Good Beef Tea
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the meat
Cut the meat into thin slices.
Place the meat in a pot with the cold water.
Simmer
Heat the pot gently until warm.
When scum rises, remove it.
Cover the pot.
Let it boil for about 2 hours.
Skim off the fat.
Strain and serve
Strain the liquid through a sieve.
Let it stand for 10 minutes to settle.
Pour off the clear tea.
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
What each ingredient does
- Lean gravy meat
- Provides the beef flavour and dissolved protein that give the tea its savoury body.
- Cold water
- Extracts the meat's flavour and juices slowly as it heats, forming the liquid base.
The step that matters
Heat gently and remove the scum. Starting in cold water and heating slowly lets proteins and impurities rise as scum that can be skimmed, keeping the tea clear. Rapid boiling would cloud it and emulsify fat into the liquid.
“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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