It Came from the Briny Deep

This weeks meat adventure: Corned Beef.  I put 1 cup of kosher salt in a gallon of water, which should make a brine around 5 - 7% by weight.  Of course, I could have weighed it.  The brisket piece is a "flat cut" piece about 2 pounds.  I also added a bunch of spices, though there is disagreement on the internet about whether they really flavor the meat.  

Later ma femme informed me that we have a package of "Corned Beef Spice Blend" in the freezer.  C'est la vie.  Overall, this seems like it will be a pretty easy project, since I think I am basically done.  I will flip it over a couple times, every other day or so, to make sure things are curing evenly.  I haven't decided whether I'll cook it with cabbage (it's a little late for St. Patrick's day, sorry) but I will probably make sandwiches to take for lunch.  It's too bad I don't have any homemade sauerkraut ready...  

...wait here.

Dangit

I know I posted about the bacon already, but I flipped it and put herbs and black pepper on in today.  It's starting to get a little stiffer and a bunch of water had come out of it; nearly a cup from a 5-pound slab.  It looked so good I had to post some meat-porn.

Aw mang.

Take it, Naked, Bacon

Five pounds of pork belly, slowly thawing out and curing.  I have committed to providing the bacon for this year's Meatfest, but since I plan for this to be incredibly delicious, I'm not sure if this specific bacon will make it there or if I'll have to make a second batch.  First world problems.

I was considering starting a corned beef this weekend, but there hasn't been a massive hipster obsession with corned beef like there has with bacon, so the internet is not drowning in recipes for it.  Really, though, bacon seemed like it was "next."  You will note that this is my third meat-based adventure: Duck Confit, Sausage, now Bacon, none of which involve fermentation.  I am taking baby-steps, since meat is a whole other ... animal compared to fermenting vegetables. Pickles, sauerkraut, and Kimchi basically can't go wrong, other than to taste bad, and can't kill you with minute amounts of unbelievably deadly neurotoxins that have no taste or smell.  This is well-salted, and I'm going to hot-smoke it, so it will end up being a fully-cooked product.

Play your cards right, and you can have some...

Confit for a King

Duck Confit.  Food of peasants and kings alike, and a preservation method designed to minimize or eliminate fermentation.  Meat is rubbed with herbs and salt, to add flavor and begin extracting water.  The salted meat is patted dry, submerged in oil (or sufficient fat from the same animal) and heated gently to cook and sterilize.  Skim any carbohydrate/protein scum, and as long as anything with any water in it is below the fat when it solidifies, it will be preserved.  Cover, set it in a cool dry place, refrigeration not required, and it should stay perfectly preserved for weeks or months.

In my case I'm covering it with olive oil, and I'm not really going to keep if for months under the fat.

I get delicious duck meat, crunchy fried skin cracklin's, and the thing that will flavor our meals for months to come: a quart and a half of rich, herb-flavored, duck fat/olive oil blend, rendered to perfection.

It's good to be king.

Run Rocks Rhymes

Peter Piper's got nothing on these.

Several nice big banana peppers, sliced into rings; a couple heads of garlic, husked and smashed, a bit of salt, and just enough water to cover.  Then the age-old pickling routine: weight, wait, great.

Actually, they are a little soft and not hot enough.  I think for the next batch, I should add some hotter peppers.  I'm also going to experiment with making a small fraction of the brine with some live vinegar.  Not so much that they are "pickled" by it, but I'm looking for ways to reduce the salt content and add bacterial diversity.

They'll be great on burgers or hot dogs, or on some juicy barbecue.  I'll probably end up taking them a serving at a time in with my lunch to work.  A nice salty snack for warmer months.

Updates in Jars

First, the preserved lemons.  I'm not calling these pickled lemons for some reason, I think because they are so salty; but then what's pickling?  There's definitely some bacterial activity going on, because it's building pressure and releasing gas when I loosen the lid.  I did not put it in the refrigerator, as recommended by the recipe, it's been in a cabinet under the counter, in the dark, relatively cool.  I opened it once or twice, and the lemons are definitely softer and somehow "greasier" if that's possible.  Also, now, after a week, they are yellower, too; more "lemon-colored."  The jar is usually pressurized a little when I look at it, and I always open the lid *just* until it vents some gas.  it always heaves a sigh of relief and bubbles a little bit.  Sometimes I think it's just air slowly escaping from the pulp of the rind, but the pressure buildup tells me there's definitely lactic acid bacteria afoot.  I want to rush out and fill another dozen jars with lemons, but not until I cook something that calls for preserved lemons.

Next, Vinegars.  There seem to be conflicting reports out there about exactly how long and under what conditions vinegar is made.  The instructor and several people I talked to in Reedsburg said it took weeks or less.  Some of my vinegars have been going for nearly two months.  Admittedly, they are in my basement which is in the low 60s, but I've got them above my furnace, which is the warmest spot.  I'm just now starting to see what looks like a thin film of mother starting to form on a couple of them.

Other sources indicate that it takes much longer to make vinegar.  The Cooks Illustrated DIY book mentions 3 months in a crock, and talking about it with my mom on the phone over the weekend, she said her grandparents used to make vinegar, and it took all winter in the basement.  She also said they guarded the mother with their lives, I assume until they could get another batch going.  The Kentucky Housewife Cookbook (from 18-who-knows-when) lists a recipe for vinegar something along the lines of: "in the fall, throw all your apple cores into an open topped barrel.  Set it under a tree, out of the sun, but where it fill with rainwater.  By the middle of the next summer, it will be vinegar."  For real.

I think my results are more in line with the second set.  I made some salad dressing with the Concord grape vinegar I got from my Fermentation Fest friend, and it was darn good.  I really hope my batches take off and I can get some real production going.  I have a couple cases of questionable beer bottled that I would *love* to turn into vinegar, and I think I would make a quart of vinegar out of every batch of wine I make.  Come on, acetobacter.

Preserved Lemons

Lemons, salt.  So far that's it.  I'll let the salt suck as much juice as it can out of the lemons overnight, and then I'll top it off with water.  Then the recipe says 6 weeks in the fridge.  I doubt there will be much bacterial action in this case, especially if I chill it the whole time.  If it does ferment, it shouldn't produce much gas, since it's already so acidic and the brine will be nearly saturated.

I'm thinking about putting it in the basement instead (~60 F instead of <40) but I've deviated from the recipe enough already; it called for more lemons to be juiced in and WAY more salt.  It also recommended to keep the lemons just barely whole, cut into wedges but not quite all the way through.  I was never going to get 5 lemons in a quart jar like that.  Maybe if I was making 2 dozen in a bucket for market in Casablanca.

This is not going to be a snack, I think it's meant to be more of a flavoring for a baked meat dish.  But in that context it's going to be amazing.  Also the brine is going to be a trip.  Super-salty 6-month-old lemon juice?  Yes, please.