Salt/Pickled Beef

[ohioyankee]

I was wondering what cut of beef would be good to use to make pickled or salted beef. I used the search function but could not find anything. Any information would be great.



Kenton Siers

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Salt/Pickled Beef

Hallo!

From Beeton's Book of Household Management, 1861) :

1/2 round of beef, 4 oz sugar, 1 oz saltpetre, 2 oz black pepper, 1/4 lb. bay salt, 1/2 lb. common salt.
Rub the meat well with salt, and let it remain for a day, to disgorge the slime. The next day, rub it well with the above ingredients on every side, and let it remain in the pickle for about a fortnight, turning it every day. It may be boiled fresh from the pickle, or smoked.
Note: the smaller the beef, the less time it takes to salt it. A joint of 8 or 9 lbs. will be sufficiently salty in a week.

My understanding is that different "cuts" could be used.

Curt

[Becky Morgan]

Re: Salt/Pickled Beef

I've always seen brisket on the list of things to pickle. While dubious quality may be authentic, choose good meat, and while chunks of half-rancid fat were a frequent complaint, out of respect for your body choose lean. A look around the Net has upheld my conviction that brisket seems to have been the favorite cut:

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcornedbeef.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/corned-beef?cat=health

http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/HamburgerHistory.htm

http://www.caymannetnews.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000127/012788.htm

From the last one...
"The boiled beef dish is called Spiced Beef, not Corned Beef and Cabbage. Joints of salt cured beef round, not brisket were boiled and enjoyed as a special meal at Christmas, according to references dating back to the 11th century.

Instead of salted beef, the modern version is beef round or brisket soaked in brine solution for 7-10 days (with dark brown sugar, saltpeter, sea salt, black peppercorns, allspice berries and juniper berries.) The beef is then boiled or “larded: with bacon or suet and baked in a tightly covered pot.
Another corned beef conundrum: food historians don’t know whether to credit the Irish or the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern and Central Europe for “inventing” it. Both cultures mastered the art of salt curing meats and fish by the early Middle Ages."

[Brian Wiswell]

Re: Salt/Pickled Beef

If you have success with a recipe, please let me know. I would like to try it my self.

Brian Wiswell

[Silas]

Re: Salt/Pickled Beef

If you have success with a recipe, please let me know. I would like to try it my self.

Purchase a round steak and give one of the salt rubbings a try. I've done it many times without ill effect. I typically use equal amounts of brown sugar and kosher salt with some pepper for good measure.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Salt/Pickled Beef

My understanding is that different "cuts" could be used.

When you figure that this was a long-term preservation method in rural America, it doesn't make sense to just do one cut if you have a whole dead steer to deal with. Eliza Leslie's 1851 recipe starts out "The beef must be fresh killed, and of the best kind. You must wipe every piece well, to dry it from the blood and moisture. To fifty pounds of meat allow..."

Mrs. E.F. Haskell, 1861, gives her recipe per one hundred pounds of beef.

So as Herr Schmidt says, there could be lots of different cuts. As far as what their favorite pickled cut was, I'd vote for the tongue.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[WoodenNutmeg]

Re: Salt/Pickled Beef

Personally, I very much enjoy the dried, salted meats; brisket works best for curring.

[WoodenNutmeg]

Re: Salt/Pickled Beef

Personally, I very much enjoy the dried, salted meats; brisket works best for curring.

[Becky Morgan]

Re: Salt/Pickled Beef

When you figure that this was a long-term preservation method in rural America, it doesn't make sense to just do one cut if you have a whole dead steer to deal with.
Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

DISCLAIMER: The following does not apply to early 1860s contractors supplying the US Government for a quick buck.

Based on purely modern experience, I'd say the use of brisket most likely came about because it's a very lean, very tough cut that doesn't lend itself as well to much else. The relative lack of fat, which easily becomes rancid if preserving conditions are not perfect, is a large bonus. Pickling tenderizes a great deal because the acids soften the muscle fibers. If you want to get a sample of this effect in a modern setting, take a piece of very lean but garsh-awful tough beef, wash it well and immerse it in vinegar overnight in the refrigerator. Rinse it off in the morning, cook it and see what you think. My neighbor, whose canning recipes reach back into the dawn of home preservation, cans her beef (usually brisket, round if it's on sale) in pickling mix and gets excellent results. Other parts of a beef might be laid down in salt, smoked or otherwise preserved. Wet pickling just suits the tough stuff well. I can see how it would be an excellent way to fix tongue.

