Autumn is the time for various home-made products. And for our case - almost the only one.
After all, most housewives probably don’t have either oak barrels or special “cold” cellars, and the need for salted meat is not so high.
You can store it in the freezer, or just buy the required amount.
But to cook the most delicious home-made corned beef, and with an absolute guarantee of the absence of complex and harmful preservatives, it is a matter of honor.
General principles of salting meat at home
• The best choice of meat for home salting is pork ham. The flesh is quite fat, well and quickly salted, perfectly perceives seasonings.
• Salting can be subjected to familiar chicken breast, but so popular chicken legs are already a more complex product, however, we will try to pickle them too!
• The main set of products and the necessary utensils fit in a couple of lines: the actual meat, salt, laurel, sugar, coriander, pepper (various); from ware - the volume enameled, wooden, glass or porcelain capacity is 30 and more liters, or 10-liter large bottles.
• Two types of salting - dry and brine, differ radically, but there is no particular difference in the products used.
• Corned beef is canned food and preservative in them is table salt. This needs to be clearly understood, since an attempt to pickle meat at home, immediately having received a slightly salted product, can end in disrepair. Food poisoning is extremely difficult, it is not worth risking the health of loved ones.
How to pickle meat at home - simple corned beef, “Countryly”
Ingredients:
• pork pulp (back) - 2 kg .;
• 2 spoons, with a hill, refined sugar;
• salt, not iodized, large - 8 full tablespoons;
• black pepper - 2 spoons of small peas, or 1 large spoon;
• coriander and white pepper (not ground) - 1 dessert spoon each;
• nutmeg powder - two pinches of freshly ground, or three pinches “out of the bag”;
• hot pepper - 3-4 large pods;
• 50 ml of cognac; • 2 medium heads of garlic;
• spoon of paprika powder;
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon.
Cooking Method:
1. Capacity for salting - enameled or porcelain, suitable size, rinse with hot water with soda, wipe and dry. You will also need linen or cotton fabric with a width of 30 cm and a length of about one meter, it is better to stock up on two such canvases.
2. Flesh, not cutting into separate pieces, cut, so that the individual chunks were about 300-400 grams of weight. Rinse and wipe off moisture.
3. Mix salt and sugar thoroughly, crush coriander and both kinds of pot pepper in a mortar not too finely. The grains should break up into 5-7 crumbs.
4. Combine the spices with salt and sugar in a bowl. Dip the meat in succession in spices, slightly rubbing it in the process. Part of the spices will remain in the bowl, they must be scattered on the canvas, leaving 2/3 for further sprinkling.
5. Spread chunks of meat on top of salt and spices, leaving 2-centimeter gaps. Put garlic cloves in them. To do this, they need to be separated, and remove the top, coarse husk layer, this will take 1 head. Pour the remaining salt with pepper over and in between.
6. Tuck the wide edges of the cloth up the pulp, trying to pull them as much as possible. Next, roll the resulting “stocking” in half, in length. Put the resulting billet in a container for salting and press on top with a load of about 2-3 kilograms (a two-liter can of cold water is just right).
7. Future corned beef must be placed in the refrigerator for 5-8 hours. After the allotted time, we take out the meat and unfold it. There will be a lot of moisture in the bowl - do not pour it out!
8. Shake off the cloth and spoon off all the spices and salt, do not throw them away, but pour them into a bowl. In their place we rub chunks of meat with a mixture of paprika, cinnamon and nutmeg. Again, as tightly as possible, wrap the pulp in a single layer of cloth. Top, right on the fabric, rub with crushed garlic and distribute the pods of hot pepper. They must be whole, uncut, not have rotting and damage. Once again, we wrap the whole blank in fabric, put it in a bowl and put it in the fridge, under the load. In brine pour brandy. 9. Withstand the day, every 6 hours turning the billet and pouring it every 2 hours with a prominent brine. After 24 hours, we cut off all the spices from the corned beef pieces, the salt crystals should not be left behind. We also remove all the crumbs from the fabric. Squeeze the cloth and wrap it pieces of corned beef, two per serving. Between the pulp, you can leave the teeth of garlic and pepper. They give mostly aroma and almost no effect on taste.
10. Lay the corned beef in a sieve or plastic colander, they must be turned over once a day. Brine is recommended to be drained into the jar under the lid and leave in the fridge for now. After 3 days, cut and try a piece of corned beef. The maximum aging period is 10 days; further aging in the fabric can be accompanied by brine addition, if you wish to add salinity. You can add another 75-100 ml of cognac - it will add color to the beef.
How to pickle meat at home in hot brine
To meat well and evenly salted, it is better to take medium-sized pieces, up to 4 cm thick.
Ingredients:
• one kilogram of meat;
• one and a half liters of filtered drinking water;
• a full glass of non-iodized salt;
• four black peppercorns;
• two large garlic cloves;
• Lavrushka - two sheets.
Cooking Method:
1. Pour the required amount of drinking water into a large enamelled container, add salt, lower the laurel.
2. Crush all the pepper in a mortar or put in a tight bag and crush with a rolling pin and send it in saline.
3. Put the container on high heat and boil quickly. In a boiling brine, dip the meat and boil it for five minutes.
4. After that, remove the pan from the heat and leave to cool in a warm place for at least 10 hours. Make sure that the meat is always in brine.
