Need help making salt beef AM I DOING IT RIGHT ?????

[pinkpetal]

Hi every one , so glad ive come accross this forum as im a bit stuck in making salt beef "sout vleis " as we call it in south africa

really hope somone can help me

i found a receipe on the net ,

the following


Corned Beef

Ingredients:

One 4 lb. brisket of beef
1/4 cup large-grained kosher salt
1 tsp. freshly ground pepper
2 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
2 bay leaves, crumbled
1 Tbs. brown sugar
1/8 tsp. nutmeg
1/8 tsp. paprika
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbs. saltpeter (optional, can be found in pharmacies)
1/2 cup warm water

Preparation:

Wash and remove most of the fat from the brisket. Mix together all the spices and the garlic and rub well into the brisket.

Dissolve the saltpeter in the warm water and pour over the meat. Place in a large, nonmetal container. Weight the meat down with a stone or brick and cover it with plastic wrap or aluminum foil. (You can also place the ingredients in a plastic bag and weight it down.)

Refrigerate for 10 days to 2 weeks. Turn the meat every 2 to 3 days.

Place the meat in a large pot of cold water. Bring to a boil and throw away the water. Repeat 3 times. Cover with cold water again, bring to a boil and cook over low heat, covered, for about 2 hours or until tender. Cool, slice thin and place on a platter. Serve with mustard or horseradish.

Serves: 8 to 10

however

Ive made it using the saltpeter and it still comes out brown and not pink, also i added some more water to teh recepe as the water didnt cover the beef , (is it suppose to cover the beef ?)

is there anything else i can do or any other recepes that will give me good PINK salt beef , bearing in mind im a complete moron in the kitchen

lots of explaining will be need

please help [/b]

[Big Guy]

That should work. You need a nitrate/nitrite salt to make the red colour. Make sure your "salt peter" is a nitrate or nitrite salt. Buy some proper meat cure and use it as per manufactures instructions.. I prefer to make up a brine solution and pump the meat then submerge it for 7-10 days.
I wouldn't cover the meat with aluminium foil as this might give an off metalic flavour. Stick with plastic wrap.

[Oddley]

Saltpetre (Potassium NitrAte) is a dangerous chemical, there is way too much in the recipe you are using.

A safe level is between 0.5 - 1 gram per Kg of meat.

Saltpetre, to have any biological action, must first be converted by bacterial action, to potassium nitrIte. Keeping the meat at too low a temperature, or the meat being too sterile ie: having too much antibiotics injected before slaughter, could inhibit this conversion.

You don't have to cover the meat with water, but do turn the meat every day. I would also suggest you knock the salt level down to 3% of the meat weight ie: 30 grams per Kg of meat.

You could also leave out the water, and use it as a dry cure. Making sure you mix the ingredient well first, to ensure even distribution.

[pinkpetal]

thank you so much for the replies , one question ( sounds daft but im new to the whole curing thing ) would the meat not go off if its not fully submerged in water ? and how do i tur the salt petre into an anti bacterial solution?

thanks
zoe

[Oddley]

thank you so much for the replies , one question ( sounds daft but im new to the whole curing thing ) would the meat not go off if its not fully submerged in water ?

Not necessarily, if the outside of the meat where all the bacteria are, is subjected to a salt brine concentration, of more than 10%, the bacteria will be inhibited. keep the bag you put it in as airtight as possible.

Brine concentration can be worked out using the following formula.

Brine concentration % = Salt/(Moisture + Salt)*100

To convert saltpetre it would help to encourage the extremophile lactic acid producing bacteria. So store at a temp of 6�C whilst curing.

[pinkpetal]

LMAO ok you may aswell be speking chinese but thanks so much , do you have a receipe i could try again bearing in mind im a complete spaz in the kitchen

thanks
zoe

[Oddley]

I have a great recipe using a combination of pump and dry rub. I'll post it for you but I formulate and keep my recipes in percent format for batch conversion for any size meat.

My Corned beef

To be pumped at 10% of meat weight

Ingredient

% Percent
76.075 % water
15 % Sea Salt
7.5 % Sugar
1.275 % Cure #1 (75 ppm)
0.15 % Saltpetre (150 ppm)

Bring to the boil the water in a large saucepan add all the ingredients except the cure #1 and saltpetre. Stir well over a low heat until the sugar and salt have dissolved allow to boil for 1-2 minutes, remove from the heat, cool completely. Then add Cure #1 and saltpetre, stir until completely dissolved.

Insoluble ingredients for brine: Usage 2.2 % of brine
Ingredients

% Percent
2.8409 % Black peppercorns
4.4318 % Juniper berries
1.7045 % cloves
1.7045 % whole Coriander seeds
89.3182 % bunch parsley stalks


Dry cure

Of meat weight

% Percent
1.5% Salt
0.75% Sugar
0.1274 % Cure #1 (75 ppm)
0.015% Saltpetre (150 ppm)

Pump meat at 10% meat weight. Then rub outside of meat with the dry cure. Vac pack or put into a zip lock bag for about 10 days. Then cook or freeze.

