Howdy All,

I've already dry aged two short loins and a rib-eye cut and and all were trimmed of the bone. --- result after 3 weeks --- hmmm !!! this was absolutely great with the short loin but the flavor and tenderness with the rib-eye was disappointing for me -- though I have to admit my favorite steak is the strip. Also, with one short loin, the broad width of the steak wasn't very wide to begin with and after aging for three weeks the resulting cut was only two plus inches at its widest part even after very conserative trimming. I'm thinking about trying a short loin with the bone-in to perhaps reduce the shrinkage since evaporation will be from almost four sides as opposed to six. The ensymes will still tenderize the meat but perhaps it might not shrink as much. Has anybody done this?? I'm planning on trying this but what comes to mind is that it may be difficult to a good seal with bag as the bone is somewhat concave.

Tagging along as well.

I can find bone-in sub primals, but not for what I can get the Prime rib eyes for. Not even a little more - nearly 1.5x as much.

I LOVE bone-in stuff but the price of the boneless keeps me coming back..

While I have never aged a bone-in sub-primal myself for the reasons I will soon explain I don't see why it couldn't be done whether it is concave or not. If you use the proper size Drybag then there should be sufficient material that will draw down to form the skin during the vacuuming process. Now the reason the bone-in doesn't appeal to me is I don't have a butcher saw to saw through the bones to make individual steaks. Even if I were to simply trim the bone off after aging it seems to me that the meat against the bone will not have lost much if any moisture resulting in a layered steak of an aged edge and unaged. This is just my opinion though!

Aging bone-in is definitely possible, but it adds another dimension of "tricky" to the bonding process. As some of you have experienced, the fat side of the meat can have a little trouble bonding as it is not releasing any meat proteins to form the bond. With a bone-in, both the fat side and the bone side have this challenge present. If you have just cracked the meat out of the vacuum bag it is shipped in, you have the best chance of getting a bond with any subprimal. You need as much of the sticky proteins coating both sides so that the material has something to bond with. Also, the tiny needle points on some bones can cause pin prick holes that will compromise your seal before the bond sets up. We've had some processors use netting to hold the DrybagSteak material to the surface, though this doesn't really help much on the concave curve there the bones are. Do share what your findings are, and what suggestions you have to make sure the material has the best chance in those first few critical days to bond.