To Corn Beef
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pickle
Mix the water, coarse sea salt, saltpetre, and brown sugar in a pot and boil for 15 minutes, skimming off any scum that rises.
Let the mixture cool.
Cure the meat
Rub the meat with salt and saltpetre, and let it stand for 3 days before adding the pickle.
Pack the meat in a vessel and pour the pickle over it, ensuring the meat is well covered.
Let the beef sit in the pickle for 1 week.
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
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it through the curing pickle.
- Saltpetre
- Helps keep the meat pink and adds the characteristic cured flavour.
- Brown sugar
- Balances the saltiness and adds a mild sweetness to the cure.
The step that matters
Keeping the meat fully submerged in the pickle. Any part of the meat left above the liquid can spoil or cure unevenly, because salt and curing agents only penetrate evenly when the surface is in contact with the brine.
“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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