Pressure cooker Method

Bring enough water to boil to reach the trivet plate. Put the corned beef in the pressure cooker on the trivet. Put the lid on and bring the pressure cooker up to the 2nd ring 15 psi for 1 hour. let pressure natrually reduce.


Pot Method

Cover the meat with water and add the Cooking ingredients, bring to the boil. Simmer until internal tempreture reaches 74�C.

Cooking ingredients

boquet garni
1 carrot, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 celery stick, chopped
1 leek, chopped
1 garlic bulb, cut in half across middle

Perhaps someone else with an easier recipe can help. I'm having corned beef tonight if I remember I post a picture of it.

[Oddley]

As promised a pic of the corned beef. Yes it does taste as good as it looks. Mind you, I've been working on this recipe for about two years, so it should taste good.

[Bad Flynch]

After reading your original inquiry, it occurred to me that you might be cureing the meat at temperatures that are too cold.

When you are doing an old fashioned cure using only Potassium Nitrate, you need time for the bacteria to comvert it to nitrite and that you have. However, you also need a little bit higher temperature for the bacteria to grow. Many old time recipes call for temperatures of 38-42 degrees F and there were times when meat was cured above that, not that I recommend that practice.

When doing an old fashioned cure like this, either convert to a curing salt that has both nitrate and nitrite or set your frig at about 40 degrees F, but certainly not lower than 38 degrees F.

Sorry about the degrees F thing, but I don't have a converting calculator handy.

[Oddley]

Yep Bad Flynch is right.

[pinkpetal]

have to say oddley that beef looks tasty , now the one i made , (that came out brown ) didnt taste to bad was quite nice actually , but it could look a bit bettre being pink and all you said to get some sought of curring mixture ? what does that contain , as i bout some sought of pickling spice then just added all the salt

And you also said something about pumping the meat hmmmm what is that , you sure sound like a corned beef buff

x

[Oddley]

As you are in South Africa, cures might be difficult to come by. Pumping, is just a matter of injecting the brine into the meat, in the case of my recipe, 10% of the meat weight.

I think that as you are so new to the subject, it might help just to stick to a few important rules. You say the recipe you posted came out nice, so use it with a few changes.

1: Use Saltpetre, at the rate of 1 g per Kg of meat. No more.
2: Use salt, at 30 g per Kg of meat.
3: Use sugar, at 15 g per Kg of meat.
4: Store meat in cure at, 6�C or 42.8�F ( top shelf of fridge).
5: Use a food grade bag, to store curing meat in.
6: Don't let the meat come in contact with any metal, including aluminium foil.
7: Follow your recipe, for all other ingredients and methods.

I have been learning about this stuff for over two years, so it is difficult to condense all of that learning into a few posts. It would probably help you, to have a good look around the forum, to get a bit of a grounding in the subject. It will probably help, if you used the search button to look for the topics you are interested in.

[Bad Flynch]

Oddley wrote:
1: Use Saltpetre, at the rate of 1 g per Kg of meat. No more.
2: Use salt, at 30 g per Kg of meat.
3: Use sugar, at 15 g per Kg of meat.
4: Store meat in cure at, 6�C or 42.8�F ( top shelf of fridge).
5: Use a food grade bag, to store curing meat in.
6: Don't let the meat come in contact with any metal, including aluminium foil.
7: Follow your recipe, for all other ingredients and methods. (end)

Yep, that is as good as it gets for an old-fashioned cure these days. You will find many recipes that recommend more Salt Petre, or more salt, or lower temperature, or worse--with only ambient cold weather in a box. You will find people recommending curing in a garbage bag and allowing something to touch a reactive metal like aluminum. None of the old stuff improves anything over the above, and probably degrades the quality of the food so made.

If you really want to improve the product, use a nitrate/nitrite cure and maybe even inject it. Injecting saves you time and, if done properly, can improve the uniformity of it.

Incidentally, you will notice that people did not flop over dead, left and right, from eating meat cured with the old-fashioned cures. However, the best evidence that we have is to use as little nitrate/nitrite as is possible and still get the desires color and taste.

The above, with some pickling spices and garlic powder, makes very good corned beef/salt beef. I make it regularly and it really is worth the effort.

[ped]

Probably a good time to resurect this thread and also ask a question, is there any reason why the spices aren't added to the pump brine, why would it just be the salt, sugar and cure?

[NCPaul]

I think it's to avoid getting them caught in the syringe needle. You could add the spices to the brine then filter them out before injecting.