Bresaola

Bresoala is an attractive and delicious lean cured meat made of beef. Unlike most cured meats, this one is almost completely lacking in fat, which may appeal to the health conscious, but it doesn't compromise in flavor. When crafted with the right amount of herbs and spice, the meat gets perfumed all the way through and has a beautiful rosy color. It can be eaten as is, put in sandwiches or sliced thinly and treated almost like a raw beef carpaccio, with a shaving of parmesan cheese and a drizzle of olive oil. Of course, like most cured meats, it's best served when sliced freshly and let come to room temperature.

Bresaola is what got me into meat curing about 7 years ago. Frustrated with the typical $28.99/lb price tag at the time, it dawned on me that this sublime cured meat was nothing more than an air dried hunk of meat that I could acquire from a butcher and wouldn't be too hard to do myself. The size is manageable, and after a bit of research, I realized that so too was the cure time. Unlike a large prosciutto that requires no less than a year of aging, a cured bresaola could take as little as 3 weeks to cure in the right conditions, roughly the same amount of time I'd wait if brewing beer at home. Totally doable.

In fact the first one that I made many years ago was done in my chest-freezer converted fridge that I used to ferment and serve my kegged beer from. The controller was one that allowed a temperature range from about 40˚ to 70˚ which would be perfect for curing. Well, it turns out the first and probably second attempts at making this cured meat ended up with a moldy and spoiled end result. The mold that had grown on the meat was green and fuzzy, not the kind you want on your meat. White mold is acceptable and good and actually serves to protect from the bad molds. After about a week of aging though, the white mold started to turn green. I was aware at the time that this was likely due to excessive moisture in the closed chest-freezer environment. I remember that on the second go around, I left the chest-freezer door cracked open, but the spores of the bad mold had already inoculated my chamber and I ended up with the same results. I remember scraping off the green mold every day in an attempt to salvage the project, but in the end, even though I tasted bits of the untainted core, it was safer to toss the experiment in the name of safety.

My third attempt was done outdoors in the winter, still before I had and humidity control or even monitoring. It hung under an awning in my backyard, and it was the best of the three that I had tried. It ended up maturing fine, but the end product was mediocre. I was still figuring out the spice blend and ingredient ratios, and the outdoor environment was too varied. Temperature swung probably a delta of 30 degrees between the mid-day warmth and late night chill. I doubt that humidity was very constant either. There was a bit of case hardening, meaning that the outer inch of meat was cured nicely, but the inner core was still a bit on the raw side, indicating that the initial curing period was a bit more dry than required.

I don't remember if I made it again between that time about 5 years ago and now, but if not, this would comprise only my 4th attempt. Over time, I have learned a lot and acquired a proper chamber dedicated to the task, and I can happily say after having tasted this, I've reached what I was aiming for many years ago, and it's definitely been worth the journey. Here's my recipe adapted from a combination of online recipes and Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie book:

Be sure to scale everything proportionally based on your meat weight.

Prepare the ingredients by carefully measuring and weighing them out. Finely chop the herbs and grind the peppercorn, juniper, clove and allspice with a mortar and pestle. Combine all the ingredients together and mix until uniform with your hand. Put the meat in a large ziplock bag and evenly add the spice mixture. Massage the spices into the meat for about 2 minutes. This is a step that I would have probably skipped in the past, but I think it contributes a lot.

Try to remove excess air from the ziplock bag and leave in a container to catch any leaks or drips. Keep it in the fridge and turn every day or two to keep the cure mixture and liquid evenly in contact with the meat. Most recipes say this is a 3 to 7 day process. I left mine in (because I forgot about it) for 12 days. After the curing period. Take out the meat, rinse it off under the sink and dry with a paper towel and truss it up to air dry in the wine fridge. The temperature was set to 65˚ and I added a good amount of water to a tray of salt in the fridge to see that the humidity was at about a constant 80%.

When the meat lost 40% by weight, I took it out. This took 23-24 days for me.

I broke it down into smaller pieces and immediately vacuum sealed two of the three parts to preserve their freshness. Slice super thinly on a meat slicer, this produced a melt in your mouth piece of heaven.

Enjoy!

Coppa, Capicola, Cappicollo

Whether you know it as coppa, capicola, cappicollo or gabagoo, these names all refer to roughly the same thing. We're talking about a cured whole-muscle usually spiced with red pepper flakes, chilies, cayenne or the like. The other ingredients vary quite a bit by region and taste. These cured meats are typically made from the neck (capo=head, collo=neck in Italian) muscle, extracted from a whole pork shoulder. My recipe was a combination of what I thought would be best after having looked at about 5 or 6 recipes. Here it is:

	lbs	grams	%
pork shoulder	2.84	1288.2
salt		45.09	3.50%
Instacure #2		3.22	0.25%
sugar		19.32	1.50%
white pepper		12.88	1.00%
clove	1	3.22	0.25%
coriander	10
juniper berry	3	1.42	0.11%
Smoked paprika		7.09	0.55%
rosemary	8 leaves		0.55%
cayenne	pinch	42.77	3.32%

For the cure process, I added all the ingredients to a large zip-top bag and massaged the meat. I set it in a baking dish in the fridge and flipped it once a day for six days. After it was all done, I removed the meat and rinsed it and patted it dry. Since I didn't have a casing big enough, I decided to use some caul fat that I found at the butcher shop. I figured it would serve as a protective membrane to prevent the meat from case hardening, or drying out on the outer surface too quickly.

