August 23, 2020 Preserved Meats: Bresaola Week 1 + 2 and UMAI bagging

I've made bresaola before and I thought it was good.  So I ordered an eye round and gathered my cure ingredients together.

Here are a few slices of the finished product.  It is so flavorful and succulent.  A good amount of salt, but not overpoweringly so.  

Ingredients

1 kg eye round of beef, trimmed of all exterior fat

kosher salt, 3 % of meat weight

2 T sugar 

Instacure #2, .25% of meat weight

5 g black pepper, ground

2.5 g fresh rosemary

5 g dried thyme

5 juniper berries

Method

1.  Weight your eye round after trimming, mine weighed 1088 g.

2.  Mix together your cure ingredients.  (1088 x .03 = 32.64 g salt; 1088 x .0025 = 2.72 g cure #2 )

3.  Rub cure all over meat.  I did this in a plastic bag that I was going to store the meat in while waiting in the fridge.  The salt and cure will pull moisture out of the meat and replace it with salt and flavoring.  Cure for 2 weeks, massaging and turning every day.

4.  Remove from curing bag, wash off cure and pat dry.  Weigh it again.  Record weight, you are going to need it.  Then you can tie the meat into a nice tubular shape and coat with a layer of extra flavorings, such as black pepper, and rosemary.

5.  Put into an UMAI Bag and seal tight using their vac mouse system.  On the bag write the weight of the post cured meat.  Figure out the target weight which will be 35 - 40% less.

6.  Put into fridge on a rack so that air can circulate all around it.  The UMAI bags are one-way bags, air and moisture goes out, nothing goes in.  The bags are very tender, so be careful, do not use a rack that has any sharp projections or corners.  Every week for 4 - 8 weeks, weigh the meat.  When it has reached its target moisture loss, you are ready to crack it open and slice thinly for a treat.

Day 1, Week 1 (see above)

Day 4, Week 1 (see below)

The cure is penetrating the meat.  It feels a bit more resistant to the touch, firmer to the finger poke.  

Day 7, 1 week, half way through curing process (see below)

The poke test reveals it is getting quite firm and there is a lot more juice surrounding the eye round.

Today was the day to pull it out of the cure and clean off and seal in the UMAI bag.  

The meat absorbed about 11 grams during the curing process.  The color of the meat was a beautiful raw tuna color.  That is what I was looking for.  

Since I need to wait until it has lost 30-40% of its weight.  I arbitrarily selected a loss of 35%.  That target weight is 714 grams.  

What will I look for in the meat in order to decide if it is ready to eat or not.  Firmness to the finger poke, rosy red color.  

I am not really happy with the seal of the bag.  I know it does not have to be air tight, and over time it will pull away from the meat, but the issue may be I coated the cured meat with pepper and paprika which may inhibit the seal.  The UMAI bags are 1 way bags.  They allow moisture out, but not in.  This is how you can cure things, or age steaks without a dedicated space to hang.  I will monitor the situation for a couple of days, and if it looks like it is not properly sealed, I will wash off the pepper and paprika and reseal in a new bag.

I rebagged this as the seal was not good.  I washed off most of the paprika and pepper, and rebagged it in a new bag.  There was a bit of trouble getting the seal to work, but I persevered and finally, it worked.  I also cut a bit of drawer liner that is breathable and put it on top of the rack in the fridge so that I could prevent any pinholes in the bag.  The bags feel quite sturdy, but are very fragile, apparently!  

Weighed it again, and it was 1063 g, 65% of that is 691 g so that is the target weight.  Should take about 4 weeks.

Today's weigh in:  873 g  Only 200 g left

Photo Op

You can see that the bag is coming away from the meat, that is normal.  It shows that the meat is shrinking and giving off it's moisture.  In handling the bresaola today, it is getting firm on one end and has a lovely pliability when squeezed.  I am getting so psyched about this!

Dateline: April 26, 2020 Pastrami, yes please

I found this guy on youtube PressureLuck, who does pastrami in an instant pot, in a freakin' instant pot.  So I am going to try it out for myself.  I have a nice hunk of corned beef in the fridge that I will follow his recipe with.

Ingredients

2.5 - 5 lb store bought corned beef, flat or point

Rub

3 T ground black pepper

2 T ground coriander

1 T paprika, I used smoked dolce

1 T dark brown sugar, I used chopped up jaggery

1/2 T garlic powder

1/2 T onion powder

1 t rubbed sage

1/2 t mustard powder

Rinse the corned beef very, very well, for at least 1 minute under cold water.  In your instant pot, add 1 cup of water and a trivet with handles.  Position the beef with fat cap up into the instant pot and set to pressure cook on high for 1 hour.

When the hour is up, use a 15 minute natural release, then remove the meat and pat dry. Let the meat rest for approximately 10 minutes so that it is cool to the touch.

Put all rub ingredients into a bowl, jar, receptacle of some kind, and mix or shake to combine well.

Put the rub on a plate that is large enough to hold the whole piece of meat.

