Tailoring dry-ageing and cooking to enhance technological quality and volatile fingerprints in beef striploin

This study aimed to improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of dry-aged beef production by tailoring the combined effects of ageing and cooking treatments. Beef striploins from heifers and steers (n = 4 per sex) were subjected to either in-bag dry-ageing for 28 days (BD) or stepwise ageing (SA: 14 days wet-ageing followed by 14 days BD). Samples were cooked using sous-vide (SVP, 49 °C for 1 h) or oven precooking (OP, 49 °C for 24 h) followed by pan-frying to a core temperature of 59 °C. Technological traits, including ageing and cooking losses, proximate composition, fatty acid profile, lipid oxidation, and shear force, were evaluated, alongside volatile fingerprinting using Direct Analysis in Real Time Mass Spectrometry (DART-MS). Unaged beef served as a control. Both BD and SA increased ageing loss, intramuscular fat content, and lipid oxidation while reducing shear force compared to controls (P < 0.05), with no differences (P > 0.05) between the ageing methods except for ageing loss. Aged samples generally showed lower cook losses but higher total losses (P < 0.01). OP reduced shear force in unaged beef to levels similar to well-aged samples (P < 0.01). Volatile fingerprinting revealed distinct interactions between sex, ageing, and cooking. Volatile features from SA differed from BD, particularly after SVP. OP-cooked control samples showed similar volatile fingerprint patterns to BD-treated beef aged for 28 days. The outcomes of this study suggest that combining SA with tailored cooking strategies may offer a practical approach to producing dry-aged-like beef more efficiently and affordably.