1800’s Corned Beef
Yall asked, so here it is! Corned beef, but like it’s the 1800’s and we are actually trying to preserve food here not just make St. Patty’s Day dinner…
You can easily scale this up or down if you need to preserve more or less meat and you can remove the meat to be eaten at any time from the brine. So, if you had for example, harvested an animal and needed to preserve some of it in an easy-to-use way for a few months (3 months ish) without refrigeration, you could simply portion the cuts into whatever size is convenient for your use, put them into this brine, and then remove them as needed.
First things first, you take a piece of beef (usually brisket or top or bottom round pieces) and you salt it. Rub coarse salt all over it and let it sit for 24 hours. Repeat. Then prepare a brine. I used 1 gallon of water, 1 cup brown sugar, 3 cups coarse salt, and some spices (I used celery seed, mustard powder, black pepper, red pepper flakes, and bay leaves in this batch, feel free to experiment!). Bring your brine to a boil for 10 minutes and then allow to completely cool. Once its cooled down, add the meat and the brine into a glass container or ceramic fermenting crock, make sure it is completely submerged and keep it in a cool dark location for up to 3 months. Check on your “meat pickle” from time to time and make sure it is keeping well. If it is not, remove it, dry it off, and salt it until you can make a stronger brine.
When you are ready to cook up your corned beef you have a couple options but they will start off the same way, You are going to simmer the meat pickle for around 6 hours. Optionally you can add some spices during this step but it’s up to you. You can serve the corned beef hot, right out of the boiling water. What seems to be more highly recomended and favored from this time period however is to press the corned beef and serve it cold. There are two variations for cold pressed corned beef that I have seen. You can just take the whole thing, set it on a plate, put a plate on top, and add a weight on top to press it. Chill it in the fridge or cellar and it should last for a week or two, wrapped in a cloth in cold storage. And the other option is to actually pick apart all the meat and fat, mixing it all together to give you a more marbled loaf, you would put that mixture in a loaf pan, press it in firmly and place a smaller pan on top with weights to continue to press it as it cools.
Cooks Tip:
When you are cooking salt meats in water, you are able to remove a portion of the salt, rendering the end product delicious and not outrageously salty. Usually, a long simmer as in this recipe will do the trick but just to double check and make sure your end results will be perfectly palatable, I like to taste the water after about an hour of simmering. If the water is very salty, I pour off half of the water, top off the pot with fresh, and continue to simmer. This has worked well for me when preparing many salt meats and I hope it will serve you well also!
The cold pressed loaf was very convenient meal prepping! A little salty when eaten by itself when cold but not unpalatable, pared with cheese and bread was lovely but adding salty pickles was a little much salt for my liking. What I really loved was using the loaf in various “hash” preparations. Eggs, veggies, potatoes, cheese… so many great pairings came out of this corned beef loaf!
Another great way to preserve some meat! I think this method could be very practical to preserve many cuts of meat. It was a win in my book.
Origional 1800’s recipes can be found here
