“The rain might have stopped, but the compound was still a morass of shallow lakes and slippery mud. Black brothers were folding their tents, feeding their horses, and chewing on strips of salt beef.”
Salt Beef
Our Thoughts:
We won’t lie. We bought a ten pound piece of meat to cure without even thinking of the blog. We’re that culinary crazy. When one of us realized that we were pretty much making salt beef, we were a) relieved that this meaty goodness could be shared with the world, and b) absolved of the crime of cooking food outside of the blog. We did, however, look like a house of psychopaths for three weeks while the muslin-wrapped bundles hung in our pantry. Which has a window, of course.
But once we unwrapped and sliced into the wondrous meat, the weeks of apparent insanity were completely worth it. The meat is, obviously, very salty, but when paired with a sharp cheese and a good loaf of bread, it is the perfect trail food. We brought a chunk of our salt beef when we went camping, and it became part of breakfast, lunch and dinner!
A long wait for the finished product, but well worth the wait!
Salt Beef Recipe
Ingredients:
Main muscle from the top round cut of beef (ask your butcher)
1/2 cup Sugar
1/4cup Black pepper
1/4 cup Prague Powder #2 (also ask your butcher, it’s expressly for curing meat)
2 sprigs fresh Rosemary leaves
Mix sugar, pepper, powder, and rosemary together in a bowl and set aside. Trim off all of the visible surface fat on the meat, but do not try to remove the silverskin running through the center of the cut. Rub half the cure onto the meat and seal it in a freezer bag. You may want to double bag it! Place the meat in the refrigerator and allow to marinate for one week, flipping it over daily. After one week, remove the meat from the bag (drain off the liquid in the bag) and dry it with paper towels. Rub the reserved half of the cure onto the meat and return to the bag and the fridge for another week of turning daily. After two weeks, remove any cure left on the meat and tie two pieces of string vertically onto the meat, and tie a series of strings horizontally around the meat. Wrap the meat in clean muslin, labeling clearly the date and weight of the meat. Hang in a cool, somewhat moist area for three weeks, or until it loses 30% of its weight. During the last week of drying, you can remove the muslin. If there is mold on the meat, simply use a clean piece of muslin soaked in vinegar to remove it. At the end of week three, take the meat down, slice it as thinly as possible, drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice, and enjoy!
*While our attempt at this kind of meat curing was a complete success, please be aware that the meat is not cooked, but cured. Keep an eye and a nose out for any kind of decay, and discard the meat if any is detected. Good luck!*
