Bresaola

Bresaola is cured raw beef: never cooked, never smoked. A whole muscle from the animal's hind leg is trimmed of every scrap of fat, rubbed with salt and spices, packed into a casing and hung to dry until it has lost around 40% of its weight. What comes out is deep ruby red, firm, and lean enough that it is almost always sliced paper-thin by machine rather than by hand.

The protected version is Bresaola della Valtellina IGP, granted in 1996 and made in the province of Sondrio, in the Alps north of Lake Como. The rules allow five specific cuts, all from the hind leg: fesa (top round), punta d'anca (the tip of the hip, and the prized one), sottofesa (bottom round), magatello (eye of round) and sottosso, from cattle between 18 months and four years old.

One thing is worth knowing before you buy. IGP status protects where and how the meat is cured, not where the animal was raised. Most bresaola is made from imported beef, frequently South American zebu, which is exceptionally lean and suits the process for exactly that reason, or Northern European cattle. The valley never had a herd large enough to supply the roughly twelve thousand tonnes made each year, and the rules say so openly rather than hiding it.

Clean, mineral and unmistakably beefy, with none of the sweetness of pork charcuterie. Salt lands first, the spices sit underneath: juniper and cinnamon read as a warm background rather than as identifiable flavours, and the finish is faintly bitter and metallic in the way that good rare beef is.

The texture is the surprise. Cut thin enough, it is silky and dissolves rather than chews, which is precisely why thickness matters: a slice cut like ham turns rubbery and tastes of nothing but salt. Straight from the fridge it tastes flat; twenty minutes at room temperature is what releases the aroma.

If you want a reference point, it is closer to a very good beef jerky that has been kept supple than to prosciutto, and closer to raw beef carpaccio than to pastrami. It is also drier and saltier than either, which is why it is almost always dressed with oil and acid rather than eaten on its own.

Take it out of the fridge 20 to 30 minutes before serving. Separate the slices while they are still cold, lay them flat on a plate without overlapping, and let them come up to room temperature. Cold bresaola tastes of salt and nothing else; warm it slightly and the spice and the beef arrive.

The standard dressing is rocket, shavings of grana or Parmigiano, lemon juice and good olive oil, added at the last possible second. Lemon left sitting on the meat cures the surface a second time and turns it grey within minutes. In the Valtellina itself the dressing is usually nothing more than olive oil, black pepper and rye bread on the side.

Beyond the plate, three reliable moves. Roll a slice around a teaspoon of soft goat's cheese with chives for the fastest antipasto there is. Drape it raw over a pizza or focaccia straight from the oven, with burrata, so it warms without cooking. Tear it over a risotto or a squash soup for salt and savour with no added fat. It also stands in for prosciutto with melon or figs, though the result is sharper and less sweet.

What you should not do is cook it properly. Thirty seconds in a hot pan and it goes from silky to leather, because there is no fat there to protect it.

A whole vacuum-packed piece keeps at 0 to 4 C to the date the producer prints on the pack, and that date is the reference. Once the vacuum is opened, the lean muscle has almost no fat to shield it and the surface begins to dry immediately. Wrap the cut end in greaseproof paper or a clean cloth, never in cling film against the meat, and keep it in the coldest part of the fridge. Over one to two weeks the piece hardens from the cut face inward, the colour there deepens toward brown, and the salt concentrates as water leaves.

Pre-sliced packs behave faster still. Air turns the exposed slices from ruby to grey-brown within hours, most visibly at the rims, and the pack itself will carry an instruction from the maker about the window after opening. Slices left uncovered curl and stiffen. Freezing is not the usual route: at minus 18 C the fibres take on ice damage and the slices weep and go floury on thawing, which shows in a product this lean.

The label to look for is Bresaola della Valtellina IGP, with the European mark and the consortium name, since the protected product is air-dried in the Valtellina valley whatever the origin of the beef. Cut, it is one clean lean muscle: deep ruby to garnet, matte rather than glossy, with no marbling running through it and at most a thin pale rim of trimmed fat at the edge. The slices should be almost transparent when held up, and the smell is dry and faintly spiced, with pepper and juniper behind the beef.

At a counter abroad it sits next to several lookalikes. Swiss bunderfleisch is pressed into a rectangle and dries harder, so the slices come out square. Trentino carne salada is salted and kept moist, never air-dried. American dried or chipped beef is a different cure and often smoked, and pastrami is brined and steamed. Plain beef bresaola with no IGP mark can be made anywhere. The price is high on purpose, because a whole muscle loses a great deal of weight in drying.

In the UK it is easy: Italian delis, Waitrose, Ocado and online specialists all carry it. Expect roughly 32 to 48 pounds per kilo sliced to order at a counter, or 3.50 to 5.50 pounds for an 80-100 g pack, which works out considerably dearer per kilo than buying it cut fresh.

The US is a different situation. USDA restrictions on beef products from Italy mean genuine Bresaola della Valtellina IGP is rare on American shelves, and most bresaola sold in the States is made domestically by producers such as Volpi, Creminelli and La Quercia, using the same method with American beef. It is good charcuterie and it is not the IGP product. Whole pieces run about 28 to 40 dollars a pound; 2-3 oz sliced packs at 9 to 14 dollars work out closer to 50-70 dollars a pound.

Wherever you buy, look for the full name Bresaola della Valtellina IGP and the blue-and-yellow EU mark if the protected version is what you want. Ask for it sliced as thin as the machine will go, and check that the colour is an even ruby red. Liquid pooling in the bottom of a tray means the meat has wept and the slices will be limp.

The province of Sondrio, an hour and a half north of Milan by train, and worth the trip on its own. Chiavenna is the best single stop: its crotti, natural cellars dug into ancient rockfalls and ventilated by a constant current of cool air, serve bresaola alongside sciatt, the buckwheat fritters with melting cheese inside, and the Sagra dei Crotti fills the town every September.

Further up the valley are Sondrio, Chiuro, Teglio and Tirano, where the Bernina Express begins its climb into Switzerland. The default antipasto in any valley trattoria is a board of bresaola, alpine cheeses and sciatt with a glass of Valtellina Superiore, followed by pizzoccheri. Morbegno and Delebio, lower down, are where many of the historic curing houses actually are.

In Milan the historic salumerie and the covered markets will slice punta d'anca to order, and bresaola with rocket and grana appears on essentially every aperitivo menu in the city.