Skip to main content
Main

Beef Tea

A simple broth made by simmering lean beef in cold water for two hours, then strained and seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Beef Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into very small pieces, ensuring no fat is present.

  2. Place the beef in a bottle with a large opening.

  3. Add the cold water and cork the bottle tightly.

Heat and finish

  1. Set the bottle in a basin of cold water and place it on the fire.

  2. Heat until it reaches a boiling point but do not boil.

  3. Maintain this temperature for two hours.

  4. Strain the mixture and season with salt.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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 beef
Supplies the meat flavour and dissolved protein that give the broth its body.
Cold water
Acts as the solvent that draws flavour and gelatin out of the meat as it heats.

The step that matters

Heat until just below boiling, then hold. Boiling makes broth cloudy and can toughen the meat's proteins. Gentle, steady heat for two hours extracts flavour slowly and keeps the liquid clear.

“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.

More beef broth recipes

Clear 36Soup 8Peptonized 4with Forcemeat Balls 3with Rice 3Carrots in 3 See all 501 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes