One of my favorite things to eat is thin slices of salt beef
that's hot and succulent and full of flavour
And I'm going to give you my recipe
that's really reliable for doing your very own salt beef
We're talking about
the beautiful brisket of beef right at the tail end of a brisket of beef.
Still, to this day, it should be a much cheaper cut from beef
Beef is always expensive, but the brisket is really good value
We need to cure that.
Why would we cure it? Because we want to extend the shelf life
We want to make it last longer
So if you go back a few hundred years,
of course, we didn't have fridges and freezers
We had things like curing. So we use things like salt
and sugar
for you know, controlling any bugs on here, right
But not only that, it gives an incredible flavour as well
A beautiful juiciness
So let's show you how to make a beautiful brine. Brine is a salty water
Salty flavored water
So here I've got two liters of water
I'm bringing it to the boil
Why are we boiling it? Cos essentially we want to make kind of a savory tea,
an infusion
So the first part of the infusion is lovely herbs
You can pick and choose any herb you love
It could be, you know, rosemary. It could be bay. I'm using thyme
So thyme goes into the water
Then I'm going to go in with 3,
yes 3 cloves. This is quite powerful, right
But really perfumed and gorgeous
So in with the cloves. I've got 1 tablespoon of mustard seeds
which will give a fantastic must have flavour which is delicious
And then gorgeous red peppercorns, 1 tablespoon, and then half a tablespoon
of the lovely little allspice here
So we're going to go in with that,
and that's going to create the flavour
Secondly, the cure, the salting. Right
So we've got 200 grams of salt going in here
So 200 grams of salt to 2 liters of water will give you the right salinity
that will not only
flavour that beef in the most beautiful way, but give you that kind of protection
in the curing that you need.
Now, not only that, we're going to use kind of two tone curing, right
We're going to use sugar, 100 grams. So half the sugar to the salt
And then there's an optional curve ball, and that is butcher's cure, right
30 grams of butcher's cure.
Now, why is this different?
Yes, it is a salt,
but it also has some other kind of nitrates in there that give you that pink colour
So that's an optional ingredient that goes in
Bring that to the boil, then switch it off
Let it cool down because we don't want to be putting hot things on raw things
And here's one I did earlier, right
So here's a cure that I've done
We want to use a nice little glass or plastic
container to put our beautiful beef because what will happen is...
the brine will react with the metal in the pan
and we don't want that
So put that into your container and then cover it with that amazing brine.
Look at the color.
Now, if you're going to double or quadruple this recipe,
you don't actually have to double or quadruple the brine.
Right.
The only rule with the brine apart from those quantities is make sure
whatever meat you have is covered beautifully in this
So, absolutely, if you add twice as much meat, you know you'd still be able to
cover it nice and easy. Now to do its work
we need to help it a little bit
If you get like a skewer, a little knife,
maybe a little carving fork and just stab the meat all the way through
What's going to happen is that will allow that brine to penetrate
all through the meat
Okay
So if it's floating, you can grab anything
that will weigh it down and keep that meat submerged
So now we put that in the fridge for, wait for it...
5 days
And this, of course, is why factories do it and restaurants do it
It doesn't happen so much in the home, but I promise you,
you know, when you cook that and it's hot and juicy and tender
and you just carving into a little sandwich, it's the best thing ever
So in the fridge we go and then I'll show you what happens next
So look at this
It's had 5 days
This is one I've done, you know, earlier obviously
but the texture and the color has changed
And now we're going to cook it
So look, what I want to do now is drain this salt beef
from all of this liquid
pour all that away,
and then I want to fill this up with fresh water
So cover it with fresh water, have a little look at that
And that will let the excess so kind of leech out
And that's very typical for anything that's been salted or brined over here
I've got half a pan of water coming to the boil
and we're now going to poach this beautiful salt beef, okay
So in this water,
we're going to use some typical sort of fragrant ingredients, celery
carrots, a couple of carrots,
a couple of celery sticks like that. Just chop them up like that
We've got some onions, just quarter those. Little bit of bay leaf. Peppercorns
So let's just put the veggies in there
You know, a little teaspoon of black peppercorns
And that is going to be really tasty
And we go into the water. So get that beef in there
Submerge in the water
Right, I'm going to get a lid
and we're going to poach this nice and gently
Nice and gently for two, two and a half hours to let that cook
And then I'll show you what to do next because we got some fun things to do
So the salt beef is cooked
It's had two and a half hours
and I've literally just turned the heat off and it's going to stay nice and warm, okay
So now we're going to fill it. It could be a sandwich
It could be a beautiful homemade bagel
But I want to show you just how you can embellish a very simple mustard
So yes, we all buy mustard, we get them in the jars
But you might have seen
the mustard powder in these little tins, the dried mustard powder
So this is an English mustard powder
So I'm going to put
a little bit of vinegar, white wine vinegar into the mustard
I'm going to add some seasoning of salt and pepper and some sugar
But you could use honey as well
Really, really nice
Have a little taste
Delicious... delicious!
Is it worth it? Yes
Even if you took everyday little pickles like this, right
I love pickles
These little dill pickles
What I quite like to do sometimes is redress these
Okay, so if I just take,
let's say, 3 or 4 for the moment. I can just slice these up at an angle like that
or you can use a little crinkle cutter if you've got one
So we're going to dress these up and you can use any lovely fresh herb
So I love using dill but it could be parsley
You could even use things like basil if you wanted to. So in we go
So just take a nice bit of that herb and get that in there and embellish it, right
Even things like chillies
So red, green, yellow chilies. Really thinly sliced
and you'll thinly sliced them and they'll kind of pickle quite quickly. Look at that
So in we go
And I like actually to kiss it with a little olive oil,
So flavour, flavour, flavour. Texture, you know, freshness, excitement
taking the every day kind of good or dreary sandwich
and taking it to a place that is just insanely good
So, look, we got dressed up pickles, homemade mustards, right
We got homemade bagels
Come on. Enough talking. Let's get filling
Take it out
I like to put the meat on a board
that's sitting on the tray to catch any of the juices
so you don't get mess on the floor. Get a sharp carving knife and just slice
nice thin slices all the way down the length of this beautiful cut of meat
Look at that
Look at the color. I like to go nice and fine
but I want to generously fill the sandwich at the same time.
It's a nice, long strokes of the meat
Look at this. Look at the color guys
Look at the texture
Can you see how we've taken that tough cut of meat
and we've made it beautifully tender
Then we're going to take a bagel. These are homemade bagels
If you want the recipe for these beautiful bagels, then click the link somewhere
Cut the bagel
I like to butter it
on both sides
I'm going to kiss it with amazing homemade mustard
I'm going to go in with some pickles,
and then we're going to go in with our amazing salt beef
Look at that guys!
Buttered bagel on top
Hello... There you go
A hot beef salt beef bagel with dressed up pickles
and homemade mustard
Happy blooming days. Let's get in there
Cut it in half
I know you're not supposed to, but I want to see what's going on in there
Look at this
Whoaw!
Look at that
Homemade salt beef. You've got to give this a try