Ambassador is one of effective methods blanks for the future meat products. Usually pork is taken for salting. You can also salt lamb, beef and horse meat, you just have to choose the fattest, juiciest pieces.
Do not try to salt all the meat in one container. Hams and loin are always salted separately, they need different amount salt. If the neck part is thick - salt it with hams, thin - only with the loin. Also, never salt different meats together.
The meat ambassador does not kill the microorganisms contained in it, but only dehydrates them and stops their development. Therefore, before salting the meat, be sure to make sure that the slaughtered animal was healthy.
For salting, you can take cooled meat within 1-2 days after slaughter. It is impossible to salt a product that has been frozen. In order for the meat to be salted evenly, it is necessary to cut it into equal pieces.
The optimum temperature in the room where the meat is salted is not higher than 2-3 degrees. If it is warmer, the meat may spoil. Lower, even negative temperatures are allowed, but the salting period in this case will need to be significantly increased. Freezing meat is salted much more slowly. How larger pieces, the harder it must be maintained optimum temperature. Large hams at temperatures below 0 degrees will be salted very unevenly and will be of poor quality.
Ambassador of meat in brine
There are several recipes for making brine.
Ingredients for a simple brine (per 100 kg of meat):
- water - 18 liters
- salt - 8 kg
- sugar - 800 g
- saltpeter food - 64 g
Ingredients for complex brine (per 100 kg of meat):
- water - 20 liters
- salt - 3 kg
- sugar - 200 g
- spices - bay leaf, cumin, allspice, coriander, anise, garlic, cardamom or other spices - to taste
- saltpeter food - 30 g
Cooking method:
- Dissolve these products in 18 liters of boiling water. It is necessary to achieve complete dissolution of saltpeter, otherwise the meat will turn out spongy.
- After preparation, filter the brine and cool to a temperature of 2-3°C.
- Put prepared pieces of meat in wooden tubs or plastic containers and fill with brine. You need to pack as tightly as possible. Pour in the brine gradually as the container fills with meat. Carefully pour each layer so that not a single piece is left unwetted with brine.
- Cover the tub or container with a wooden circle on top (so that the meat does not float to the surface) and set the weight. Cover the top with a lid or tie with a thick cloth to protect the meat from flies.
- Once every 10 days, the meat must be shifted. Lower the top pieces down, and lift the bottom ones up.
- Control the salinity of the brine with a hydrometer. The salt is absorbed by the meat and the brine concentration decreases over time. If the density of the brine is less than 12%, the meat may rot. To increase the density of the brine, add salt if necessary. All other ingredients of the brine do not need to be added.
- Salting, depending on the size of the pieces, lasts 6-8 weeks.
The salinity of the brine affects the taste and aroma of the meat, but also its shelf life. There are three levels of brine salinity: lightly salted (14-16% salt), normal (18%) and salty (20% and above). Salted meat is better preserved, but becomes drier and less tender.
Saltpeter is needed not so much for preservation as for preserving color. finished meat. Corned beef cooked without saltpeter takes on an unattractive gray tint.
The brine can be used several times, it will only need to be boiled and filtered. The meat gives extractive substances to the brine, therefore, in the repeated brine, corned beef turns out to be even more aromatic.
Dry cured meat
This method is simpler, but the requirements for the pickling mixture are much higher here.
Ingredients for pickling mixture (per 100 kg of meat):
- coarse salt - 5 kg
- sugar - 2 kg
- saltpeter food - 160 g
- spices - to taste, most often used black and red ground pepper, coriander grains, cumin
Sometimes a mixture of salt and salt is used for dry salting. ground pepper, without sugar and saltpeter. The amount of pepper is selected depending on the desired spiciness of the product.
Cooking method:
- Prepare the pickling mixture. Mix sugar, salt and nitrate evenly.
- Salt is best to take the 2nd grinding. fine salt you can’t take it, it forms a salt crust, and the product does not salt out. Also, iodized salt or with any other additives is not suitable. You should only use salt that is absolutely pure, free from impurities and impurities.
- Saltpeter must also be chemically pure, preferably in crystalline form. Technical (garden) saltpeter should not be used!
