Ordinary Beef-tea
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the beef
Remove all skin and fat from the beef and shred the meat.
Place the shredded beef in a thick jar, basin, or jug.
Pour the cold water over the beef, stir, and cover tightly with a lid or paper.
Let it stand for 30 minutes.
Simmer and strain
Place the covered jar in a pan of cold water, ensuring the water comes halfway up the jar.
Simmer for 2 to 3 hours.
Pour off the beef‑tea and remove any floating fat using kitchen paper.
If not using immediately, let it cool and warm only what is needed later.
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 protein that dissolve into the liquid.
- Cold water
- Draws out the beef's juices and flavour during slow soaking and gentle simmering.
The step that matters
Simmer gently in a water bath. Keeping the water in the outer pan at a gentle simmer, not a hard boil, extracts flavour slowly and keeps the beef tender and the liquid clear. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and cloud the tea.
“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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