After a good wrapping in a couple of layers and a quick wrap up in butcher twine, I set it in the fridge at 50°F and about 75%RH to start. A tray of moistened sea salt is key for maintaining the proper humidity level. And for a low-tech solution, it works quite well.

Date	3/7/2015	3/26/2015	5/11/2015	6/3/2015	6/14/2015
Weight (g)	1287	1033	886	850	834

I waited until the weight had dropped by 35% before cracking into the Coppa, a little over 3 months later! I was rewarded with a beautiful rosy color and aroma when I first cut into it. I cut it up into 4 equal pieces, one to enjoy for brunch and the others were vacuum packed and put into the fridge.

Tasting notes: I find the salt level to be quite perfect, it's not too salty, but it's also not under salted. The flavor is pleasant and mild but the spices don't seem to come through very strongly, I would up all of the aromatics significantly for a more pronounced flavor, there is also no heat felt from the cayenne. 

If and when I make coppa again, I'd probably make the following adjustments:

Double the cayenne and juniper berry, and triple the paprika. Consider adding red wine also.

Soppressata

Soppressata, or pressed salami dates back to at least the 17th century. Today it is produced in several Italian regions, all of which vary in spices and technique. The type most commonly consumed in the US comes from the Veneto region in the north west of Italy and amusingly, it is the only Soppressata that is not pressed. Go figure.

Something about the unevenness of the oblong shape of this salami gives it rustic character, and I appreciate that. I didn't pursue a particular style when making this though, I went about it in an all too pragmatic way. I first approached my meat monger and requested hog middles, which he didn't have, but he did offer some fibrous casings that he uses and says work just as well. They ranged between 2-1/2" to 3" in diameter.

I then considered the spices that I found that other people had used. Things like: white pepper, black pepper, clove, cinnamon, coriander, cumin, juniper berry, rosemary, bay leaves, paprika, garlic, fennel, red pepper flakes, cayenne, white wine, red wine. Of course, as I've learned from so many things, art and cooking is the practice of restraint. Using all those ingredients together would not taste good. Pick 4 ingredients, and let the simplicity work its magic. Pure and clean flavor is achieved when each ingredient can come through on its own. I decided to go with white pepper, pepper flakes and garlic with a little dry white wine.

I picked up some pork shoulders that had been butchered beautifully. In the Bay Area, Dittmer's is my go to place. They were each about 2.7 lbs. I used the other one to make Coppa which I'll share in another post.

My recipe was an amalgamation of several others, and here's what I used:

Actually used 3g of pepper flake, and white pepper since I felt the amount wasn't enough.

I started by putting the meat grinder components and meat into the freezer for 15 minutes. I diced up the fat back into little cubes, and the meat into slightly larger cubes.

I returned the cubed up meat and fat to the freezer while I proceeded to prep my yogurt and spices. I added slightly warmed water to the Greek yogurt and added the dextrose (corn sugar from a brewing supply) and let them sit for a while to wake up. I then added all the dry ingredients together, the salt, white pepper, red pepper flake and cure #2. I then pressed the garlic into the yogurt and added the white wine. 

I then installed the meat grinder components onto my Kitchenaid and began the grinding process. Fat first, then meat.

After all the fat and meat was ground, I added the wet and dry ingredients and attached the paddle to my stand mixer for a quick mix. On the lowest setting, the ingredients churned for about 1 minute. Be careful to not let the mixture get warm.

Content with the blend, I cooked off a piece for a taste test and stuffed the rest into the casings that I had. I didn't have the right amount to make two full sized pieces, but no big deal, I made one and a half.

The next step was to prick the casing all over with a pin that I heated with a lighter and wiped off, and of course waived for a few seconds to cool off. Now it was time for fermentation. I placed the meat logs onto sheetpans in my bathroom and ran the shower on the hottest setting for a couple minutes with the door closed to increase the humidity and temperature. I placed another sheetpan on top of each with whatever weights I could find on top of that. A granite mortar is nice and hefty!

After being pressed for several hours I just hung the meat for the remainder of the fermentation process. All in all, they fermented for about 12 hours. Looking back, I should've kept them pressed for the entire duration.

After that, it was time to go in for the official pre-drying weigh in. These beauties weighed in at 1023g for the large and 484g for the small. The fridge was running at 50°F and 75% RH. Now to wait a few weeks...