- Thoroughly rub the prepared pieces of meat with the pickling mixture.
- If using spices, rub them over the meat over the curing mixture.
- Place a wooden grate at the bottom of the salting dish. Lay the meat on it in layers, sprinkling each new row with the pickling mixture. Quality finished product will depend on how tightly you put the pieces of meat on the salting.
- Cover the top row with a clean cloth and put oppression.
- Once every 3-5 days, pieces of meat must be shifted. The salting process, depending on the size of the pieces, lasts 2-5 weeks.
Dry-cooked meat lasts longer than brine-cured meat.
Salted meat is hung on hooks in a cool place. In the presence of a smokehouse, salted meat can be smoked. Too salty meat is soaked in water before eating.
The shops offer a rich assortment of meat products, but many housewives are still engaged in home-made preparations. They are confident in the quality of their product and know that their relatives will appreciate the taste of, for example, pork corned beef - a chic dish cooked by their own mother or grandmother.
Corned beef was once one of the delicacies on the tables of our ancestors. Salting the meat made it possible to preserve it for a long time, even in the spring and summer. When preparing such a dish, you can salt the pork in a dry way or use a salt solution, and a very concentrated one.
Corned Beef Recipe: Dry Method
For cooking, you will need 1.5 kg of pork, it is best to take meat with layers of fat. In addition to this basic product, the following ingredients- 100 g of salt, 5-7 cloves of garlic, bay leaves, hot peppers.
First, the pork must be washed and dried using paper towels, cut into small portions. Rub each piece well with salt and garlic.
Now fragrant pieces must be placed in an enameled container, layered with bay leaf and pepper. Put oppression and weight on top. Such a preparation should spend in a cold place for about 3 days. Appearing meat juice must be drained.
After 3 days, put the pork in glass containers, cork nylon lids and send to the refrigerator. Such a dish is good on its own, with a slice of black bread and a spicy onion. Also, canapes will be a great addition to borscht.
Recipe "Pork in brine"
Only fresh meat is suitable for cooking, and it does not matter whether it is a sirloin or on the bone. First you need to prepare a brine based on each glass table salt 2.5 liters of water.
The brine is being prepared enamelware, large enough, since pork will be laid here, and the salting process will take place here. The brine should completely cover the meat.
Bring the water with salt to a boil, put the meat in the boiling brine and let stand for exactly 10 minutes. This is necessary so that after cooling, a thin film of fat remains on the surface.
You can store in the same container, but the best option- in glass jars. In the case of using glass containers, you need to shift the pork, pour in brine, cork and, after cooling, put in the refrigerator. After 3 weeks, corned beef is ready for use. It's time to call your family for dinner!
Every housewife from time to time has a question in order to cook such a delicious dish, which has not yet been done. In this case, you can show your imagination or find some proven recipe in cookbook or the Internet. Sometimes, in order to make something really tasty, you need to spend a lot of time and effort. So, for the preparation of corned beef, one of the main dishes of Russian cuisine, it may take from two to five days. This dish can be served as an appetizer, as a main ingredient in salads, or as a side dish, and so on. In order to find out what kind of wonderful dish this is and how to cook it at home, you should read the article presented.
Corned beef - what is it?
Corned beef is a dish that has Slavic roots and is prepared from meat or lard, which is salted for a long time, after which it is consumed in its current form or processed additionally. Earlier, before there were refrigerators and freezers, salting meat was a very popular way to extend the product's shelf life. After all, after keeping the meat tenderloin in salt, it can be stored for a very long time even at positive temperatures.
In the Middle Ages, salted meat was the main dish on the lord's tables, and ordinary people also ate it, since livestock breeding was found everywhere. A feature of this method of cooking is that meat, fish or salt cannot be spoiled. No matter how bad the culinary skills are, the dish will still turn out amazing. It should be noted that you can salt any kind of meat, and pork, and lamb, and beef, and even horse meat - it all depends on individual tastes.
How to cook corned beef at home
There are quite a lot of various recipes for salting meat, having different compositions of mixtures, spices and conditions for keeping the product. Each individual recipe has a unique taste and aroma, which is also very important for this type of dish. Cooking corned beef at home is very simple, and you can create a dish using the most different types meat and salt mixtures. So that everyone can choose for themselves suitable recipe, below is a selection of the most delicious and simple options cooking corned beef.