5. Then take the pieces of meat from the brine, rub them in garlic chopped on a grater and remove, putting in a plastic container or bag for three hours in the cold. This is done so that the meat absorbs the whole garlic flavor.
6. If you do not use garlic, you can use it immediately, after aging in brine.
How to pickle meat at home in cold brine
The method of “cold brine” is used for cooking meat for the purpose of canning, and for use immediately after salting. The meat in it will cook longer than in hot brine.
Ingredients:
• two liters of clean drinking water;
• a glass of coarse salt;
• garlic head;
• peppercorns - 4 peas.
Cooking Method:
1. Dilute the salt in water and boil the solution, remove the container from the stove and cool it.
2. Wash the meat with cold water and cut it into equal pieces, thick to five centimeters. Cut the pieces so that they are then conveniently folded into the prepared for salting capacity.
3. Disassemble the garlic clove and peel it off. Cut each garlic clove along into four slices, if they are large. Smaller cut in half.
4. In the meat pulp with a knife edge make punctures and insert peas in them.
5. Then put the pieces of meat in the prepared container, shifting them with garlic cloves, and fill with brine.
6. Place the container in the common chamber of the refrigerator for a week.
How to pickle meat at home for later smoking
Meat salt is not only to extend the period of preservation, it is also a way to prepare the product before smoking. In this way you can prepare not only meat, but also fat.
Ingredients:
• three liters of water;
• five large teeth of garlic;
• one full glass of salt, without a hill;
• a tablespoon of granulated sugar;
• Fifteen peppercorns;
• two large leaves of laurel;
• three tablespoons of seasoning “For kebab”;
• Carnation umbrellas to taste.
Cooking Method:
1. Prepare saline solution. Add the sliced garlic, spices, spices and put on the maximum heat. As soon as it boils, remove from the stove and leave to cool. While the pickle cools, all the spices and spices will open and give the liquid its flavor.
2. Cut the meat into rectangular layers, 5 cm thick and fold the pieces into a suitable container, pressing them tightly with your hands.
3. Fill with brine and put under the yoke. Then remove the container in the general refrigerator and keep it there for five days.
4. Remove the salted meat from the brine, rinse well under cold water and hang for two hours in a draft so that it dries well before smoking.
How to pickle meat at home in a dry way
Dry salting is used mainly for salting fatty meat or fat, as the salt is able to draw moisture, making it hard and too dry. But it does not threaten the fat, rather, on the contrary, it will absorb the salt itself and take it as much as is required - no more, no less.
Ingredients:
• coarse salt;
• garlic, spices and spices - to taste.
Cooking Method:
1. Cut the meat well dried after rinsing into 4 cm thick chunks. It is desirable that they were rectangular in shape. Make cuts on pieces, without cutting about 1 cm to the end.
2. Slice a piece of garlic, and slice a part through a press.
3. Pierce the meat over the entire surface and in the slots with a knife edge and insert garlic plates and peas into the openings.
4. Then sprinkle the meat liberally with a mixture of salt and ground pepper and coat it with minced garlic on all sides, place some garlic in the slot.
5. Pack the meat in a plastic bag, tie it tightly and leave it warm overnight, and put it in the refrigerator in the morning.
6. In two days, the pieces of fatty meat salted in this way will be ready for use.
How to pickle meat for long-term storage of mixed pickling
Salting of meat is done in two ways - first, the meat is salted with a dry method, and after it is so-called wet. Most often used for cooking for long-term storage of fat pulp on the bone. We will use it to pickle chicken legs.
Ingredients:
For dry salting:
• 150 gr. salt;
• teaspoon of granulated sugar;
• one kilogram of chicken legs or pulp on the bone.
For brine:
• five liters of water;
• 250 gr. non-iodized salt;
• two tablespoons of white sugar;
• A tablespoon of ascorbic acid.
Cooking Method:
1. Cut the meat into small pieces of 5 cm thickness and place tightly in the prepared container, sprinkling the pieces with a mixture of salt and sugar. Ham just pierce the edge of the knife to the bone. Put a load on top and clean the pan in the cold for four days. 2. After that, drain liquid out of the meat container.
3. Dissolve the salt and granulated sugar in five liters of water. Add ascorbic acid, mix well and pour the prepared solution of meat in a saucepan.
4. Put the corned beef under the yoke for five days, covering the container with gauze.
5. After that, the salted meat soak for two hours in cold water and suspend so that all the moisture has come off it.
Methods of salting meat at home - cooking tricks and useful tips
• The dry salting is great for fat, the pickle is ideal for salting bacon - pieces of fat with meat veins. For salting ham, brisket and brisket is best to use the combined method of salting.
• Another virtually unchanged preservative component is sodium nitrate. They need to use with extreme caution. If you overdosed the meat, in the worst case, you slightly spoil your reputation as a cook, then by “missing” the amount of saltpeter you already risk more seriously - the product will become unsuitable and can cause serious poisoning. Just in case such recipes are not included in our selection, more simple ones are chosen. Let the corned beef be not so beautiful, but do not have to fear for its edibility.
• It is difficult to distinguish the pickling of meat and its marinating. Most recipes almost imperceptibly go one into another. In general, corned beef is meat cooked with a minimum of spices, or in their absence. Corned beef, as a rule, is more salty in taste, besides acid is usually added to marinades - lemon juice, vinegar, sour wine. But the dry marinades almost correspond to the usual salting.
