More Charcuterie

Before jumping in, a note. The directions and processes given here are a quick overview. For more details, check the web, books or simply email me and I can provide more on recipes and details.

One of the motivations for curing my own meat, aside from the pure enjoyment, is that many most of the meats you buy in the stores contain dextrose. Dextrose is a corn derivative and causes the greyness to itch. So given my carnivore tendencies and propensity to itch with a good store bought salami or lunch meat, it's time to make my own. By the way, there are some brands sold commercially that are safe and I use them as fill-in occasionally, but I also like to make artisan products that I can adjust to my taste, including using local, organic meats from unusual animal breeds that in most cases is exceptionally good and not generally available.

I've made salami off and on for some time. But it wasn't until I learned of Jason Molinari and his efforts that I really dove into it. The greatest discovery was that there are a whole lot of meats that you can cure without any grinding. These are the so-called "whole muscle" meats like bresaola, coppa and lonza. I've also now cured and prepared my own bacon and pancetta, both of which are extremely simple and even easier to do. What I found is that virtually any cut of meat can be cured and flavored. For the most part, all of these require very little special equipment, particularly if you cure during the winter.

This is a picture of a bresaola in the early stages of curing. You simply trim an eye of round of fat and silver skin, rub it down with salt and spices, and let it sit in the fridge for a couple of weeks. Some folks use sodium nitrate as a preservative. I have learned that in whole muscle meats the nitrates aren't necessary (as opposed to ground cured meats like salami).


After the curing period, the meat is put into casings readily available here, tied and hung until it loses approximately 30% of it's weight. You can spray the outside of the meat with a curing mold, or let nature take it's course.

This would be my curing chamber which consists of a cheap wine cellar ($175, any enclosure with a modest refridgeration unit will work), humidfier ($50), and a temperature controller ($28). The bresaola is the smallish piece of meat without any mold in the left/center of the pic. To the right is "bra spice" salami and the left is the below referenced coppa.

This is a pretty deluxe setup. As I said earlier, if you do curing in the winter you can simply hang the meat somewhere in a cool spot with an pan of water underneath (for humidity).

Finally comes the good part. You slice it and eat it (h/t Jason Molinari, here one of his drizzled with olive oil, lemon and herbs). I'd put a picture of the finished products of the greyster, but it seems to disappear a bit too quickly to get the camera out .....

The entire process takes about 6-8 weeks, or longer if you choose. The cure time affects the taste with less time equaling a milder flavor and more time adding more punch. The bresaola's I've made thus far have had minimal hang time resulting in a very delicate meat that it hardly distinguishable from a good proscuitto .... and a whole lot cheaper btw.

That's a quick overview. Perhaps as meats come to maturity I'll post more pics and tasting notes.