Recipe for salted beef in a jar
AT this case salting will be carried out using a liquid solution, which consists of only two components: salt and water. First you need enough, in which you need to mix five liters of water with a floor liter jar salt, and the salt must be iodine-free. Now the container should be sent to the fire and brought to a boil, after which the pre-prepared meat, which was cut into pieces of medium size, is sent to the pan.
After the beef has been placed in a container, the meat must be boiled for ten minutes. During this time, the fat layers will melt, which will only benefit the product. Next, the composition needs to be cooled a little, remove the meat from it and thoroughly fill it with a jar that is suitable in size. Now you need to pour the brine into the jar, which should completely cover the pieces of beef. For full cooking the product will need to infuse from one to three weeks.
How to make corned pork
First of all, you need to prepare the meat, for this you need to cut the pork pulp into approximately identical pieces 10 cm long and 3-4 cm wide. Rinse the pork thoroughly before dipping in salt, and then roll in the salt mixture. The mixture can be prepared from a kilogram of salt, 100 grams of sugar, as well as spices, which may include any seasoning that you like. Pepper adds additional piquancy - all these components are introduced into the salting in free volumes, which will correspond to individual taste preferences.
After all the ingredients are ready, the meat must be rolled in a salt mixture, and then sent to glass jar or container. Above pork tenderloin filled up completely to the top with salt for a period of three weeks. At the end of the allotted time for cooking, the meat must be washed from salt deposits, then the workpiece can be eaten or used to prepare all kinds of dishes.
Salting fat
There are enough various options salting fat at home, but they all have common trends. In this regard, we will describe the simplest option for preparing corned beef from lard, which, if desired, can be diversified by showing imagination. To do this, you will need long strips of lard, which must be cut into identical bars, as well as salt and a little red pepper.
You need to start cooking by rubbing the bacon with salt and pepper - this must be done wisely, not completely filling the product with salt powder, but also not sparing it for rubbing. Now the blocks of the same size are required to be laid tightly one to one in an enameled bowl in such a way that there is no free space between them. From above, the fat is crushed with salt and the second layer is laid on top of the first.
In the end, the fat must be properly pressed down, for example, with a wooden circle, placing a load on it, which will hold the product for the entire time. It must be remembered that when preparing corned beef from bacon, the pieces should be shifted - the lower ones on top, and the upper ones on the bottom - every five days. The product will be ready at the end of three weeks of curing in salting.
How to use corned beef
Corned beef is unique product, which can act both as an appetizer and as a main dish. Basically, after the meat has been pulled out of the brine, it needs to be washed, as a result of which it will already be ready for consumption. Quite often, corned beef is cut into slices and served to the table, which almost everyone likes. In this case, the described product is salted in the form of blanks for addition to the composition of dishes, for example, in scrambled eggs, pizza, or simply placed on a sandwich.
What dishes can be prepared from corned beef
AT classical form corned beef is ready for use after the meat has lain in salt for several days, however, there are other options for salting meat and fish. From the resulting blanks, you can cook quite tasty and original dishes who have every right to be called independent. That is why below are presented a few enough bright recipes corned beef dishes that deserve attention.
Boiled corned beef with sour cream sauce
It is very simple and tasty dish, which can be prepared at home without having special culinary talents. First you need to soak the corned beef in water, after which you need to drain it and collect a new one so that the water covers meat preparations. The pan is sent to slow fire for 15-20 minutes, so that the meat boils a little and acquires the desired taste. You can cook it with carrots and onions, which will add a special piquancy. The dish is served with sour cream sauce, which consists of sour cream, a small amount greens and garlic or horseradish, which must be grated into the composition. Small pieces of meat delicate sauce from sour cream - it's simple, but it tastes worthy of the most luxurious table.
Recipe for cooking with potatoes
To prepare this dish, you will need to preheat the oven to a temperature of 180 degrees, and then lay foil in a baking dish, laying a piece of corned beef on top of it. The meat is rubbed with coriander, french mustard, black pepper, and also 2 sheets of parsley are laid on top. The salted workpiece is wrapped in foil and sent to the oven for 2-2.5 hours, until the product becomes easy to pierce.
