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Actually, it's my dried beef experiment, but the title gotcha to look
This is my 2 chunk-o-meat experiment for making dried beef. My goal here is to make the same dried beef that is used in chipped beef. Hormel and Armour both make it and you have probably seen it if you are not familiar with what I’m talking about. It is those ultra thin slices that come in either a foil pouch (Armour brand) or a glass jar (Hormel).
Trouble with both of these is that they are super salty. My hopes here are to have a great product that is still characteristically dry like dried beef should be, but not loaded with a heavy salt taste.
I started off with 5.47 pounds of Beef round eye that I split in two.
I am going to be trying two different methods for curing these. One will be with Mortons Tender Quick, the other using Cure #1 or pink curing salt.
First one is the Mortons.
The GREEN weight of the first cut was 1114 grams or 2# 11oz. I injected it to 10% of it’s green weight for a total weight after injection of 1225 Grams.
I went a bit over to 1270 but should be ok.
Next step was to rub down the meat in TQ at 1 Tbl per pound of meat which I figured was 2 Tbl + 2 tsp.
On top of that, I gave it a very light coating of brown sugar and into a zip loc bag where it will sit for 7 days.
Next one weighed 1025 Grams, or 2# 4oz. and I’m using Cure #1 or pink curing salt on this one. This one gives me the freedom to control the saltiness. I’m using a stated recipe for this and can adjust if I see fit next go around.
Frist step was to make the brine.
1 1/4 Quarts water.
2 Tbl Kosher Salt
1 Tbl Cure #1.
2 1/2 Tbl Brown sugar.
Next, make several injections throught the meat until it visabilly swells up. No weight percentages to make for this one so I just injected it evenly thru-out.
Put into a zip loc bag and added the remainig brine where it will sit for 10 days.
I don’t know whats worse. Waiting for your cheese to age once smoked to waiting for brined meat to be smoked so you can see how it turns out.
For this experiment, I have read online where people would wrap the meat in clean cloth and set in the fridge changing the cloth daily for clean ones. The purpose of this was for the cloth to wick the moisture from the meat. After the cure time was up, I wrapped both pieces in cloth and tried this for 2 days. It did extract some moisture out as both pieces of cloth were damp.
(I let the one cured in Tender Quick cure to 10 days instead of 7 so I could smoke both together)
For the smoke, I started both pieces out on the big chief as I didn’t want allot of heat to begin with. Combine the low heat of the Big Chief and the fact that todays outside temps were 12 degrees, I was doing a cold smoke so to speak
. Smoked the Chief for 2 hours with Apple. After that, I moved it to the UDS and kept the temps at 175-180 for about 5 hours and then bumped the temps up to 220 to finish off at an internal temp of 155 degrees.
Visual differences of the two. Right out of the cure, the one cured with TQ was visiably darker while the one with instacure was lighter as you can see in the pics.
Also, the TQ one, when you held it or touched it, almost had a rubber feel to it., sorta a bounce feel to it. Not the exterior, but overall. Like a solid hunk of soft rubber. When you pushed into it with your finger, it would spring right back out. The instacure one was considerably softer to the touch.
Pic of the UDS sitting inside one of the sheds. Had my trusty Coleman lantern lighting the way on this snowy cold and hell night. I think it was 6 degrees outside. This shot is right around 10 pm.
Both smoked and wrapped and set on the porch overnight to chill.
After sitting all night, ready for the slicer. Very nice dark color on them.
Cut both of them into sandwich size pieces.
Foodsavered up and ready for the freezer.
The end cuts I saved as thick hunks as there was no uniform shape to them for slicing. Will keep these pieces to make chipped beef and gravy.
Taste test. The TQ one had tons more flavor to it. Not overly salty at all. In fact, the wife even commented on how good it was. The Instacure one, still good flavor, but not as intense. Lacking a bit overall. Even with the slow and somewhat cool smoke starting off, and the wrapping of the meat to remove extra moisture, the meat could have used a bit more drying out. I think the next time I do this, I am going to wrap them again, and either set them in my mini fridge with a small fan or on the porch with a small fan to evaporate more moisture still. They did lose overall weight, and I forgot to take a post smoke weight of them, but looking at them on the cutting board, you could visiabally see they had shrunk in size.
Thats it for this smoke. Stay tuned for Double smoked hams, coming soon.
