The Cure · Starter
Bresaola
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with a sweet edge rounding the corners.
Ingredients
- 1.2 kg beef eye of round, every scrap of silverskin and fat trimmed off
- 36 g fine sea salt (3%)
- 3 g curing salt no. 2 (0.25%)
- 12 g dark brown sugar
- 6 g black pepper, cracked
- 8 juniper berries, crushed
- 2 g thyme
- 2 bay leaves, crumbled
- 150 ml dry red wine
- 1 beef bung, large collagen casing or drying net
The skills inside
TrussingBrining & curingKeeping the cooking liquidResting meat & slicing against the grain
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Weigh the trimmed muscle and scale every cure ingredient to that weight, then rub the lot on and seal it in a vacuum bag with the wine.
- Cure at 4C (39F) for 12 days, flipping the bag daily so the liquor washes both ends.
- Wipe the meat down, case it or truss it tight in netting, and hang at 12-14C (54-57F) and 70-75% humidity.
- Weigh it weekly. It is ready at 38% weight loss, four to eight weeks, when the whole muscle feels evenly firm with no soft give at the core.
- Slice across the grain as thin as the knife allows and let it warm on the plate before serving.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes
- It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
- The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
- Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
- The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
- The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.
Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.
Keeping the cooking liquid 60 recipes
- It was actually kept: the liquid went into a container rather than down the drain, and the volume saved is enough to be worth using.
- It is clean: strained of solids and grit, and not clouded with the debris of whatever broke up in it.
- It tastes of what it cooked and tastes concentrated rather than washed out, and it is not so salty or so bitter that the only honest use is the bin.
- It was cooled quickly and stored cold, not left standing warm on the stove to be dealt with later.
- Used, it does the job the dish gives it (carrying flavour into a sauce, loosening the dish, or setting when chilled) rather than merely adding water back.
Where it goes wrong The pot was left to cool slowly on the stove and only strained the next day, so it soured overnight: what should have been the best ingredient in the dish goes in the bin, and the recipe gets water instead.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Syrah (northern Rhône) or Nebbiolo
- Also Right
- The braising wine itself, better bottle
- From the Taps
- Belgian dubbel
- Zero-Proof
- Beet & blackcurrant shrub
Long-cooked beef trades bite for depth: savory, structured reds echo the pot; and pouring the braise’s own region is law.
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