Name: Beef Tea
Ingredients: 1 pound lean beef (leg of beef or any lean cut); 1 pint cold water; a pinch of coarse sea salt

Beef Tea

Ingredients

1 pound lean beef (leg of beef or any lean cut)
1 pint cold water
a pinch of coarse sea salt

Directions

Prepare

Remove all fat from the beef and cut it into small pieces.
Place the beef in a jar with the cold water and let it stand for 1 hour.
Add a pinch of salt and cover the jar with greased paper.

Cook and serve

Place the jar in a saucepan of boiling water, ensuring the water comes two-thirds up the jar.
Keep the water boiling for 1 to 2 hours, allowing the beef tea to simmer.
Pour off the liquid, stirring before reheating and serving.

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: Provides the meat flavour and dissolved protein that give the broth its body.
Cold water: Slowly draws juices and flavour out of the meat as it stands and gently simmers.

“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.