Dried Beef

[McCreamy]

Does anyone on here know how to make dried beef? My father in law gets this made at the butcher (from his own angus), but my husband told me that he gets charged about $6 a lb!!! I just tried it for the first time over the weekend, and I love it. It's so salty, and it melts in my mouth. I just figured that there are a lot of really handy people on here, who might be able to tell me how to make it. I found a recipe on google, but it was with brown sugar, and no salt. Ideas?

[dthelmers]

Are you talking about a solid piece of piece that has been cured and dried, like Bresaola? Or thinly sliced beef that has been dried, like jerky, but without the marinade?
Dave in CT

[McCreamy]

Well, I guess I'm not sure. It's definately not completely dry like jerky. It is also smoky and very salty.

[dthelmers]

Bresaola, which is cured aged beef, is pretty salty but not smoky. There are various versions of pastrami, but they're usually not dry. It sounds like it was maybe prepared like an aged smoked ham, where the meat was dry cured and then cold smoked. I'd try dry curing an eye of round as if it was Lonzino, and then cold smoke it. A lot of cuts of meat were treated just like hams in earlier times, including hams of mutton. I suspect that what your father in law's butcher is making is something like that. Really, $6 a pound is a pretty good price, considering how much room it's taking for curing and smoking; but I bet you could do it yourself without too much trouble, if you've got a cold smoker. One of the forum members here, DeeJay Debbie, is a smoking and curing genius; check out her posts. Also, a wealth of info on her site: dejayssmokepit.net.
Dave in CT

[Gürkan Yeniçeri]

This is how I do my beloved pastrami/basterma:

Bury the meat pieces in rock salt. I have a special plastic box for this with little holes opened with soldering gun underneath the box to ease the drainage.

I keep there till the dripping stops, about 10 day. Meat turns to brown. You can rub the meat before burrying in salt with Cure #2 (according to the instructions on it),

Remove and rinse under fresh water and hang it to dry. It should be dry to touch. Cover it with cheesecloth to protect from flys.

Prepare a mixture of corn and oat flour to 20% and 80% ratio respectively. Add sesame oil, ground fenugreek seeds, garlic, paprika and other spices you like. Make a dough by adding warm water like bread.

Cover the dried meat with this dough all over. Keep the remaining dough in the freezer and fix the cracks later on.

Hang the meat to a dark and dry place for another 5 days or till the outside looks dry. Or you can smoke it at this point. If smoked, you must use Cure #2 to prevent bad bacteria to grow.

Consume in thin slices or cook your favourite beans with cubed pastrami. You can keep the cubed pastrami in water before cooking to reduce the saltiness.

[Tomer1]

Does the curing process takes care of the connective tissue of the breast meat?

[DeejayDebi]

Sounds like you are looking for the type of dried beef we used to use for chipped beef on toast. Some really good delis sell it but it's most often found in tiny little jars and very pricey!

Deejay's Dried Beef
This will can be use for up to 12 pounds of meat
You'll need to mix a brown sugar brine/cure:

6 ounces of kosher salt or sea salt
4 ounces of brown sugar
cure #1 or Prague powder #1 (see note!)
optional -
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teasppon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon canjun spice
adjust to your liking on the next batch

NOTE: cures should be used based on the amount of meat used. Cure #1 should only be used at a rate of more than 1/4 teaspoon per 1 pound of meat no more! Less is better!

Mix and add to 1/2 gallon of hot water. Stir until disolved completely and cool to room temperature.

Take your meat wash it in plain water and trim it well removing any surface fat or other undesirables.  Beef tenderloin works best for this. Inject the brine into the meat every few inches all around the meat. You want to inject an amount of brine to equal about 10% of the green weight of the meat. For example if you meat weighs 12 pound after trimming you want to inject enough brine so that the final weight will be about 13.2 pounds.

Place the meat in a bag and squeeze out as much air as posible or vacuum seal it if you hvae one. Place the meat in the refrigerator for  5 to 7 days. AFter a few hours you will begin to see liquid forming in the bag. That is good. The salt is drawing moisture from the meat. Turn the bag from time to time so the liquid does not pool in one spot and the meat spends equal time sitting in the liquid.  Once a day is fine.

After 5 to 7 days reove the meat from the bag and rinse it in plain cold water to remove any excess salt. Hnag the meat in a piece of cheese cloth or a ham bag and allow it to air dry at room temperature for 1 or 2 hours.

