Irish Bresaola Charcuterie

Tried my first attempt at making some Irish bresaola charcuterie and what is this I hear you ask? It's a cured meat that's served thinly sliced along with salads or a cheese board. Bresaola is an unusual one as it requires both a dry and wet cure. It's really a simple recipe to try. Once its cured it can be left hanging in the kitchen for a month or two to mature and then used as required.Using a recipe from the fantastic Steven Lambs book The River Cottage Curing & Smoking Handbook . Its possible to tinker around with it to add the flavors you would like to get out of it. It's really just the time and salt are the only ingredients that should remain relatively constant.Starting off with a nice piece of beef, preferably with just the one piece or singular muscle such as a cut of round roast... 

Preparing the meat

Trim off all the excess fat to leave a nice piece of meat. Its even better if there are no holes or cuts so the cure can work evenly through the meat...

Preparing the cure

 Here is a list of the ingredients for the dry cure mix that I used this time around:

• rosemary

• ground cloves

• crushed fresh garlic

• crushed black peppercorns

• orange peel

• sea salt

Rubbing the cure into the meat and leaving it in the fridge, I try and turn it and re-spread the cure morning and evening. Its left there for four days.After 4 days in the fridge I placed it in a ziplock bag from #Ikea, added as much red wine (Rioja) so as the meat was covered, using a bag instead of the lunchbox uses far less wine allowing more for me to enjoy  :-) Leaving an additional 5 days in the fridge.Removing the meat from the mixture and patting it dry. Try to carefully leave as much as the herbs as possible there for effect.

Air drying

 Then its tied up with some butchers string. I left it in the kitchen for a few days to start to develop a white fungal bloom.As you can see in the picture below the white mold has started to develop so this is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about.After a few days I transferred the bresaola down to the workshop when it hung for another 3 weeks to air dry.Three weeks hanging in the workshop and this is what I have, it was so exciting to cut into it, Irish charcuterie at its best.

Ready to eat

 Look at the color of the meat, looks and tastes absolutely amazing. Decided to slice the remainder of it up and vacuum pack it up to use at a later date but it would last up to a month in a cool kitchen.Some of the bresaola even made it into my Xmas hampers.