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!
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!