In parallel, you need to deal with potatoes, for this you need to wash them thoroughly, pour them over sunflower oil and rub with salt and red pepper. Potatoes, like corned beef, are wrapped in foil and sent to the oven for 20 minutes.
- nothing more than meat cooked by prolonged exposure to salt. Previously, this method of cooking served only to extend the shelf life of meat, but now, when refrigerators are in every family, corned beef has turned into independent dish, which, although rare, but regularly appears on our tables.
Corned pork - recipe
There are two methods of salting meat: dry and using saline. In the recipe below, we will talk about the dry method of salting meat.
Ingredients:
- pork belly - 1.5 kg;
- garlic - 3-4 cloves;
- bay leaf - 5 pcs.;
- salt - 120 g;
- black pepper - to taste.
Cooking
Wash pork belly and pat dry with paper towels. Cut the garlic clove into slices. We make small but deep cuts in the meat, into which we put the pieces of garlic. Rub the brisket with a mixture of salt and ground black pepper, and then place the meat in enamel pan. We cover the pan with a lid or a plate, and put a load on top. Now the meat needs to be salted for three days in any cool place, for example, a refrigerator, balcony or cellar. During the entire time of salting, juice will stand out from the meat, which should be drained. After the brisket has been salted and excess moisture has come out of it, we wash and dry the meat again, and then put it in a jar of garlic and bay leaf. Now the pork should stand in the cool without a press for another three days. If during this time the juice does not start to stand out from the meat again, it is cooked perfectly.
Chicken Corned Beef - Recipe
Ingredients:
- chicken - 5 kg;
- saltpeter - 20 g;
- salt - 2 kg;
- sugar - 1 teaspoon.
Cooking
Before making corned beef, the chicken carcass can be cut into pieces, this will speed up the salting and make it more uniform. But no one forbids you to salt the whole chicken, this will not spoil it.
We mix all the ingredients of our curing mixture: saltpeter, salt and sugar. AT chicken carcass or parts of it, we make several shallow cuts and rub the meat with the prepared mixture, laying it in the resulting cavities. So distribute half of the curing mixture. At this stage, garlic and / or bay leaves can be added to the chicken.
Now we put the chicken in an enamel basin and put it under the press. After 3 days, the meat should be evenly salted, and do not forget to drain the secreted meat juice daily. After, transfer the chicken to a jar or barrel and pour strong brine prepared from the rest of the salt mixture and 5 liters of water. In this form, the meat can be stored until consumed.
The main task of the meat salting procedure is storage. its roots go back to ancient times, because there were no refrigerators before, but products that tend to deteriorate quickly somehow had to be stored.
This method was practiced in almost all cultures of the world, and even more, corned beef was the main food of the Caribbean pirates. To this day, this processing of meat is widely practiced throughout the world.
In addition to storage, meat is salted for cooking hams and smoking. In order for salting meat at home to be correct, you need to start by choosing fresh. The animal must be healthy for the meat to be good quality, there were no pathogens, because this is important.
In fact, the salting process only slows down the reproduction of bacteria, and does not kill them, so you need to be careful with the choice of meat for salting.
You need to follow some rules for salted meat to be really tasty. Salting from meat products are subject to:
- Pork
- horsemeat
- Chicken
- Ideyka
- Carcasses of other birds
If you choose fresh meat, at the end of the procedure, the meat acquires a pleasant aroma, becomes softer and juicier. We can say that the meat gives a ham taste. Salting begins with the choice of meat, because its further taste will depend on this.
Salting meat for subsequent smoking
Salting is a way of preparing meat for smoking, one of its stages. First you need to know that the salting recipe depends on what meat will be smoked and a number of other conditions. Salting meat at home for smoking will differ depending on:
- Type and condition (young/old)
- Piece thickness
- The amount of fat or body fat
To prepare the curing mixture you will need:
- 3 liters of water
- 1 glass of salt
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 3 bay leaves
- 15 cloves black peppercorns to taste
Some also add 3 tablespoons of seasoning for. Lamb and beef are prepared in the same way, and this curing mixture is perfect.
