Corned beef

A traditional Aussie meal to share

We helped some friends cut up some meat the other day. They had killed a heifer and we were to lend them our coldroom for hanging the heifer in as it’s always better if you can age the animal for a week or more. However, because our coldroom was not working, my friends had to think of an alternative. He’s very clever, so he built one. He did have all the panels and just needed to get a drop in box (the refrigerator part) and found one in Brisbane so wham, in less than a week, he had it built and holding the dead heifer.

We offered to help, because that’s the kind of thing we think is fun!!! Well, maybe not fun, but I don’t mind cutting up meat and it was interesting cutting it up with them. They are self-taught butchers, and Kim was able to give them him a few tips and I found it interesting to see what cuts of meat she cooks up.

We got to talking about corned beef. Corned Beef would have to be a very traditional Aussie food and it’s what the bush was built on. The English brought the idea of salt beef with them when they settled Australia and it was the most common way to preserve meat without refrigeration.

My father grew up without refrigeration, and he used to talk about the meat in the brine tubs that were kept under the house where it was coolest. They would kill a beast and eat some while it was fresh, which would only be a day or so and the rest would be cut into large pieces and placed in a brine made with salt and the curing salt of the time, which I assume was saltpetre. He told me once that when it got a bit manky (my word, not his) they would take the meat out and boil the brine up, cool it and put the meat back in.

They had a dairy and took the cream to the train station once per week. The train took it to the local butter factory, which when driven today is less than an hour away, but the train back then would’ve taken quite a bit longer. Now, the cream was not refrigerated on the farm, because they didn’t have refrigeration! The cream would have naturally soured and was still useable. In fact, this is most likely how cultured butter came to be a thing. There were a lot of dairy’s in Australia, and the majority of them were cream dairy’s to make butter, and England was our biggest customer for a long time.

Anyway, back to corned beef. Our friends are French, so don’t have the traditional knowledge and fondness for corned beef and to be honest, if your only experience with corned beef is the stuff you buy in woolies and cook up in the plastic bag…..then you may not have the same fondness that I do.

I offered to take a piece of their silverside home and cure it for them, and I offered to write up what I did, so I thought I’d share it here as well. I do use curing salt as I like the pink colour and I like the flavour it gives the meat. If you don’t have access to curing salt, you can buy it online or you could possibly ask your friendly butcher if he could sell you a small amount. You don’t need a lot, and it can usually only be purchased in large amounts. If you don’t want to use curing salt, you can skip it and you could add some ground spices to the salt, like peppercorns, mustard and coriander seeds.

Get yourself a nice piece of silverside or brisket, which is the traditional cuts to use, although you can corn any roasting piece. The piece I had was 1kg so the ratios were easy to do.

Weigh your piece of meat and get 2% of that weight in sea salt in a small bowl and I used half a teaspoon of curing salt, which was about .2% of the weight of the meat, so that’s probably a good measure to use. This is a lot less than the recommended amount on my packet of curing salt, but I try to use as little as possible. You can guarantee the meat you buy from woolies will have a lot more curing salt and possibly more sea salt too. The 2% salt amount will not be too salty when it’s cooked.

I sprinkled this salt mix over the meat and rubbed it in all over. I then cryovaced the piece of meat, but you could just put it in a container with a lid. I was going to be freezing it though, so I packaged it and left it in the fridge for two days before freezing. If you’re doing this at home, you would leave it in the fridge for about 5 days and try and remember to flip it over each day. The beauty of cryovacing it means that if you forget to flip it, it doesn’t really matter. One time when we were cutting up a beast of ours, I salted it like this before cryovaccing and froze it straight away and it cured pretty well.

When you’re ready to cook the corned meat, take it out of the bag and place it in a large enough saucepan to hold it comfortably and then cover the meat with tap water. I like to add some peppercorns and bay leaves when I cook mine. Bring it to the boil and then turn down to a simmer. It will take anywhere from 2-3 hours to cook through, depending on how big your piece of meat is.

Now to serving the meat. Today I cooked up ham hocks, instead of corned meat, but served the ham hocks in the same way I would serve corned beef. Traditionally, potatoes and pumpkin would be cooked in the same pot. I wait until the meat is cooked and take it out to rest while I cook the veg in the water.

Corned beef is usually served with white sauce (bechamel) and I like to add onions to the sauce. I sliced up a small onion and cooked it in a good tablespoon of butter. Cook the onions until they are soft and translucent (I think that’s the right word!) Then add some flour to make a rue, before adding in the milk. Stir while it comes to the boil and thickens. I only made a small amount so only needed a tablespoon of flour (I used bunya nut flour, but you could use plain flour or another gluten free flour). This thickened nicely. I then added some chopped parsley.

I cooked some tromboncini in with the pumpkin and potato.

And then the complete meal below…….

Corned beef is one of my favourites, but these ham hocks were pretty good too. Now I have some ham flavoured stock to make soup with.

Let me know if you’re a fan of corned beef or not.