Armenian Cured Beef | Basturma | Gourmet Woodsman

In this video, I’ll show you step-by-step how to make basturma, a popular Armenian cured meat. Using a combination of salt, garlic, and a blend of warming spices, you can create your own rich and savory basturma that is perfect for sandwiches, salads, or even enjoyed on its own.

Basturma:
Beef eye of round

2.5% salt
0.25% cure #2
0.3% black pepper
0.25% coriander
0.2% cumin
0.75% brown sugar
0.75% minced garlic
Chaman:
1/4 cup fenugreek
1/4 cup paprika
add the following to taste:
cumin
black pepper
garlic paste or granulated garlic
chili paste
cayenne (optional)
salt
sugar
add water to make a paste

Brine time calculator: https://genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/saltbrinecalculator.html

hey there welcome to the channel my name is Greg today I’m going to show you how I made this basturma basturma is an Armenian cured beef it’s got some warming spices it’s got a little bit of heat frankly the first time I had it I thought it was one of the best things ever let’s get into making some basturma usually basturma would be made from an eye of round I’ve heard of people using the fillet but that just seems like a not great use of the fillet if I was going out to buy this I would have bought an eye round I get a side of beef for my freezer once a year and I’ve already used my I round for breast seola so what I have here it’s a piece of top round say top round bottom round decent substitutes for the eye around it’s all pretty lean and that’s the main thing you don’t want too much intramuscular fat just like with jerky can kind of cause a chewy texture that we’re not really going for so I’m just cutting off silver skin any excess fat that may be on [Music] this I’m going to cut off this skinny area I’ll save that for sausage this other stuff is just for the dogs over here too it’s a little thin just try to keep it kind of a uniform size so got that trimmed up I’m just going to Pat it dry real quick my next step it’s going to be to get a weight on this now that I have a weight I can make up my spice mix for my equilibrium cure moving along to the spice mix and cure going to start out with some coriander and some black pepper and the reason I weighed those up first is so I can put them in a pan start them toasting while I weigh up the rest and now that those are toasting over some low heat I’m going to weigh up my salt and I’m going to use some cure number two using cure number two because this will take a little over a month over 30 days I use cure two under 30 days I use cure number one because cure number two has sodium nitrate that very slowly converts to nitrite it’s the nitrite that actually interacts with the proteins to convert to nitric oxide I’m going to go in with some cumin and I’m also going to add some sugar I’m using brown sugar I think the extra little molassy taste will be a good addition but plain sugar is fine too you know you do you so my pepper and coriander are just starting to smell a little fragrant going to add them back in and the only other ingredient going in at this time is I’ve minced up a little bit of garlic and I’ll add that as well so let’s move to the next step so before I mix in my spices I’m going to show you I measured this fattest part this is about 3 in so I looked on my Bing time calculator which I’ll put a link in there for and I see this is going to go for just under two weeks I’ll probably leave it for 2 weeks cuz the beauty of this equilibrium cure is you really can’t go too long it’s not going to pick up any more salt than what I’m putting [Music] in now the oldfashioned way of doing this it’s called more it’s called a salt box method and that method you would just encase this whole thing in your salt and spices and then you’d have to pull it out based on the thickness of your meat if you don’t pull it out in time it will become extra salty and if you pull it out too early you won’t get a good cure which is the same with this if you pull this out too early you won’t get an adequate cor cure through the middle and your meat could spoil but you really can’t go too long with this method cuz I’ve weighed my meat I’ve weighed my spices it can’t absorb more than what I’m putting in but the important thing is that I get it all to stick and what does not stick I need to make sure to put in my bag while it’s curing so I’ll have that pretty well covered on all sides I’ve got my freezer bag my seal meal bag I mean cut I like to fold over the top so that I can try to not get the uh cure on it CU it makes it can effect getting a good seal you can do this in a Ziploc bag although expect it to leak it’s better in a sealable bag if you have it like I was saying before the important thing when doing this equilibrium cure is to get every bit of this cure into this bag is 3 in and the thickest part it says 11.2 days it also says to add 20% so that’s another 2 days it’s like 13 days I’m just going to call it two weeks so I’m going to label it put my date on it and then put my date that it comes out there you go now in effect it’s kind of all you need however buma has a certain look to it that’s cuz it’s pressed it’s flattened what I’m going to do is put some weights on top try to get that to flatten out just a little bit but you could use a container of water whatever you have to add some weight that’s how you’re going to get traditional look so I’m going to put this in my refrigerator I’m going to take it out in 2 weeks I’ll see you in a while well here’s my bus terma actually went about a week longer than it needed to but that’s the beauty of the equilibrium cure won’t absorb any more salt than what’s actually in there you can see quite a lot of liquid has been forced out of this meat so what I’m going to do I’m going to go take this to