Hamburg Beef
Ingredients
Directions
Rub the common salt thoroughly over the beef.
Pour the treacle over the beef.
Turn the beef every day and rub it well in the pickle.
After three weeks, put the beef to dry in wood-smoke.
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
- Beef
- The main protein, which the salt cure and wood-smoke drying preserve and flavour.
- Common salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it, while helping the cure penetrate.
- Treacle
- Adds sweetness and a dark, rich flavour to the cure.
- Saltpetre
- Helps the cured meat keep a pink colour and resist spoilage during curing.
The step that matters
Rubbing the salt and turning the beef daily. Salt cures meat only where it touches it and moves inward slowly. Rubbing it in well and turning the beef every day spreads the pickle evenly, so no part is left under-salted and open to spoilage.
“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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