Salt Beef Cure Question

[deb]

A long time ago (2 years or more maybe), before I joined this forum, I had a go at Hugh F-W's salt beef recipe from his River Cottage Cookbook. I know I used a smaller piece of meat than is given in the recipe but can't remember much other than this, I THINK I just cut down on all the ingredients.
The crux of the matter is that I want to have another go (it was good stuff). Now I have become more interested in curing etc I'm aware that just halving ingredients isn't always the right thing to do. The recipe calls for a 2-3kg piece of meat but I will only want to do about half of this. I see no reason for making up the full amount of brine as it will be a waste of ingredients, so, can I just use half the ammount of everything? It seems a bit heavy on the Saltpetre, is it? I did wonder if it used what appears to be a lot because of the short curing time. If it is too much how much should I use?

Here's the brine recipe
5 litre of water
500g demerera /light brown sugar
1kg coarse sea salt
1tsp black peppercorns
1tsp juniper berries
5 cloves
2 bay leaves
a sprig of thyme
a bunch of parsley stalks
150g saltpetre (optional).

Make the brine, then fully immerse the meat for 5-10 days (joints of less than 3kg should not be left for more than a week), keeping cool. Soak in water for 24 hours and cook.

Thanks.

[Oddley]

Hi deb
It's funny I have just posted a converted recipe from the HFW one.

http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?t=1100

In the one you have just posted the amount of saltpetre will give 2256 ppm or mg/kg ingoing. Which in my opinion is far to much. here is a converted recipe for 1 liter of water, I have just divided the rest by 1/5th and custom worked out the saltpetre.

1 litre of water
100g demerera /light brown sugar
200g coarse sea salt
1/5 tsp black peppercorns
1/5 tsp juniper berries
1 clove
1 bay leaves
a small sprig of thyme
1/5 a bunch of parsley stalks
4g saltpetre (307 ppm).

Please let us know how it worked out. As I would be interested.

[deb]

Oddley, thanks for taking the time.

I would need more than one litre of water, probably two or three, as I intend to use a 1-1�kg piece of meat, so what would I do about the saltpetre? Do I keep it at 4g in total OR do I use 4g for each litre of water?

Hope you have the time and patience to help out.

Thanks.

[Oddley]

deb you can double or treble up this recipe or any multiple thereof as long as you double or treble the whole recipe. you can be more flexible with the non soluble ingredients such as the clove, peppercorns parsley stalks etc. But you must multiply the water, salt, sugar, saltpetre.

So for instance to treble the recipe you would use.

3 litres of water
300g demerera /light brown sugar
600g coarse sea salt
black peppercorns (How much you like)
juniper berries (How much you like)
clove (How much you like)
bay leaves (How much you like)
thyme (How much you like)
parsley stalks (How much you like)
12g saltpetre (307 ppm).

[deb]

Thanks for that Oddley.
That's what I was thinking but considering my lack of knowledge I like to try and confirm these things.

[Heather]

Oddley, using your brine, how long should I be curing the brisket for? Silly me forgot to weigh it before putting it in the brine, but it's about 4 inches in diameter (boned and rolled) and about 9 inches long.

[Oddley]

Heather a piece of meat that size would normally take between 14 and 20 days. It may help if you look at the ends of the meat and if there are no dark patches this may indicate the meat is well on the way to being done.

[Heather]

Oddley, thanks, I wasn't sure what the curing times based on thickness would be, but thanks for the info.