The curing mixture must be brought to a boil and left to cool, this is necessary in order to better reveal the aroma bay leaf and garlic. It is better to cut the meat in the shape of a rectangle, but the thickness should not exceed 5 cm.
After that, everything is placed in the dishes quite tightly, pressed down a little with your hands. Then you need to fill everything with brine and put it under oppression. We put everything in the refrigerator for 5 days. That's enough for a good salting.
After you need to remove the meat from the brine and rinse with running water. Then it is advisable to hang it for 2 hours so that it dries up and glass water, but you can also blot the meat well with napkins. After that, you can start smoking.
Salo can also be salted in this way, but there are some subtleties. The thickness of the fat should not be more than 3 cm, and the salting period increases to 7-10 days.
Dry curing of meat
This method is used most often, because it is quite simple and does not require anything extra. This method is good only when salting fatty meat or even fat, since under the influence of salt it will lose a lot of moisture, but not fat.
Conventional cooking
An approximate calculation of salt is for 1 kg of meat, it is enough to take 250-300 grams of salt, in other words, an incomplete glass. Any dishes are used, except for plastic or iron containers, you can even use a wooden box.
The classic way is that you just need to grate the product large quantity salt and fold the pieces tightly, and put oppression on top. It is necessary to stack the pieces tightly so that there are no empty spaces. The pieces are optimally cut no thicker than 3 cm.
But one salt is too simple and the taste will be ordinary. Much will be if you make a mixture. It is necessary to add ground pepper, cloves, garlic or other spices to the salt to taste.
Sometimes even finely chopped walnuts are added. Pieces are rubbed abundantly with this mixture, and then the technology is the same as with conventional dry salting.
Cooking bacon
If you need to cook bacon, then you need to know that this is the part that is removed from the back or sides, but not from the peritoneum. Its thickness should not exceed 3 cm and this is normal. The fat itself looks quite dense, loose, and even more so yellow meat, not suitable for cooking.
It is very important to pay attention to the choice of fat. The product itself should not only be fresh, but also not be old. This can be easily determined by the condition of the skin.
The skin should be soft and elastic. When pressed with a fingernail, the skin of a young animal is easily pressed through, and it will not be so easy to pierce an old one even with a sharp object.
Such fat is cut into 20x20 squares and folded into a dish, on the bottom of which parchment is placed. A layer of salt is immediately poured onto the parchment, and only then the pieces are folded, and the first layer lies skin down.
All free places are covered with salt. When all the fat is laid, then you need to cover with parchment and put under pressure.
Sometimes, before, pieces of dense fat are left for several hours in salt brine, so that they soften a little.
At a cool temperature, up to 5 degrees, such a product can be stored even for a year. Before use, scrape off all the salt with a knife and cut into pieces. It is very convenient to cut if the piece is still cold.
Mixed (combined) method of salting meat products
In fact, this method has incorporated both dry and wet cooking. This option is ideal for long storage. Most often used for salting fatty meat on the bone.
The first stage is very similar to dry, but for this you need products from the calculation:
- 1 kg meat
- 100-150 grams of salt
- A teaspoon of sugar
The pieces are cut not very large, everything is covered with a dry mixture and tightly placed in a container, a load is placed on top. Leave in a cool place for 4 days. This is necessary in order to glass excess liquid. It is better to drain the formed liquid.
After that, you need to pour into a container with meat. It is prepared according to the ratio - for 5 liters of water you need 250 grams of salt, 2 tbsp. spoons of sugar, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of ascorbic acid.
All this is completely poured, covered with gauze and put under oppression for 5 days, and if it is ham, then the ambassador can last up to 2 weeks.
The container should be stored in a cool place and, after the expiration date, the meat must be soaked. Lure time - 5 minutes for each day of salting, a total of about 2 hours. After that, the pieces are hung to dry and drain water.
Of course, it is best to take lard for dry salting; for brine, meat pieces with streaks of lard are ideal. For combined option take ham, loin, knuckle. All meat salting methods are good in their own way, and the taste of the product, subject to all the rules, will be amazing. And how to pickle the loin is presented in the video:
