To Make Beef Tea
Ingredients
Directions
Make the tea
Cut the meat into small pieces about the size of dice and place it in a clean saucepan.
Add the cold water and bring to a boil, skimming off any scum that forms.
Once boiling, add the salt and simmer for 1 to 1.5 hours, removing any additional scum.
Strain and serve
Strain the tea through a fine sieve and let it cool.
Before serving, remove any fat from the surface and warm up the desired amount, adding more salt if needed.
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 beef
- Releases its flavour and savoury juices into the water during long, gentle simmering.
- Cold water
- Acts as the cooking liquid that extracts the beef's flavour and dissolves its soluble compounds.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the tea and heightens the savoury beef flavour.
The step that matters
Skimming the scum while the water comes to a boil. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the liquid heats. Removing it keeps the tea clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or greasy.
“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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