Folks:
For those of you who use a cooler and ice to wet age meat, I have a couple of questions.
1. I know the water drains through the plug, but doo you keep the meat off the bottom of the cooler with a grate or something?
2. Do you put the ice directly on the meat, or is there something like freezer paper between the meat and ice? (I've seen that done both ways).
Thanks
RM
Hello Mike.....
The way I do it is to put a layer of ice on the bottom of the cooler, chunk the meat in and put ice on top. I don't wrap the meat or anything, don't put salt or anything else in the ice either. Drain the water out each day and refill with ice. I don't try to crowd the meat ie attempt to stuff an entire quartered whitetail in a 48 quart cooler. I put the hindquarters in one cooler and the rest of the deer in another just so I have a lot of ice. I find two little coolers (54 quart) a little easier to work with than one big one but YMMV on that.
You are going to get some water on the meat, especially at first as the first round of ice has to dissipate body heat, but there is no way in heck that bacteria is going to be an issue as long as you have plenty of ice in the box. That water is going to be just above freezing temp, and unless you get water from a creek somewhere to make your ice its gonna be coming from a purified source. The only way you can screw this up is to forget about it, let all the ice melt and the water get warm. After about a week give or take, the meat will appear pale, looking kind of like chicken, and that worries some people, but that is only superficial. I use plain old igloo coolers, not the high dollar stuff.
I don't know how much "bleeding" takes place in this process. You cut a heck of a lot of little blood vessels when you butcher an animal and these are going to bleed into the water. It does not take much blood to make the drain water look red. Usually after a day or two the water gets pretty clear.
I'm usually tired of acquiring ice, draining the cooler, etc after about a week and get motivated to put the deer away in the freezer. So I have not left the meat on ice much longer than that.
I've never had any problems or complaints about meat quality. I have had a chance to eat some venison that was aged in a walk in cooler with the hide on, ie the ideal way, and I could not tell any difference personally. I've also "dry aged" it in a fridge and can't tell the difference. It is my opinion that most average deer people kill are relatively young and don't benefit that much from a long aging process........but this stuff is almost like a religion.
