We have all read about Casper Stuhr Sobczyk’s butter steak, and one of the things that bothered me after my chat with him was that his butter became rancid in the process and couldn’t be used afterward. The main reason was that the steak was placed in a regular refrigerator, which is not an environment that appeals to the butter. After a lot of dialogue about the butter steak in the Facebook group: “Danske Dry Aging Entusiaster”, I got a tip that Dennis Juhl from the Aalborg restaurant: “Restaurant Textur” also works with the process.
Dennis Juhl
Dennis runs Restaurant Textur and works primarily with a strong focus on resource utilization, in the spirit of Stop Food Waste, as they generally strive to reduce food waste among Danes. In October, Dennis was named “Chef Profile of the Year” by Den Danske Spiseguide and won ahead of profiles Thorsten Schmidt, Eric Vildgaard, and Brian Mark Hansen.
Dennis’s Butter Aging Process
Dennis has long collaborated with Arla, and through this collaboration, he found his ideal butter aging process.
He generally uses meat from Rævhede Naturprodukter, where the meat is aged for 3 weeks before he receives it. Essentially, the meat is ready and can be eaten. It is typically sirloin from dairy cattle that is used. They can bind much more fat and are therefore very marbled, which is crucial when aging meat. Meat that is too lean cannot be aged very easily. The sirloin is the end of the beef fillet, and it is somewhat thinner.
He makes a paste of Jamaican long pepper and fermented wild garlic mixed with butter. The meat is coated with the mixture and wrapped in a dry aging bag. The process allows him to encapsulate the flavor, and there is generally experimentation with the duration of the process. The meat is aged for anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months in the bags.
The meat is typically used as tartare, which was nominated as dish of the year in the “Land” category, judged by “Danish food critics”.
The butter absorbs the flavor of the meat and herbs and is used in other dishes. For example, a broken sauce is made with the melted butter, mixed with fermented yellow peas (a miso with a very strong umami taste) along with stock and vinegar.