That said, you can see how salt horse got a bad name. Does anyone seriously believe that contractors were going to take the nicest cuts from the best beeves for army use? Does anyone think they carefully trimmed away all the excess fat? Heck, they were doing well by their own standards to leave out the hair and horns. The process itself is safe and effective, the practice under 1860s wartime conditions less so.

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Salt/Pickled Beef

Hallo!

Just an aside... I might would add a caveat on "cut."

Sometimes we moderns are overly "selective" on our "cuts," where the 19th century person would have had a wider range of choices. (Ethnic, regional, rural, and urban side-discussions so noted..)

Not that he was a Civil War era person, but my grandfather was fond of things I have grown away from- such as souse, scrapple, jowl meat, snout, knuckles, feet, tail, and "cracklin's." .
And although my mother has gotten away from it, she used to be always boiling some odd bone or part for scraps and bits, or even just broth.

Curt

[Hank Trent]

Re: Salt/Pickled Beef

Pickling tenderizes a great deal because the acids soften the muscle fibers. If you want to get a sample of this effect in a modern setting, take a piece of very lean but garsh-awful tough beef, wash it well and immerse it in vinegar overnight in the refrigerator. Rinse it off in the morning, cook it and see what you think.

In my experience, long-term salting with a period recipe makes beef tougher than it started, and it needs to be boiled for several hours before it starts to become tender, the longer the better. Even when relatively tender after long boiling, it has a fibrous texture, easy to cut with the grain, tough to cut across it. Is that the results that others are getting?

Salt pork, by contrast, even when heavily salted, seems easier to turn back into something tender after it's boiled or even just stewed a little and fried. Though admittedly, I've not tried pork salted with saltpetre (Morton's Tenderquick) or beef salted without it, so I don't know if any of the extra toughness is due to that.

On the topic of "salt horse," from the 1862 USDA annual report:

There is little difficulty in keeping salt beef in an ordinary farm cellar through the summer, but it is quite otherwise when prepared for market or transportation. If salted sufficiently to secure it against changes of temperature, it becomes so salt and hard as to be comparatively unpalatable and worthless. Of this nature must necessarily be "army beef," flatteringly designed by "the boys" "salt horse!" Army beef must be guaranteed against spoiling in all places and under all circumstances and temperatures, while farmers' beef is to be kept out of the sun at a cool, even temperature. The question with the farmer is not whether he can keep beef by salting, but how to salt it so as not to cause the loss of its qualities. In the first place, the cask itself should be perfectly sweet. If meat has ever once "taken hurt," it is quite impossible ever to render it safe again. Secondly, the winter pickle should never be retained for summer. As warm weather comes on, a new, clean brine should be substituted.

The materials and proportion for the pickle vary much in different localities, and according to the tastes of individuals. The following is substantially good: Make the pickle of strength to bear a fresh egg above the surface to the size of a quarter of a dollar; add one ounce of saltpetre to fifteen to twenty pounds of meat; one pound of sugar, or one and a half pints molasses in same proportion, if desired. After the meat is packed in the barrel, the pickle is turned on boiling hot. The spring pickle is of similar propotions, except being without saltpetre and without being heated.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Charles Heath]

Re: Salt/Pickled Beef

Kenton,

Get to know Dennis Sr. and Dennis Jr. of the Kolar family, owners of K & K Meats Shoppe of 10682 Main Street in Mantua. You should be able to get fresh beef from them in quantity. Although not an AC Forum approved vendor, they seem to be close by your location, and they have a website if you want a phone number and other info:

http://k-and-k-meat-shoppe.tripod.com/

(Unrelated to this conversation -- please note they have their own smokehouse, and ask them for some "thrice smoked bacon." If they don't know what that is, then threaten to become a Vegan on the spot. )

The recipe Curt provided is for salt beef. You want this. This is not the same as the modern "corned beef" in the happy little plastic bags found in the grocery store.

You will find a couple of terms useful. The first is "fresh beef." This means both Kosher beef, and beef that has not been frozen. You do not want frozen beef, as the cellular structure is damaged just enough to retard salt absorption. The second is revisiting the term "corned." It has a number of different meanings, and most of them don't mean what you want.

What Beeton didn't tell you:

1. Fetch the worst cuts of beef you can find, and buy about 10 pounds of it. Make sure the meat has not been frozen. Brisket is high class compared with some of the lesser cuts of beef. What you want is an end product not unlike a large chunk of a bias-ply truck tire in terms of texture and flavor. I must say Jerry Gouge is able to capture this aspect better than any other fellow I know. Have you ever had his "Cartridge Box Strap Soup a la Shiloh?"