This is my 2 chunk-o-meat experiment for making dried beef. My goal here is to make the same dried beef that is used in chipped beef. Hormel and Armour both make it and you have probably seen it if you are not familiar with what I’m talking about. It is those ultra thin slices that come in either a foil pouch (Armour brand) or a glass jar (Hormel).
Trouble with both of these is that they are super salty. My hopes here are to have a great product that is still characteristically dry like dried beef should be, but not loaded with a heavy salt taste.
I started off with 5.47 pounds of Beef round eye that I split in two.
I am going to be trying two different methods for curing these. One will be with Mortons Tender Quick, the other using Cure #1 or pink curing salt.
First one is the Mortons.
The GREEN weight of the first cut was 1114 grams or 2# 11oz. I injected it to 10% of it’s green weight for a total weight after injection of 1225 Grams.
I went a bit over to 1270 but should be ok.
Next step was to rub down the meat in TQ at 1 Tbl per pound of meat which I figured was 2 Tbl + 2 tsp.
On top of that, I gave it a very light coating of brown sugar and into a zip loc bag where it will sit for 7 days.
Next one weighed 1025 Grams, or 2# 4oz. and I’m using Cure #1 or pink curing salt on this one. This one gives me the freedom to control the saltiness. I’m using a stated recipe for this and can adjust if I see fit next go around.
Frist step was to make the brine.
1 1/4 Quarts water.
2 Tbl Kosher Salt
1 Tbl Cure #1.
2 1/2 Tbl Brown sugar.
Next, make several injections throught the meat until it visabilly swells up. No weight percentages to make for this one so I just injected it evenly thru-out.
Put into a zip loc bag and added the remainig brine where it will sit for 10 days.
I don’t know whats worse. Waiting for your cheese to age once smoked to waiting for brined meat to be smoked so you can see how it turns out.
For this experiment, I have read online where people would wrap the meat in clean cloth and set in the fridge changing the cloth daily for clean ones. The purpose of this was for the cloth to wick the moisture from the meat. After the cure time was up, I wrapped both pieces in cloth and tried this for 2 days. It did extract some moisture out as both pieces of cloth were damp.
(I let the one cured in Tender Quick cure to 10 days instead of 7 so I could smoke both together)
For the smoke, I started both pieces out on the big chief as I didn’t want allot of heat to begin with. Combine the low heat of the Big Chief and the fact that todays outside temps were 12 degrees, I was doing a cold smoke so to speak
. Smoked the Chief for 2 hours with Apple. After that, I moved it to the UDS and kept the temps at 175-180 for about 5 hours and then bumped the temps up to 220 to finish off at an internal temp of 155 degrees.Visual differences of the two. Right out of the cure, the one cured with TQ was visiably darker while the one with instacure was lighter as you can see in the pics.
Also, the TQ one, when you held it or touched it, almost had a rubber feel to it., sorta a bounce feel to it. Not the exterior, but overall. Like a solid hunk of soft rubber. When you pushed into it with your finger, it would spring right back out. The instacure one was considerably softer to the touch.
Pic of the UDS sitting inside one of the sheds. Had my trusty Coleman lantern lighting the way on this snowy cold and hell night. I think it was 6 degrees outside. This shot is right around 10 pm.
Both smoked and wrapped and set on the porch overnight to chill.
After sitting all night, ready for the slicer. Very nice dark color on them.
Cut both of them into sandwich size pieces.
Foodsavered up and ready for the freezer.
The end cuts I saved as thick hunks as there was no uniform shape to them for slicing. Will keep these pieces to make chipped beef and gravy.
Taste test. The TQ one had tons more flavor to it. Not overly salty at all. In fact, the wife even commented on how good it was. The Instacure one, still good flavor, but not as intense. Lacking a bit overall. Even with the slow and somewhat cool smoke starting off, and the wrapping of the meat to remove extra moisture, the meat could have used a bit more drying out. I think the next time I do this, I am going to wrap them again, and either set them in my mini fridge with a small fan or on the porch with a small fan to evaporate more moisture still. They did lose overall weight, and I forgot to take a post smoke weight of them, but looking at them on the cutting board, you could visiabally see they had shrunk in size.
Thats it for this smoke. Stay tuned for Double smoked hams, coming soon.
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