Place meat onto plate, fat cap down, and press into the rub.  Flip the meat over, and cover completely with the rub.  Get into any valleys or divots.  The rub is what provides the pastrami taste.  

Cut 2 pieces of aluminum foil.  Place the rub-covered meat into the center and wrap tightly.  Wrap a second time so that juices or spices do not escape.

Refrigerate for minimum of 12 hours or up to a maximum of 2 days.

An hour before you are going to cook the pastrami in the oven, remove it from the fridge and leave on the counter.  Set oven to 275° F with rack in the center, and a second rack with a drip pan below.  Remove outermost foil piece, and keep the meat on the other piece.  Using the foil around the meat, make a basket like structure to leave the top exposed, but there are foil sides to catch the drippings.  

Let cook at this temperature for 1 hour.  Remove from oven and place brisket on a cutting board and let rest for 10 minutes before cutting.  

Please slice against the grain into however thick or thin you want.  A very sharp knife is essential.

so much promise

slices

waiting for the bread to be done

So yummy.  You've got to try!


Note:  Next time I do this, I will hunt for a point corned brisket.  The extra fat will help keep everything really juicy. 

Dateline: April 14, 2020 Turkey Saltimbocca

I just couldn't face lamb leftovers tonight.  So, I dug through the freezer and found turkey tenderloins.  Now, what to do with then.....Saltimbocca!  Had the prosciutto, Bill got some fresh sage leaves, and I had the pounding devices.... so easy peasy.

Turkey Saltimbocca

Turkey tenderloin or turkey breast  sliced into slabs and then cut in half if need be.  Ultimately you want the slab to be able to be pounded out to the approximately size of either a whole or half piece of prosciutto.

Prosciutto, at least 4 oz of thinly sliced ham

fresh sage leaves, you will place at least 2 or 3 leaves on each flattened turkey piece

Cut each tenderloin longways at the tendon, your slice should be as close to the tendon as possible so that you can remove it without losing too much meat.  After slicing the tenderloin, cut around the fat, exposed end of the tendon, and turn the slice so that it is now tendon next to the cutting board.  Waggle a bit of it loose and holding the knife at an angle so that you can cut/scrap the flesh off of the tendon.  Examine the piece.  Is it thick enough to cut longways into 2 slabs and cut into 4 pieces.  If not thick enough, then cut into 2 pieces and hold to the side.  The other half of the tenderloin can now be sliced in half longways and split into 4 pieces.  You should have from a single whole turkey tenderloin about 6-8 pieces.

Plastic Wrap

Get a clean cutting board and place a sheet of plastic wrap that is large enough to fold and cover the turkey piece with enough room to allow it to expand when it is being pounded.  Sprinkle a few drops of water on the plastic wrap and put a turkey piece on it.  Sprinkle the turkey piece with a few drops of water as well.  Cover with the other half of the plastic wrap.  Using either a meat pounder, rolling pin, straight sided wine bottle, any implement that can apply some pressure to the turkey piece.  Gently whack it until it is flattened some what.  (Ultimately, you want the piece of turkey to end up about 1/4 inch, but not in this first whacking.)

Lift up the top part of plastic and place 2 - 3 sages leaves on the raw turkey and cover with a piece of prosciutto.  Cover with plastic wrap again and pound to that 1/4 inch thickness.  This is to make sure that the prosciutto adheres to the meat without resorting to toothpicks.  I hate toothpicks in food.

Remove the turkey cutlet from the plastic wrap and put on a plate.  I used some parchment paper between cutlets to keep them from sticking to each other.

Continue on until all of the turkey pieces are pounded and on the plate.

The Cook

3-4 cloves of garlic, either halved or whole depending on their size and your taste for garlic

red pepper flakes

1 T chopped shallot

peeled and chopped rind of 1/2 lemon

white wine 

juice of 1/2 lemon.

1 T butter

Heat a large frying pan and add in some olive oil.  To the pan add several sage leaves and the halved cloves of garlic and some hot pepper flakes.  Saute these until the garlic is lightly browned and the sage leaves are crispy.  Remove from the pan and hold.

Add a couple of the turkey cutlets prosciutto side down into the hot pan.  Lightly salt and pepper the side of the turkey that is face up in the pan now.  Saute until lightly browned and flip over for a short amount of time.  Just enough to almost cook it through.  Remove from the pan and hold on a clean plate.  Continue with the balance of the cutlets.  

After all the cutlets have been cooked, add the shallots to the pan and cook until translucent.  Deglaze the pan with a slug of white wine, not too much, loosen up the browned bits.  Reduce the wine until there are just a slight glaze on the shallots.  Add the lemon juice and a another slug of wine.  Reduce slightly, taste.  Does it need anything?  Add salt, more juice, wine, chicken stock, whatever. Add butter to the pan and swirl to incorporate into the sauce.

Put the cutlets back into the pan and heat them through and baste with the sauce.  Serve.

I made absurdly addictive asparagus to go with the saltimbocca and a delightful French St. Emilion.  Delicious on all counts.