I've very much enjoyed my previous two attempts at Dry Curing Meat (Spanish Lomo and Capicola). I don't have any special equipment or drying chamber but, in the case of the Capicola, was able to make something as good as the commercially available product.
My previous two projects were pork but this one, Bresaola, is beef Eye of Round. It's not a cut of meat I cook with typically but it's very inexpensive ($5/lb for a 6 lb roast) and I expect to appreciate this use of it. Like the last two I will be curing it using the equilibrium method where you apply a specific amount of salt (3% by weight in my case) and give it as much time as needed to absorb it (this is as opposed to providing much more salt than is needed and then properly timing the salting time which can over-salt the meat). I'm using salt only here which is okay for whole muscle curing.
Post curing, I'll cover the meat with Pepper, garlic, and spicy paprika.
I will wrap the meat in dry aging wraps like last time and hang it in my basement which is in the mid 50s and fairly dry. The drying was fairly gentle in these conditions and I didn't get much of a dry ring on the outside (we'll see how that goes now that we're in spring). I'll plan on a 40% reduction in weight on the meat which should take something like 6 weeks.
I finished up my Capicola this week and am missing having it to snack on. I'll need to find a better way to time the availability of these projects going forward.
Ingredients:
- 2359 g Eye of Round Beef Roast (with most fat trimmed
- 71 g of Salt
- Spice mix of equal parts covering the meat:
- Spicy Paprika
- Black Pepper\
- Garlic Powder
Process Details:
- 3/16/24 - Initial Preparation
- Trimmed my roast - removed some of the thick hard fat. Left on a thin layer in a few places. This is a big roast (nearly 6 lbs)
- Weighed the meat in grams and then calculated 3% salt.
- Moved to a 1 gal bag and added the salt as evenly as I could. Sealed the bag with as little air as possible and moved to the back of the fridge
- The meat expelled juices and then reabsorbed them over the next couple weeks. I flipped the meat every day for the most part. Still has some free juices after 2 weeks so I'll plan to give it 3 or 4.
- 4/5/24 - Drying preparation:
- The meat had re-absorbed most of the moisture so I decided to proceed to drying
- Covered the meat with 2 tsp each of Black Pepper, Garlic Powder, and Spicy Paprika. It took it all with a medium level of coverage
- Wrapped the meat in a dry curing wrap
- Trussed up the meat to hold it's shape
- Put this in a few muslin sacks and tied a few more times including with a place for hanging
- Hung the meat down in the basement where it is now about 60 F and 50% humidity
- It weighs 2454 g after the salting and with the wrapping. I am shooting for a 40% weight loss which would be a loss of about 950g from the original weight - this is a target weight of 1500g
- 4/18/24 - The meat has been air drying almost 2 weeks now and is down to 1846g (25%). This is consistent with the percentage of weight loss for my Capicola at this stage
- 5/4/24 - The meat dried down to 1488g in the last 2 weeks. This is quite a bit faster than previous meats. It is done at this weight.
- The dry curing meat wrap had been applied a bit too heavily and was very difficult to remove. I ended up having to scrub the meat with a brush and still couldn't get it all off. Ended up leaving a lot on there to be eaten (this ultimately didn't make much difference, but I was irritated about it at the time). Sliced the meat down the middle - it is very red and very shiny with just a very minor amount of dry ring around the edges. The basement is running about 50% humidity now which probably helped a lot (but getting into the mid-60s which is higher than ideal.
- Sliced it thin to sample. I'd never had this before to compare the real thing with. It has a concentrated beefy flavor as you would expect and struck me as having an iron flavor. The flavor is quite different than the pork. I ended up washing away much of the spices with the effort to clean off the wrapping so not much of that flavor. The texture is a bit chewy - definitely a bit tougher than the Capicola.
- I put it in a ziplock bag in the fridge with the plan eat it all here in the near term
- 6/9/24 - I have eaten about 75% of the meat at this point. I really like it. It is plenty tender even if not as tender as the pork and has a strong flavor which I find to be very pleasant. I definitely will make this again - hopefully without the stupid mistakes I made this time.
- I've been reading quite a bit about curing meats since making this and learning that I was largely ignorant of the theory behind this practice of curing meat. The potential for pathogens with cured meat wasn't something I fully appreciated. A big part of the salting protects meat by helping the surface dry out and stay dry (as it drives moisture to be retained inside the meat when you transition to the air-drying phase). A dry surface is much less likely to allow harmful bacteria to develop. The bacteria are active between 40 F and 140F. Drying between 50-60 F, along with the dry surface and protection provided by salt, helps limit the chances of something bad growing on the meat as it starts drying out. I feel I was a bit cavalier with this meat in attempting to dry in the basement above 60 F. I plan to use my temperature/humidity-controlled dorm fridge for the air-drying stage in the warmer months going forward
