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Drink

Ordinary Beef Tea

A simple beef tea made by simmering shredded lean beef in cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Ordinary Beef Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove all skin and fat from the beef.

  2. Shred the meat and place it in a thick jar or jug.

  3. Pour the cold water over the beef and stir.

  4. Cover tightly with a lid or paper and let it stand for 30 minutes.

Simmer and strain

  1. Place the covered jar in a pan of cold water, coming halfway up the jar.

  2. Simmer for 2-3 hours.

  3. Pour off the beef tea and remove any floating fat with kitchen paper.

Store

  1. If not using immediately, let it cool and warm only what is needed later.

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 beef tea its body.
Cold water
Slowly draws out the beef's juices and flavour during the long, gentle soak and simmer.

The step that matters

Simmer gently in a water bath. The jar must sit in a pan of water and the heat kept low. Boiling or fast heat would toughen the meat and cloud the liquid, so the extraction stays gentle and 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.

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