Why it works: Beef and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,533 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓
Directions for Dry Salting Beef Cheeks
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the meat
Mix Freeze-Em-Pickle and salt in a pail for 100 lbs of meat.
Thoroughly mix this mixture with the beef cheek meat.
Use ½ lb of salt for short-term storage (less than 2 weeks).
Use 1 lb of salt for storage between 2 weeks and 2 months.
Use 2 lbs of salt for storage between 2 and 6 months.
Use 3 lbs of salt for storage between 6 months and 1 year.
Pack and store
In a clean container, sprinkle salt on the bottom, then pack the salted meat tightly, tamping down to remove air.
Continue packing 100 lbs of meat at a time, tamping each batch.
If sealing the container, sprinkle salt on top before adding the lid.
If leaving open, cover with a clean cloth and add a 2-3 inch layer of dry salt on top.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Beef + meattop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,533 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Beef cheek meat
- The main protein that is cured and preserved by the salt mixture.
- Freeze-em-pickle
- A pre-mixed curing blend that supplies the cure for the meat during storage.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the meat, with the amount set by storage length.
The step that matters
Packing the salted meat tightly. Tamping out air and covering the meat with salt limits contact with oxygen and helps keep the surface from spoiling during storage.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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