the sink and I’m going to rinse it off Pat it dry with some paper towels then I’ll put it on one of these collagen sheets I got these from the butcher’s pantry and they’re just simply sheet of collagen I like to get it ready before I wash off that meat so as soon as I wash it off and Pat it dry plop it right down all right after rinsing it off patter it it dry want to leave a little moisture on here because do want it to uh have enough moisture for this sheet to stick to it so just try to get it as tight as I easily can no big deal there then I like to just take a little bit of water on my fingertips just kind of wet this collagen sheet and I find it helps it to stick to the other side there easy as that now I want to make sure I have enough to cover this Edge but I don’t need a whole lot extra so what I’m going to do cut that then this I can use for another piece that’s plenty for like something small or sometimes you find yourself needing a little patch it’s handy to have little pieces like that around really it’s pretty much as simple as that and I’m going to take some netting twist that up and just tie this right here put a second knot on to hold that tight and tie that together to make a loop so I can hang it same thing on the other side just twist it up one more thing I want to do here is just weigh that up I’m going to make a tag I want to dry this 25% of its weight now so 1296 * 75% going to dry it till it hits 972 G and I’ll be doing that in my carrying chamber which I will show you in a minute as soon as I make a tag for this one other thing that I did before putting it into my drying chamber is I took my little sausage pricker sterilized it and I poked some holes in that collagen sheet on all sides you don’t need a sausage pricker you could use a pen or a needle anything sharp it’s going to just make a small hole just make make sure it’s clean and sterile pretty important step for whatever reason I don’t have footage of it I’m not sure if I didn’t turn my camera on or if I erased that file accidentally let’s go check out the cabinet so I got this hanging in my chamber now this stays about 55° F and about 80% humidity leave this in here for I’m guessing about a couple weeks maybe a little less maybe a little more but until it loses 25% of its weight found that beef dries quite a bit quicker than pork especially the lean stuff see you in a bit my beef is dried to about 25 it’s actually more like 28% see it still has some give on it before I unwrap this I’m going start making my spice coating it’s called chamon spelled c h m an but it’s pronounced more like a youu and this is heavy in the fenig Greek fener Greek is like the base I always like to toast my seeds and spices when I can so there’s my fener Greek I’m going to go even a little more not really measuring there and I’m just going to go a pinch or so of cumin and pretty good amount of black pepper corns so I’m going to go get these on the heat just on some low low to medium just till I start smelling them and oils start coming out a little the other thing that’s pretty heavy in this is the paprika put in some paprika I’m just going to add a tiny bit of garlic powder my chili paste that I will be using coming up is actually a Harissa very spicy chili paste but it has a lot of garlic in it already know it’s going to need some salt but I will adjust my salt later after I mix everything together oh smelling those spices I’m going to go grind them real quick add those spices that I just growled and I just love the smell of didn’t really grind it as thin as I’d like try that [Applause] again I love the smell of fener Greek fener Greek kind of reminds me of like butterscotch I’m also going to add just a tiny bit cardamom cuz that’s going to go really good with all this too pretty popular spice and renan Cuisine you can kind of really make it your own do what you want as long as it’s uh you know got a very predominant fener Greek and obviously it needs some spice cuz my Harissa I’ll be using is pretty spicy I’m not adding any extra Cayenne or anything but depending on your chili paste you might want to add some cayenne kind of up to you now before I start adding my wet ingredients I’m going to get my meat ready cuz once I add the water once I add the water chili paste stuff it can start to thicken up and I want to spread it while it’s thin so let me get my meat ready just going to take off this netting can see it has some white mold did not put any of that white mold on but my chamber just has so much of it in there tends to grow I’m hoping it won’t grow much onto my uh finish busera the coating but we’ll find out now if your collagen sticks it doesn’t come off that easy you can always just dampen it just a little bit not a big deal a little bit of water loosen it right up okay well I think what I’m going to do is I’m going to wash some of this mold off way I’ll wash the mold off is I’ll just put this in a little pan kind of rinse it with some red wine could also use white wine or vinegar anything acidic like that suppose you could use lemon juice but I haven’t tried that so I don’t know sure it would kill the mold but I’m not sure it would do to the meat so you can see comes off real easy just give it a quick little and just Pat that dry dry that off with the paper towel almost away now we’re golden see it’s flexible squishy starting to dry it’s not quite perfect not quite there yet but very close if you have a butcher’s needle this would be a great time to bust it out I don’t have one so I’m just going to use you can use any kind of skew I’m just going to use this candy thermometer because it has a nice point on it and I’m pretty sure it’ll punch a hole in here real good yep perfect wiggle it around to make my hole a little bigger I’ll see if I can’t push my string through can be a little finicky without a butcher’s needle but you can get it done there we go right through the other side not too bad tie knots will have a loop to hang it from okay now we’re ready so I’m going to finish up my spice mix and then we’ll bring that back so this is hares I’m using this this has a lot of garlic has T in already it has a lot of the flavors that I want to have in this spice coating so but you could use any chili paste just might want to adjust your garlic this is really spicy I think that’ll be good I’m just going to add a little bit of water at a time slowly slowly hydrate these spices and make more of a paste out of this whole thing if the paste is too dry it will be hard to get a thin layer one a really thin layer too thick of a layer it can slow down the meat from drying and it can also crack we don’t really want either of those things to [Music] happen now at this point we just want to give it a little taste so so I can adjust for salt if I need to it does need a little bit more salt hly I think just teeny bit of sugar is going to be good too it’s not my original recipe I think it’ll be really [Music] good she didn’t have those little pieces of fener Greek that weren’t ground I wish I’d ground them all better but it’ll be all right yep perfect I think that little bit of sugar was perfect I think that was a really good idea woo that’s got some a kick to it okay next just going to put down tiny bit of water on the bottom not much just a little bit and I’m going to put a little bit of this down I’m just going to try to spread a pretty thin layer of this on top and on the sides and all around you know it looks to me like I might have made just the perfect amount looking pretty good one little bald spot don’t want any bald spots now I’m just going to take a little bit of water on my hand and just kind of smooth this out it’ll help me even out any parts that seem either too thick or too thin I have another version that’s not really traditional different kind of set of spices which I think is even better than this original one there we go I’m going to go hang this up in my uh chamber where I’m going to leave it for a week or two it’s really going to depend on how this coating looks you want the coating to dry out but not crack or anything if you want to have some moisture that’s how I’m going to judge when it’s ready it’s been drying for another 12 days the crust is uh coating is it’s stried but it’s not so dry it’s going to crack it’s a little crumbly I should have really grounded to a finer texture look close you can see it has these little pieces of fenegriek in it probably would have been better if i’ ground it to all the way to a powder let’s pull out this string this coating is super spicy let’s get a look at the inside [Music] H smells just Rich deep and Rich that spicy coating on it let’s give it a slice on the slicer you see how translucent that is see my finger yeah you can see my finger moving behind that that’s pretty translucent there let’s sit down and give this a taste here see if it’s as good as the a I had when I worked at Alvin’s coffees and teas I spent a couple of years living in San Francisco when I was a teenager I worked at this coffee shop called Alvin’s coffees and teas it was owned by this Armenian couple Alvin and his wife Ellen along with importing coffee beans and roasting it himself he also imported a lot of specialty items and one of the things he got was basturma of course the basturma he got was not imported it was made locally but it was definitely a specialty item people bought it as a treat it was definitely pretty expensive my guess is it was probably made from a filet manong not from the round but the first time I had it it was like nothing I’d ever had once I got into curing Meats myself I knew I wanted to try to make basturma and I’ve made it several times now kind of dialing it in just a little bit honestly it’s been a long time since I worked at Alvin’s coffees and teas can’t really remember I just remember really liking it and this is really good coating is on the outside [Music] good man that is just delicious what I’m going to do with these is I’m going to vacuum seal them up equalize them for about a month that’ll help this little drier area on the outside equalized to the inside I like to equalize my shakery when possible that just means vacuum sealing it and leaving it in the refrigerator for the same amount of time as it took to dry like to at least equalize things for half the amount they were drying but it’s best if you can leave it as long as it took to dry so like I said this took one month to dry I’m going to equalize it for one month in my refrigerator this is a really I love bosma I’ve made a what I call my African spice bosera it’s the exact same process but the spices are bunch of African spices that a friend of mine brought me a while back and I think I want to make another one of those pretty soon I’d like to make that African basturma with some Yak meat if I could get my hands on some I know I have a neighbor here raises Yaks and see if I can get my hand on some Yak to cure well another great use for an ey round or really any part of the round round is really a beefy flavored cut but not a super exciting one it’s not going to make great steaks it’s not even going to make great pot roasts makes good roast beef though for like an Italian beef sandwich Chicago style like to make one of those pretty soon all about finding ways to use every cut and to me this bosma it makes the cut if you like this video please give it a thumbs up that helps the algorithm share it more widely if you’re still watching at this point make sure you’re subscribed to my channel cuz you’d probably like some of my other content put some love into the food you’re making peace