Today the Bresaola had lost enough of its weight to be ready for tasting. This is a continuation of my previous post on making the Bresaola .
Started 1/5/19, tasting 4/13/19 The process took just over 3 months.
The meat was curing in the dry box in the basement with the dry cured ham and more dry cured pork loins (Lonzino).
The bresaola was weighed and pulled today . It had lost 44% of its starting weight.
The meat was covered with an even coating of the mold until I dropped it. So then I wiped it off with a damp towel and vinegar. So you can now see some of the surface texture.
First cut. You can see how dark the meat is.
A bit closer and you can see that the coloring is even across the meat with little extra darkening at the edges indicating that the drying was fairly even. Feeling the meat, the top end is a bit firmer and presumably drier than this which is at the bottom quarter point. The collagen is very well adhered to the meat, more so than with the pork loins.
Tasting – delicious if a little bit salty. Saltiness is comparable to commercial prosciutto. There is a hint of the rosemary and juniper flavors but very mild. The meat is very tender and almost a bit too soft yet. Hint of a “minerally” flavor which is I guess to be expected with the eye of round roast. Meat is very dark red as you can see and slices nicely. This has a much stronger “meaty” / “minerally” flavor than the pork loin.
Putting the large piece back in the box for another week. Small piece into the fridge to eat.
Next time, I will rinse thoroughly before applying the collagen to get more of the salt off to see if I can reduce the saltiness. I had not rinsed much so that I would not wash all of the spice mix off.
I would rate this one also a success. However I much prefer the dry cured pork loin.
Mark Bronkalla