The Original Dry Bag Steak | Make Artisan Dry Age Steak at Home › Forums › Charcuterie Making › Charcuterie with UMAi Dry® › Bresaola and Lomo too dry, too soon › Bresaola and Lomo too dry, too soon
Weight is usually the only gauge of “doneness” with charcuterie and salumi. Once they’ve genuinely lost 35-40% of the start weight, the water activity should be at safe levels. Sometimes the texture requires the finished product be vacuum sealed for several days to balance out the drier surface with the moister center.
That said, unless you used remarkably small cuts of meat, this time frame is very short. You are right to be doubtful.
There are two possible explanations:
1) You weighed the meat before curing, rather that after bagging in UMAi Dry®. This would give a false start weight because the two week curing process causes weight to be lost, but it is not “drying weight,” per se.
2)You might have done the math wrong.
In other words, it’s hard to believe these cuts losing that amount of weight so quickly under the recommended UMAi Dry® aging conditions in a regularly used modern frost free kitchen refrigerator located in a room temperature environment.
Ron