Homemade salting of meat or how to salt meat at home.

This is a very simple and affordable way to preserve and store meat products. But, salt draws out all the liquid from the meat and the product becomes very tough and dry. Together with the liquid, almost all useful substances, microelements and vitamins leave the meat. And if some part of them remains in the meat, then they are subsequently washed out with water, in which the meat is soaked before cooking.

After experimenting with various types of meat for many years, people came to the conclusion that some types remain quite tasty and healthy after salting. This mainly refers to fatty pork and beef brisket with layers of fat and connective tissue. To prepare the meat to make the corned beef tender and flavorful, you should follow several general rules:

1. Salting meat should be done at a temperature of 2 to 4 degrees, which is easiest to achieve in late autumn and winter.
2. The brine solution, if meat is salted wet, should have a concentration of 19 to 25 percent. The fattier the meat, the higher the brine concentration. Before pouring, the brine must be boiled for ten minutes and then cooled completely.It is also possible to use a weaker salt solution (from 6 to 12%), but such corned beef is stored for a short time.
3. To soften meat when salting wet, you can add a little sugar to the brine: 10 grams per 1 liter of liquid.
4. When dry salting corned beef, use only rock salt that has been pre-heated in the oven. In the future, sprinkle the meat with it only after the salt has cooled completely.
5. In order for the meat to retain its red color and not turn gray, salt for the dry salting method must be mixed with food nitrate. Exactly 6 grams of it are taken per kilogram of meat.

Homemade corned beef allows any housewife to have a strategic supply of meat from which she can prepare any dish. Before using in dishes, it must be soaked in cool water. The temperature of the liquid cannot exceed 12 degrees. Soak the corned beef for fifteen hours, regularly changing the water in the basin. The number of water updates is also strictly regulated - five times. In order for the meat to soak evenly, it is necessary to change the water at the following intervals: 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 6 hours and 12 hours - counting from the very beginning of the soaking process. Before soaking, the corned beef should be cut into pieces of 1-1.5 kilograms and take 2-3 liters of water for each piece.

Properly cooked corned beef looks very neat, without traces of mold or mucus. A good preparation has a natural meaty smell, without putrefactive sour notes. The brine in which properly cooked meat lies has a transparent color and there is no foam or cloudy film on its surface.

Salting meat to prepare homemade corned beef is done in several ways: dry, wet and mixed.All methods require care and the selection of good meat suitable for this method of preservation.