Salt beef recipe in 'Preserved' - subbing saltpetre?

[MBT]

About to have a go at the salt beef recipe on p55 of 'Preserved'.

The recipe calls for 1 heaped tbsp saltpetre and 1 heaped tbsp salt for a 2kg / 4.5lb brisket in 2L water. The recipe also says I can substitute sodium nitrite for the saltpetre, so I plan to use prague # 1. The recommended rate for #1 seems to be 4 oz per 100lb meat, but I'm not sure how to convert for a brine. Any tips?

The recipe also suggests leaving the beef to cure for 3 days in 'a cool place'. Any advice re temp would be much appreciated.

Cheers
Matt

[wheels]

Welcome to the forum Matt.

I don't have the book 'Preserved' but those levels of saltpetre and salt make no sense at all to me!

The level of saltpetre seems to be far too high and the level of salt far too low.

For example the salt can't be more than about 0.2% in the finished product; hardly discernable I would have thought.

For 2 Litres of water I'd go for about 200gm of salt and 55gm Prague #1 if you are pumping (injecting) the meat at 10% of it's weight i.e. Inject at 10% then put meat in remaining brine for 5 - 7 days. If you are not injecting it I'd go for 2 Litres of water, 40gm salt and 10gm Prague #1 for 20 days for a 2 kg piece of meat.

The figures for the Prague Powder are for 'standard' powder at 6.25% nitrite. If you are using Prague powder from the site shop increase the amount to 60gm for the injected the other is OK at 10 gm.

I also add sugar to mine

I hope this helps, but if you have any doubts or want alternative salt beef recipes, just post back here.

Phil

[Oddley]

I bought the book some time ago reduced to a fiver. This is the Salt Beef recipe from the book Preserved.

Salt Beef (from Preserved)

Brine
1 heaped tbsp - 20 g salt
1 heaped tbsp - 20 g saltpetre
2kg / 4.5lb brisket

Stock
2 Litres water or Beef Stock
1 Teaspoon black peppercorns
4 Bay leaves
1 teaspoon salt
� teaspoon caraway seeds
2 carrots
1 onion cut in half

Method:
Dissolve salt and saltpetre in a cup of warm water. Place meat in a container just big enough to contain it. Immerse in cold water and add the dissolved salt and saltpetre. Cover the bowl and leave it in a cool place for 3 days. remove beef rinse well. Simmer in the stock ingredients for around 3 hours.

This recipe is a bit confusing, in that it doesn't say clearly, that you won't be using the 2 Litres of water or stock, for the brine. You will be using 1 cup of water, with the dissolved salt and saltpetre in it, plus whatever amount of cold water you can get in the close fitting container. The close fitting container bit is quite important, because you want to use about half the weight of brine to meat, ie: 2 parts meat to 1 part brine.

Doing the calculations reveal. That the saltpetre will be about 1000 mg/Kg meat, the salt about 0.1%. Please don't leave the meat in brine for more than 3 days, or you will start getting unacceptable ingoing levels of saltpetre.

[wheels]

Oddley - that explains the saltpetre, but I still find the level of 0.1% salt bizarre?

[MBT]

Thanks for the welcome (and for not kicking me for posting this under 'air cured' instead of 'brined' )

I had completely missed the bit about a close fitting container. I would've blindly dissolved the lot in 2L of water, tossed in the beef and waited. I'm clearly a looong way from being able to eyeball a curing recipe and notice something doesn't add up. That'll learn me to read more gooderer!

I'm not sure the beef is supposed to be salty - the authors draw a clear distinction between this 'salt beef' (which they suggest serving on deli-style sandwiches with pickles) and 'corned beef'. Their recipe for the latter calls for 3 cups of sea salt in 3.3L water to do a 5-8lb brisket - far saltier than the salt beef recipe.

The nitrite is standard 6.25% DQ Curing Salt from butcher-packer. Any suggestions for converting the required saltpetre to a percentage of curing salt (eg x grams per liter)? The label only gives levels for a 10% pump, and I'm not pumping. That way I can cover the beef, drain to measure, check that I'm close to the 2:1 meat to brine ratio Oddley mentioned, then dissolve the salts.

Thanks again!
Matt

[wheels]

Matt

As you get supplies from Butcher and Packer, I assume you are in the US.

The US standards allow 200 Parts Per Million (PPM) Nitrite ingoing in Immersion Cured Products. There are two methods of calculating this:

Method One is used for hams, shoulders, bellies, etc., because it takes weeks for these large items to reach equilibrium. Method Two is primarily used with small items with large surface areas such as pigs' ears, tails, snouts, etc.

Your brisket (assuming it isn't rolled and tied), being similar to (say) a pork belly would appear to be Method 1 for which the calculation is the same as for a pumped product, other than replacing the figure for '% pump' with '% pick up'. As such you could follow the instructions given by Butcher and Packer. The only difference may be the amount of cure that the meat will 'pick up' in 3 days, which is anybodies guess. Because of this I would go for 65gm Cure #1 with the 2 litres of water and 20gm salt in the recipe (although IMO 20gm is not a heaped tablespoon full!). This will give about 195 PPM if the meat picks up 10%, but will still provide a safe level (above 120PPM) at 4.4% pick up, it's the best compromise I can come up with.

Whether the meat will be cured throughout in 3 days will be interesting to see, but it certainly has more chance of doing so with Cure #1 as against saltpetre. It should be noted that the salt in the cure #1 will have an effect on the salt level in the meat, negligible at 4.4% pickup and about 3 times more at 10%. It's so low anyway as to not be of concern.

Please let us know how you get on.

Phil

[MBT]

Thanks Phil. I'm actually in Canberra, Australia. The cure came to me via my mum who lives in Florida - butcherpacker wouldn't ship to me, so I shipped to her, and here it is. I've had no luck obtaining curing salts in Australia that aren't premixed with sugar, salt and other spices. Asking for saltpetre gets me an apologetic smile or an alarmed chemist reaching for the phone to call the Australian Federal Police. I feel much better about using the DQ cures, but still wrestling a bit with the voices at my shoulders:

"Go on, just chuck in a tablespoon and see how it goes. Near enough is good enough!"
"Don't listen to him! You'll kill us all! It's PPM and tenths of a gram or nothing!"

Anyways, thanks for your advice. I'll make the beef the week after next, and will post pics of how it turns out. This week it's biltong, and I'm traveling the following week.

Cheers!
Matt

[wheels]

I look forward to seeing how it works out.

Phil