We first tried bresaola years ago, when our friend Dr. Francesco — a man as passionate about food as my husband is — gave us some of his own. Then, on a trip to Northern Italy, we came across a pure beef salami and realised there was a whole world of cured beef we hadn’t properly explored yet. Bresaola was next.
After the salami, my husband wasn’t done. Next up in his curing corner was bresaola — a whole muscle of beef, cured, washed, cased and hung until it turns into something silky and deeply savoury. This time of year, out come the curing tubs again, and I know we’re in for another few months of him weighing things obsessively on the kitchen bench. These days we joke that we make it better than he does — but Francesco’s the reason this all started, so my husband will always set a batch aside for him. That’s just who my husband is with anything he takes on: meticulous to the gram, never satisfied until it’s exactly right. If you read The Beef Salami My Husband Has Been Perfecting for Years, you’ll know exactly the kind of person we’re dealing with here.
Why beef bresaola?
It comes down to the same reasons as the salami: pure beef, nothing else. That mattered to us even before we started curing our own — it was Francesco’s bresaola, and then that beef salami in Northern Italy, that first made us realise how much cured meat on the market is pork, right down to the casing, even when the label doesn’t make that obvious. If we can’t source a properly halal casing, we make sure whatever we use is at least definitely not pork — so this works whether you need it fully halal or simply pork-free. Beyond that, it’s the same instinct that drives all of his curing — wanting to know exactly what’s gone into it, and the satisfaction of doing it properly yourself rather than trusting a packet off a shelf.
Bresaola is also, in its own way, even more precise than the salami. Nothing is minced or mixed by hand-crank here — it’s one whole muscle, and every single ingredient is weighed to the gram and prepped and ready to go before it even touches the meat. If the salami is about the process, bresaola is about the discipline of it.
This isn’t a beginner recipe — it’s a recipe for people who already have the bug for curing and want to take it further.
How it’s made
The short version — the full recipe with exact quantities is below.
It starts with girello, also called eye of round — a lean, whole muscle, trimmed of all its fat and sinew before curing. Unlike the salami, this one stays whole — no mincing, no grinding. Just the one clean muscle.
The cure itself is a rub, not a mix: No. 2 Curing Salt, black pepper, fresh rosemary and thyme, juniper berries, chilli flakes, fennel, lemon and orange zest, fresh garlic and dry bay leaves — all worked out as a percentage of the meat’s weight, then rubbed straight onto the beef. Every ingredient is measured out and lined up before it goes anywhere near the girello — nothing is eyeballed, nothing is added on the fly.
Once it’s rubbed on, it goes into a vacuum bag for a minimum of four weeks.
Honestly, this is one of my favourite projects of his to be around for — not because I do much, but because I don’t have to. Unlike the salami, which genuinely needs two sets of hands on the stuffer, bresaola is his alone from start to finish. No hand-cranking, no mixer, and — my favourite part — far fewer dishes.
The night before, the ox casing gets its own preparation — washed, trimmed to length, and left to soak overnight in water with a spoonful of bicarb soda and a few orange wedges. It stays in water right up until the moment it’s used, then gets rinsed inside and out before casing.
Once the four weeks are up, the cure gets washed off with water, and the meat is dabbed dry. Then comes the part he calls the hardest: sliding the whole muscle into the ox casing. It’s a bung casing, which is different to the salami casing — a bung comes already sealed at one end, so once the meat is in, there’s only the open end left to tie off.
From there it’s pricked all over with a sterilised pin to release any trapped air, then netted.
The last step before hanging is a mold culture — Bactoferm Mold-600, diluted in distilled water and sprayed or washed over the outside of the netted bresaola.
Then it hangs — ideally at 12.2°C and 85% humidity — until it’s lost 38% of its original weight. That can take anywhere from two to four months, depending on the environment it’s hanging in. He weighs it along the way rather than watching the calendar.
A few things you’ll want to know
This is not a beginner recipe — it’s a recipe for those who are already passionate about curing. Cured, air-dried meat is safe when it’s done properly, and the same rules apply here as they do to any long cure we take on: you need an accurate curing salt (No. 2 Curing Salt) weighed precisely against the meat, and a way to hold a stable temperature and humidity while it hangs — ideally a proper dry ager. If you can’t control those conditions, please don’t attempt it — unless making bresaola already runs in your family, Italian-style or otherwise, and you know exactly what you’re doing.
The percentages matter. Every cure ingredient is calculated as a percentage of the girello’s exact weight. Weigh the meat first, then scale everything from there — never eyeball it.
The 38% weight loss is your finish line. Weigh and date it the day it goes up. It’s ready when it’s lost 38% of that starting weight — not before, however long that takes.
The white bloom is meant to be there. As it hangs, a soft white mould develops on the outside — this is exactly what you want. It’s a good, protective mould, the same kind you see on a quality salami, and it’s why we spray the culture on in the first place. What you don’t want is fuzzy green, black or blue-grey mould — white and even means it’s going right.
