How Dry is a Dry Cure?

[Liz]

I'm making a Spiced Beef recipe from Eliza Acton. It's a dry cure, and after adding sugar, spices and saltpetre, it sits for 3 days, then the salt is added. She says it should be rubbed and turned daily for 12 days. The old recipes generally say the meat should sit on dry straw, or a clean stone floor. Mine is in an earthenware dish in the fridge, which collects liquid in the bottom.

Should I throw out the liquid, which would probably be the closest thing to the free drainage that seems to be expected? And if I throw it out, will I be losing too much salt/saltpetre, and will my meat still cure properly? Some recipes tell you to add the salt in stages over a few days, but this one didn't. If I don't add any more salt, then after the first time (yesterday) I don't think there will be anything much left to rub in.

[Oddley]

Liz I think you will have to post the recipe. The old one and your one. We may then have an idea what is going on. It is as you may have discovered a bit of a complex subject. Without knowing what drying times you are useing and what amounts of nitrites/nitrates salt etc, it is difficult to give advice.

[Liz]

Spiced Beef
Good and wholesome

For twelve pounds of the round, rump, or thick flank of beef, take a large teaspoon of freshly-pounded mace, and of ground black pepper, twice as much of cloves, one small nutmeg, and a quarter of a teaspoon of cayenne, all in the finest powder. Mix them well with seven ounces of brown sugar, rub the beef with them and let it lie three days: add to it then half a pound of fine salt, and rub and turn it once in twenty-four hours for twelve days. Just wash, but do not soak it; skewer or bind it into good form, put it into a stewpan or saucepan nearly of its size, pour to it a pint and a half [note: a pint was 16 fl oz at this time] of good beef broth, and when it begins to boil, take of the scum, and throw in one small onion, a moderate-sized faggot of thyme and parsley, and two large, or four small carrots. Let it simmer quite softly for four hours and a half, and if not wanted to serve hot, leave it in its own liquor until it is nearly cold. This is an excellent and far more wholesome dish than the hard, bright-coloured beef which is cured with large quantities of salt and saltpetre: two ore three ounces of juniper berries may be added to it with the spice, to heighten its flavour.

Beef, 12 lbs.; sugar, 7 oz.; mace and black pepper, each, 1 large teaspoonful; cloves, in powder, 1 large dessertspoonful; nutmeg, 1; cayenne, 1/4 teaspoonful: 3 days. Fine salt, 1/2 lb.: 12 days. Beef broth (or bouillon), 1 1/2 pint; onion, 1 small; bunch of herbs; carrots, 2 large, or 4 small: stewed 4 1/2 hours.

Obs. - We give this receipt exactly as we have often had it used, but celery and turnips might be added to the gravy; and when the appearance of the meat is much considered, three-quarters of an ounce of saltpetre may be mixed with the spices; the beef may also be plainly boiled in water only, with a few vegetables, or baked in a deep pan with a little gravy. No meat must ever be left to cool in the stewpan or saucepan in which it is cooked; it must be lifted into a pan of its own depth, and the liquor poured upon it.

That is how the recipe appears in the book. I used 2 Kg beef (37% of the recipe quantity), and decided to use the saltpetre, mainly because I wanted to try it out. My quantities were:

Beef - 2 Kg
Sugar - 2 oz, 55g (2.6 oz would have been the scaled down number)
mace, pepper - scant 1/2 tsp
cloves - scant tsp
nutmeg - about 1/3
cayenne - tiny pinch
saltpetre - 1g
salt - 3 oz, 85g

[Oddley]

Right Ok Liz you are making salt beef so it is going to be simmered in stock or roasted. Leave it in the liquid being extruded. Turning it every day.

The reason being there will be cure and salt in the liquid. If you were doing dry cure bacon or whatever and air drying it would be a different matter. In that case I would suggest more saltpetre and more salt.

If you do a dry cure air dried ask me before you do it and I will tell you my reasons for the above and if you want will advise you to the best of my ability.

[Liz]

Thank you. One more week to go before I can eat it!