Next you will need to dry the meat in the smoker.

Preheat the smoker to 140F degrees with no wood and dampers wide open for 1 or 2 hours until the meat is dry to the touch.
Add wood chips and smoke at 150 to 160F degrees for about 2 hours with the damper vents half open.
Raise the temperature of the smoker to about 180F degrees and continue to smoke until the internal temperature of the meat reaches 155F degrees then remove and chill.
Slice thin and make sandwiches! The colder the meat the easier it is to slice thin.

ENjoy!

[fied]

I make a Swiss type Bündnerfleisch/Viande Séchée this way: using fillet of beef (for tenderness) or a piece of shoulder, bury it in a crock of pure salt crystals and add a little saltpetre. The SP is to keep the meat red. You can also put in herbs, pepper and/or spices at this point, though they're not always used. Keep in a covered crock in a very cool place or fridge for at least 7days to 4 weeks, depending on the size of the piece, turning twice a day as the brine develops, making sure that the brine covers the meat. I mostly brine for 10 days to 2 weeks for a 3lb piece; I can tell when it's done when the outside layer has hardened, but still gives a little when pressed.

Take out of crock, wash the meat and press the shape between your hands to get rid of some more moisture, but keep the shape neat. Wipe off water/brine and dry thoroughly in a cloth. Wrap in a muslin cloth, hang up so that fresh air circulates freely around it at about 10-12C for at least 10 days. You can dry it to the point where it remains pliable, or dry it until it's hard before eating. I find it cuts thinly with a serrated bread knife.

I find it's best made in late autumn temperatures when I can hang it up beneath our balcony. Most usually, I wrap it in greaseproof paper and put it in the fridge once we've had the first cut, but it can continue to hang outside until it's of the hardness you want. Once it's had it's salt cure and before being wrapped and hung, it can be resoaked in cooled, boiled water and placed back in the fridge for a day to leech out some of the brine. We like it salty, so don't bother with this step. Traditionally, it isn't smoked.

It's done differently in different parts of Switzerland; in some parts of the Valais, for instance, the meat, before drying thoroughly, is squashed into a bread tin type mould, allowed to drain overnight and when the shape is set is then hung up to air dry.

In fact, the basic recipe isn't fundamentally different from that used for cooked salt beef or pastrami, except that the air-drying step is left out in these cases and the beef cooked straight away. Pastrami is pressed; salt beef isn't. I use brisket, though, for salt beef.

[fied]

There's a part-recipe for Dutch air-dried beef - Naegelholt - 3/4 of the way down this link. It looks interesting.  You'll need to use Google Translate to get it:

http://www.slowfood.nl/biodiversiteit-ark-van-de-smaak/ark-van-de-smaak/


Traditional Naegelholt

Naegelholt dried beef which usually butcher the "mouse" is used, a long buttocks with a flat structure, where you can cut slices of good. Previously, only the richer "cow farmers' naegelholt. If visitors came, there were thin slices cut along with some (luxury) wheat bread served. Naegelholt is still an expensive meat. "Naegelholt mo'j sniienn thin and thick on the botterham legn."
The product probably takes its name from the fact that, after months in the "Wieme" to have hung, so it was hard and tough as the wood where nails (nails) of it. The Wieme a fence slats on the ceiling of the living room by the fireplace. This will be used to the slightly smoky flavor naegelholt may have had, depending on the distance to the fire.
After the mouse was gently cut, rub it in the butcher with salt and let it lie as 10-14 days, until the color is deep red. Twente is in one butcher ground cloves or nutmeg from the brine. This used to be a way to further increase the shelf life. Some butchers naegelholt the vacuum in plastic, so less need to use salt, the meat loses less weight on the outside and less oxidized. But the meat is different from the traditional way.
After salting, the meat is rinsed with cold water and hung up. After 4 weeks, the starting weight of about 5 kg shrunk by half. In the adjacent German area makes it Nagelholz by the smoke (at 35-40 ° C) slices of bacon to the meat and do it in a hanging net.
Some butchers remain
Naegelholt is still made by some butchers in the Achterhoek, Twente, Salland and Drenthe. To earlier in Groningen. More and more butchers make their own and naegelholt not order it from wholesalers.

Disappear Cause: Ignorance of product, labor intensive