2a. Ask the man (either Dennis) behind the counter if he has any Morton's Cure. He'll also know it as "Morton's Quick Cure," "Tender Quick," and "pink salt." Buy a box or bag. It will be in the sausage making, pickling, or hog killing section of the butcher shop or feed-n-seed. If you hunt deer, then you know where to buy this already, and Sam Walton's Mercantile (not an approved AC Vendor) may also carry this stuff. This is the easiest way to get the salt petre over the counter in small quantity these days.

2b. Don't just walk into a grocery store and ask for salt petre. First, they won't know what it is, and second you'll probably get hauled downtown for "uttering" or some such nonsense.

2c. Buy about 10 pounds of Kosher salt. This is non-iodized salt. Iodized salt will not give you the results you want.

3. Raid your wife's Tupperware (not an approved AC Vendor) collection for a container large enough for the meat and salt concoction. Rubbermaid will work in a pinch, but let's not get into an us vs them thing when it comes to plastic containers. If you don't have a wife with an extensive plastic container collection (the London Broil marinator is ideal), a clean drywall bucket will work just fine. Get one with a lid, and cut a small board in circular fashion to barely fit inside the bucket. Find a couple of relatively clean bricks to weight down the board.

4. Read the directions on the box. Throw the box away. Forget the directions except for the part about too much salt petre will kill you.

5. Mix a scant handful of cure, a heaping handful of sugar, grind up a half-handful of black peppercorns, and add in five pounds of Kosher salt. Hold this for the next day. Think about how much money you just put into that stainless steel bowl, too.

6. Cover the bottom of the container with salt. Coat the meat with salt. Layer the meat with layers of salt and pack well. This is the drawing phase. The salt will draw out the blood, and make the "slime" mentioned by Beeton. The same goes for fish or pork. The next day, you'll want to wipe off the salt and slime, and repack the meat in the cocoction you made the day before. Press it down tight. Tight is good.

7. Why she turns that meat every day for two weeks is a mystery to me other than Beeton may be trying to eliminate any gaps and/or air bubbles. If you have the meat and concoction in a drywall bucket, don't forget the wooden board and the bricks to hold it all down a bit. Put a 2" layer of salt between the meat and the board, and snap the lid on. Leave it in there for a month. If you open the lid and the smell chases you down the hall, into the garage, and out into the front yard, then you did something wrong. Immediately mail that rotten meat to Rev. Pompey for use at a Trans-Miss event.

8. Deleted upon request of those humorless prigs with sensitive digestive tracts.

9a. As unoriginal as this may seem, salt beef is salty. While I don't have any documentation for this, just take a bite sometime, and judge for yourself. You may freshen the salt beef by soaking it overnight, and then boiling it several hours prior to issue, or parboil it for 15 minutes, pour off the old water, add new, and then boiling it again. Unless you enjoy eating pure salt with a little beef flavoring, removing some of the salt is strongly suggested. This mirrors how Augustus Kautz advised in his handbook, Customs of Service for Noncommissioned Officers: "Salt pork is usually boiled. As with salt beef it should be well soaked to extract the salt, and then boiled for three or four hours.” If you can deal with salt pork, then you can deal with salt beef. If some of this sounds familiar, then it should. You've read it before.

9b. At some point you'll wish to transfer the meat from the modern container to something more period. While barrels are good for larger quantities, a crock will work fine for a few pounds of beef. At this point you will realize why the Army had so much in the way of plain, untinned, sheet iron, basins and kettles as the salt in a heck of a lot of these meats and pickled goods would eat away that tin in rapid fashion.

10. Once you've gone through the labor of making the salt beef as a beta test, and found it to your liking, then grab some potatoes and make some hash with it. This is pretty darn good with eggs for breakfast. Why mention this? Well, at some event where you have slaved over the 100 pounds of salt beef you'll notice the gathered gaggle of giggling gastronomes haven't eaten very much of it because it is salty, or it looks funny, or it didn't come from a box and a microwave oven. I kid you not. Buy a container of desiccated potatoes, decant them, and have them onhand for just such a moment. Chop that beef into 1/4" cubes, and prepare a hash with the potatoes. They'll eat it, enjoy it, and not even know it is the same food. This is my favorite source for consistently good quality desiccated potatoes (not an AC Forum approved vendor):

http://www.harmonyhousefoods.com/dicedpotato.html

11. I have seen men turn up their noses at hot flapjacks with molasses, and days old fish from a rusty bucket. There is no accounting for taste. Experiment on a small scale, and then work your way up to feeding the hordes.

