Flavoursome feast: Home cured salt beef

This is a firm favourite in our house and is another one of those homely recipes that requires a little planning ahead but little actual work.

Salt beef / corned beef is a great first cure to try at home, it will always work, it's inexpensive and you can play adding ingredients and flavours to your heart's content.

I tend to use brisket as I think that it has a wonderful flavour and has not yet become 'trendy' enough to be expensive.

There are so many variations to the basic method here that I'll write my simple version with optional additions as we go...

Essential ingredients;

1 piece of brisket at least 1kg in weight

Around 200g salt (table is fine, we're looking for the chemical effect rather than delicate seasoning here)

Around 200g sugar, again any variety is fine, you can play with flavours.

Optional extras (for the cure);

Allspice

Cinammon

Black pepper

Coriander seed

Mustard seeds / powder

Bay

Rosemary

Thyme

Chilli

Cloves

Almost anything else that you'd like to try!

Optional extras (for the cooking);

2 carrots

1 onion

2 sticks of celery

1 tblsp english mustard

Beef bones

Directions

1) Mix together the salt /sugar and any other cure ingredients that you wish to try, they will only quite subtly flavour the meat. Totally cover the meat in the cure (in a non-metallic dish) and refrigerate for 5-10 days. You will notice water coming out of the meat and collecting in the container, strain this off and add more of the curing mix if you like a stronger flavour.

2) After 5-10 days your beef should resemble that pictured below, rinse off the salt and place in a pan with enough cold water to just cover. If you add stock veg/bones at this point you end up with a delicious beef stock.

3) Bring to the boil and simmer for 3 hours skimming any scum that rises to the surface.

4) Remove the beef and strain the stock.

Variations

To serve warm; I simply add mustard to the stock (taste, you made need to water down if too salty) and boil some potatoes and vegetables in the same stock until just tender, I then serve these with thick slice of the beef and a ladleful of the stock.

To serve cold; I usually allow the beef to cool in the stock and then remove, chill and slice thinly with a salad or quick pickle. Retain the stock, adjust the seasoning (again if it's too salty water it down) and use as you see fit, mine went to make the nettle soup on my previous post!