Salt Beef Bonanza!

I've been waiting patiently for my Pancetta to mature, twiddling my thumbs and checking every 5 minutes for any signs of spoilage. As expected it is very frustrating! I got so agitated by waiting that i decided to have a pop at something a bit quicker - Salt Beef. I've made it before and i loved the flavour and texture of the meat. It seemed the perfect way to get my cured meat fix ASAP.

I got myself a decent looking piece of Brisket from the butchers that weighed around 2kg and after scouring my books and the web for recipe suggestions i decided to basically have a go at making a cure with what i had in the house (It was raining!). So here is the brine recipe i came up with:

3 Litres of Water

500g Sea Salt

300g Dark Brown Sugar

1 tbs Black Pepper, crushed

1 tbs Corriander seed

10 Allspice berries

3 Bay leaves

5 Garlic cloves

A sprig of Thyme

You may note that there is no curing salt or saltpeter in the recipe. From what i have read it's not absolutely necessary and i didn't have anything apart from Prague powder #2 available which i didn't think was the right thing to use.

The rest was easy, I simply boiled all the cure ingredients together, let the brine cool, popped the meat and brine in a large plastic tub and submerged it with a plate and a stone which i had cleaned earlier. There it easy swimming about in the brine - great. The next step was very important. I made some space in the fringe for the plastic tub and went away for the weekend.

I had a grat time, and when i came back the Beef was ready to be cooked. It had 4 days swimming around in the cure, it's colour had changed and it smelt seasoned and tasty. I decided to cook the Salt Beef in a pressure cooker to save time and energy. It took about an hour until it started to become a bit flakey on the thinner parts although it definately would have taken less if I wasn't constantly releasing the pressure and checking it. At this point I took out a bit of the cooking liquor for sauce and threw in some spuds, carrots, onions and cabbage. Whiulst it was back on the hob for 10 minutes i made a quick white sauce, half milk and half cooking liquor and added a good spoon of Horseradish sauce and a small handfull of finely chopped parsley. All that was left was to put it together on the plate. It was so good we ate it all before i remebered to take a photo for my blog! Salt Beef really does have a distinctive flavour and I love the flavour the stock imparts on the vegetables. A real winner. In the future I would cure a few more cuts at the same time as it's quite an effort for a single meal. Having said that, there was enough cold bits left for me to have a decent supper the day after which i did remember to take a pic of......