12. Good luck.

[Becky Morgan]

Re: Salt/Pickled Beef

Even when relatively tender after long boiling, it has a fibrous texture, easy to cut with the grain, tough to cut across it. Is that the results that others are getting?
Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

Yes. Even when it tenderizes, it tends to go into strings. My teeth are no longer up to the job of pulverizing beef-flavored chewing gum. I can only imagine how much fun it was to try to chew it with a mouth sore and teeth loose from scurvy. You're right about the salt pork, too. The older folks around here still use it regularly, and it neither gets as hardshell leathery as salt beef nor requires the kind of soaking and cooking beef does. I have to wonder whether jerky is actually easier to do something with.

Pickled beef isn't quite the same animal as salt beef. Vinegar pickle truly does help. A lot. No wonder the old relatives always had vinegar around.

Those who were old when I was young (49 years ago) did indeed eat parts of animals that only veterinarians bother with these days. The expression "eating high on the hog", after all, referred to eating what we now consider as edible pig instead of the feet, shanks, belly, snout, tripe and anything else that didn't kill the person attempting to eat it. Once again, it's hard to fathom a world where there was no welfare, food stamp program, WIC, or, for that matter, county road crew to clear snow from the (paved) road to the grocery store. Some farm families weren't off the farm for weeks at a time in winter unless they made the short trek to their neighborhood church, provided anyone else could get there. Many period housekeeping books assume the reader is in town, able to send to the butcher and order up a nice fresh whatever. Farm folks and other country people ate what they had. Think of the even greater difficulties during wartime, factor in a few shady contractors and uncertain transport for barrels, and I have nothing but admiration for the cast-iron stomachs of the past.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Salt/Pickled Beef

beef-flavored chewing gum.

:D I think it's not really good until it's simmered overnight on the fire and been cooked the second time for hash, and by then it's all gone.

Pickled beef isn't quite the same animal as salt beef.

What would you say is the difference? Was it storage at a higher temperature, to allow fermentation? I've not had the guts to do the salting procedure at a temperature higher than just above freezing.

In the period, "pickles" (the veggie kind) were often made initially without vinegar, stored only in a salt brine for a few weeks or a few months. I think the food chemistry had something to do with natural lactic acid being produced from fermentation, thus creating the acid environment for pickling. There are a few modern recipes for fermented pickles online that talk about the chemistry of the procedure.

After a few weeks or more in the brine, in a typical period recipe, cucumber pickles are taken out, greened, then packed in vinegar.

So putting something in a salt brine, whether meat or cucumbers, was so similar, I think that's where the term "pickling" gets applied to both. For example, from Mrs. E.F. Haskell: "For one hundred pounds of beef, allow ten pounds rock salt, four ounces of saltpetre, and two pounds of brown sugar. Dissolve the ingredients mentioned in clean soft water, boil the pickle [the brine itself, no vinegar], remove the scum, and pour it on the beef when cool..."

Has anyone pickled beef at both higher and lower temperatures and noticed more acid fermentation at the higher temperature? Or is there another trick that creates something different with the brine? Or are there period beef instructions like cucumber pickles, where you salt the beef first for a while, then remove it and store it in vinegar?

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Becky Morgan]

Re: Salt/Pickled Beef

hanktrent@voyager.net[/email]

That's how my neighbor does hers. She cans all sorts of meat, but she does have a pickle recipe. The home ec agent's explanation was that meat by itself won't form enough acids in salt to cause the tenderizing. Mind you, all of my modern cucumber pickle recipes DO call for vinegar in the brine, probably as a modern safety measure against botulism (you'd think salt would be sufficient for that, but every little bit helps.)

It's still surprising to me that only the Trans-Mississippi folks mentioned any great amount of jerky. It would have been a lot safer and no harder to cook. When I was small and we went to Cold Harbor during the centennial commemoration, we picked up a ham advertised as cured by a period salting and smoking. When we got it home, Mom tried to cook it the way you normally would, only to find it had to be soaked at least overnight through several changes of water to get the salt out. Even then, it was so salty we could never get used to the taste. We gave it to a neighbor who ran a restaurant. She made bean soup with little slivers of it for a solid year. Since Mom and Dad used to smoke and salt their own beek and pork, I have to assume this was way more drying and smoking than they'd ever dealt with.