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?