Curing Meat
This page contains information about curing meat, preserving, salting and drying it along with tips, instructions and useful techniques to help you start your own farm and living independently away from cities. Below are information about preserving and storing meat. If that's what you're loooking for then this is the place for you. Below you will find the most important aspects related to curing meat, just enough to get you started, if you have any question you can visit our forum and ask our expert farmers.
Preserving Meat
An ox meat could support a family of 5 for a whole year. You can only consider killing an ox if there is a freezer.
If you must try to cut up your steer yourself, this is the order in which you should tackle it:
Forequarter: Cut off the brisket, then the ribs, then the 'leg of mutton'.
Hindquarter: Cut off thin flank; then sirloin, aitchbone, shank, thick flank; then separate the topside out; then the silverside. You have left the thick rump of flank. Cut the best of this for steaks and boil the rest.
Of course all beef is eatable, and if you hack at your steer in complete ignorance you will still get a great number of good meals. But you will be roasting what you ought to grill, and grilling what you ought to boil and all the rest of it. Your ox is a very valuable animal. Surely it is worth the expense of having a butcher attend to him.
Curing or Potting Meat
Potting is another way of preserving beef:
- Lay it in salt for three days.
- Wash the salt off.
- Season with a pinch of saltpeter, herbs and spices.
- Put some suet and butter on top of it.
- Leave it in a slow oven all night.
- Pour off the fat.
- Cut the beef up small and put, hot, into a pot.
- Press down tight and pour on top of it clear strained fat—very hot.
- Cover with greaseproof paper when cold.
Fresh beef should be well hung before eating. Ten days in cold weather is not too much. The tongue: soak in boiled, spiced, cold brine (with the silverside if you like). Leave it there for six days. Bake it in the oven. Skin it. Pot it and cover with clarified butter and/or suet as for potted beef.
If you liked this page, you might also be interested in this page about Raising Cows.
This page is just one of many pages dedicated to sustainable living through organic farming and living wisely. Curing meat will enable you become one step closer to food independance. This is beneficial to your health, peace of mind and lifestyle, great for nature, and reduces your carbon footprint. You can really do it yourself, grow your own food, raise your own animals, from simple means. You can go back to nature and sustainability one step at a time. Today storing and curing meat, tomorrow something else. That's why we have many articles that you can find on the left side of this page to choose from. Each time try to add something to your farm. Sustainable living is your ticket to true freedom. Enjoy the rest of our pages.
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