A Recipe for Making Beef Tea
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the beef
Remove all fat from the beef and cut it into very small particles.
Add salt to the beef particles.
Make the tea
Place 1 pint of cold water in a pan and add the beef and any juices from cutting.
Let it sit in the cold water for 1 hour, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.
Heat the pan on the stove and bring it slowly to a boil for 30 minutes.
Continue boiling for another 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, without skimming.
Strain and cool
Pour the mixture through a sieve to remove beef particles.
Let it cool and skim off any fat from the surface.
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
- Rump of beef
- Provides the meat flavour and the dissolved savoury substance that gives the tea its body.
- Clear cold water
- Serves as the solvent that slowly draws flavour out of the beef particles.
The step that matters
Bringing the pan slowly to a boil. Starting with cold water and heating gradually lets the meat release its juices and flavour into the liquid. Boiling too hard early can toughen the meat and cloud the liquid, making the tea less 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 tea recipes
You might also like
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipes
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Yorkshire Pudding264 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.