Brine strengths question

Recipes and techniques using brine.

Brine strengths question

Postby Flying Scotsman » Thu Sep 09, 2010 4:42 pm

Hi All

I'm looking to make some smoked beef similar to the recipe in Keith Erlandson's Home Smoking and Curing book. I've done a fair bit of dry curing but never really dabbled with brines, so I wanted to get some thoughts on the brining method used here.

The recipe states an "80% brine" which is 1.2kg salt in 4.54L water and immersing the beef fillets for 2.5 -3.5 hours. They are then left to drip for 24hrs before cold smoking.

The brine strength seems very high and the immersion time seems to be very low (other methods seem to require days as opposed to hours, but with a weaker brine). Has anyone had any experince with using these relatively strong brines and short immersion times? I'll be using silverside instead of fillet, the piece weighing 1.9kg with a fairly uniform thickness of 3.5". Will this brine actually cure a piece of meat of this size in this time period?
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Postby Richierich » Fri Sep 10, 2010 9:07 am

I have only ever brine cured ham, which was weeks rather than hours. I have only ever used dry cures for salmon or mackerel.

If it is in the book then due to my lack of knowoledge I would not question it, follow the recipe and method to the letter and see how you get on.

Just my opinion of course, others may offer different thoughts.
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Postby grisell » Fri Sep 10, 2010 12:44 pm

Strömming (Baltic Herring, a smaller variety of herring) is often made that way here in Sweden. It's gutted but not boned, immersed in a saturated (i.e. maximum strength) salt solution for ½-1 hour, then dried and grilled without extra fat on an iron plate or skillet on maximum heat for only a few seconds. Eaten with lemon and maybe parsley butter. Delicious if the fish is fresh (I guess it could be done with e.g. sardines or whitebait as well). In Swedish they're called 'sotare' (=chimney-sweepers).
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Postby wheels » Fri Sep 10, 2010 2:55 pm

I'd do what Erlandson says, or use a different proven method completely. In my experience, if anything, his methods make the product too salty for me - so I doubt that it will be 'undercured'.

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Postby NCPaul » Mon Sep 13, 2010 3:20 am

I'm not sure I follow that this process yields a "cured" piece of meat. I understand that with a high concentration of brine that there will be a rapid (and hard to predict) uptake of salt in the outside centimeter or so of the meat and that it will migrate towards the center during the cold smoking (will it reach the middle?). There is no mention of curing salts or of a drying step, so I would treat this as a brined fresh meat that needs refrigeration. The bresola recipes would, to my mind, be more straightforward ways to a cured beef process. They could be modified to a brine recipe (I think) followed by a drying step. If you try this, let us know how it comes out. :D
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