Old Recipes

[wheels]

Would anyone care to post what recipe they would use to imitate the above?

Phil

[BriCan]

I am assuming that you would like to take another stab ( might not be the right word) at this??

[quietwatersfarm]

Phil, Robert will know better than I but I wonder if this is to do with how the beef is cut. Sounds as if it is perhaps opened up fairly flat for the initial drying and then the curing process, then rolled and tied up?

Perhaps this would achieve the penetration of cure in the time stated? compared to a fuller round with larger diameter.

Just a thought.

Also the initial drying period is probably key, whilst also a bit vague - "as long as the weather will permit" could be that day or that year !!

[BriCan]

QFM

I need sleep and am running on empty -- take another look at the recipe -- think old -- its not the meat

[wheels]

Sorry, I've misled you; I'm not asking from the point of view of doing it. Just asking how you would amend the cure to make a palatable safe product to current standards. It may be easier to post the cure usage for 1kg based on the above.

Ignoring, the fact that you know that there were problems with my cure, which may have been more due to method than ingredients as QWF has suggested, I'm interested at this stage to know whether you would have done things differently in terms of the cure ingredients, and if so, what?

Phil

[quietwatersfarm]

Previous observations and thoughts aside.

There is nothing to tricky to use ingredients wise so I would go one of two ways:

A) Nice and easy All purpose curing salt approach, with everything else and method as described.
B) Simply bring saltpetre content down to what could be considered upper limit of reasonable.

interesting.. may be do a couple of testers?

Relates to te scaling up thread too. the size of the beef will affect outcome also I think.

[wheels]

Sorry to push you QWF but would you have adjusted the salt? The level in the recipe's a potential 10%. And, the bay leaf is the equivalent of 1 Schwartz pot per kg?

Phil

[quietwatersfarm]

Sorry to push you QWF but would you have adjusted the salt? The level in the recipe's a potential 10%. And, the bay leaf is the equivalent of 1 Schwartz pot per kg?

Phil

I guess it depends how authentic you want it?

I would have imagined that the salt content meant that it was soaked as a matter of course before baking.

On the bay I would think that their dry meant hung up rather than commercially dehydrated so would guess at around a third to a half of that by weight.

[wheels]

Good points.

Phil

[Dogfish]

Reading this, and not being an expert like you all, my thoughts (for what they're worth):

-- the instructions given in two parts with the bulk of the salt and sugar first would equalize the meat and would allow easier uptake of the saltpetre in the second rub, at least in my thinking.

-- the bay leaves are probably not the cheap bay laurel like we get in Canada; the nice bay leaves have a lot gentler flavour from the British tropical colonies -- like Jamaica. Nothing else in my experience has a potentially damaging flavour except for the bay.

-- I would imagine this cut is from the front of the animal; when I cut up deer there seem to be a lot more glands in the front end. There also seems to be more moisture in the meat which would speed the uptake of the salt?

-- Watching Gennaro Contaldo etc they'll say things like '100 gms salt' and then use their palms to measure the ingredient. Maybe that's the same with this recipe -- the ingredients measured in a pint mug. To me, many of these ingredients are copacetic with handfuls and pint mugs.

-- Finally, I would wonder the source of the saltpetre, and whether there are differences among the sources (urine vs everything else).