The cut of meat
Girello, also called eye of round, is the cut for bresaola — a lean, whole muscle from the leg. It’s trimmed completely of fat and sinew before curing, and it stays whole the entire time. Unlike the salami, nothing here is minced or ground — the whole point is a single clean muscle, cured as one piece from start to finish.
The ingredients explained
If some of this is new to you, here’s what each thing does and why it’s there.
No. 2 Curing Salt is a curing salt that contains sodium nitrate (and nitrite) alongside regular salt. It’s what makes cured meat safe over a long, unrefrigerated dry-cure like this one — it protects against harmful bacteria and gives the finished bresaola its characteristic colour and flavour. It’s different to the No. 1 cure used for short cures and cooked sausages; No. 2 is specifically for long-aged, air-dried products where the meat hangs for weeks or months. Never guess the amount — it’s used in tiny, precise quantities, always weighed as a percentage of the meat.
Ox casing (bung) is the natural casing the bresaola is cased in. A bung comes already sealed at one end, so once the meat is inside, only the open end needs tying off. This is genuinely important: because you don’t eat the casing, it’s easy to assume it doesn’t matter what it’s made from — but a lot of cured meat on the market is wrapped in pork casing, and nobody tells you, because they assume it’s fine either way. It isn’t fine for us. Ox casing is beef, so it’s the right starting point — and a halal-certified ox bung can be sourced, even if it takes a bit more effort to track down than the standard version.
Netting is the elastic string mesh that holds the bresaola’s shape while it hangs and dries, and gives you something to hang it from. It comes as a long tube, and you need something wide to load it onto — a purpose-made netting horn if you have one, but honestly, a traffic cone works just as well, which is exactly what we use. Slide the netting over the cone and gather the whole length onto it like a concertina, then feed the tied bresaola through the middle and pull the net off the end so it slips over the meat as it comes through. Tie off both ends and it’s ready to hang.
Bactoferm Mold-600 is a mold culture, diluted in distilled water and sprayed or washed over the outside of the finished, netted bresaola. It encourages the right kind of mold to develop on the casing as it hangs.
A sterilised pin is what’s used to prick the bresaola all over once it’s cased and netted, to release any trapped air pockets before it hangs. Any multi-pronged pricking tool works — ours has three fine needles set into a cork handle — but the needles need to be sterilised first, which we do by holding them in a gas flame for a few seconds until they’ve heated right through. Let them cool before you use them.
Beef, or fully halal?
These are two different things, and this recipe can be made either way.
No pork. At its simplest, this is a bresaola made with beef instead of pork — for anyone who just needs it to be pork-free. That includes the casing, not just the meat, and this is the part that catches people out: because you never eat the casing itself, it’s assumed to be a non-issue, and a lot of cured meat is cased in pork without anyone flagging it. Ox casing already puts you in the right family of casing since it’s beef, so using it keeps the whole thing pork-free before you even get into halal certification. Use good, trimmed girello and the rest of the process stays the same.
Fully halal. To go further and make it fully halal, every animal-based part needs to be halal-certified — the beef, and the casing too. You just need the ox casing to be halal-certified specifically, which can take some looking, but it is out there. Check your cure and mold culture too, for any non-halal additives.
The recipe
Beef Bresaola — per 1000g girello (eye of round), fat and sinew trimmed
- 2.75% salt
- 0.25% No. 2 Curing Salt
- 0.4% black pepper
- 0.2% fresh rosemary
- 0.3% fresh thyme
- 2 juniper berries per kilogram
- 0.4% chilli flakes
- 0.2% fennel
- Zest of 1 lemon
- Zest of 1 orange
- 0.7% fresh garlic
- 2 dry bay leaves
- Ox casing (bung), washed, trimmed to length, and soaked overnight in water with a spoonful of bicarb soda and a few orange wedges — rinsed inside and out before use
- Bactoferm Mold-600, diluted in distilled water (for hanging)
Method
- The night before: wash the ox casing, trim it to length, and soak overnight in water with a spoonful of bicarb soda and a few orange wedges. Keep it in water until you’re ready to use it, then rinse inside and out.
- Weigh the trimmed girello and scale every cure ingredient proportionally from the 1000 gram base above. Combine and rub thoroughly over the whole muscle.
- Vacuum seal and cure for a minimum of 4 weeks.
- Wash the cure off with water, then dab dry.
- Slide the meat into the ox casing (bung) and tie off the open end.
- Prick all over with a sterilised pin to release any trapped air, then net.
- Dilute the Bactoferm Mold-600 in distilled water and spray or wash it over the netted bresaola.
- Hang at approximately 12.2°C and 85% humidity until it has lost 38% of its original weight — around two to four months, depending on the environment.
- Once it reaches its target weight, remove the netting and casing, then vacuum-seal. Store in the dry ager or the fridge.
Slice it as thin as you can — almost see-through — and serve it simply: a drizzle of good olive oil, cracked pepper, olives, maybe a little rocket and shaved parmesan. That’s the whole point of bresaola. Let it be the star.
Sahtain!
