Bresola

[Northern_Smoke]

I have to say thank you to everyone that has ever posted about dry curing. It is something that always intrigued me. I decided to take tiny steps to try and get into it and after seeing some posts about using the dry bag method I decided this was the way to get started. I just don't have he room yet for a dedicated curing chamber but I do have a dedicated full size beer fridge :) anyways long story short is I used a beef eye of round and what looks like an eye of round from an elk my friend brought over. I used Jason Molinari's recipe from http://curedmeats.blogspot.ca for his beef and venison bresola. They are now in the dry cure bags and the wait begins.

Here is the beef

And the elk

And bagged and weighed


I also talked to the people from the dry bag kit web site about case hardening I had seen in some of their videos and we talked about the possible use of a humidifier to slow it down. Does anyone see a problem with this?

[Northern_Smoke]

I guess I could have resized the pictures :(

[Northern_Smoke]

Well it's been a week since I put the vac bags in the fridge. The beef has lost just under 8% weight and the elk is right around 10%. I am wondering if I am on course time wise vs. weight loss? I felt the meat and it is still fairly soft on the outside. I was concerned with case hardening like in the video from the dry bag site. Also the bag on the elk looks really loose and "baggy". Should I be concerned or take it out and re seal it in a new bag?

Here is the beef


And the elk


(Nothing really interesting to look at yet)