Canning Beef

[CottageFarm]

Our move date is fast approaching and I'm still cleaning out the freezers and canning everything.
I have 3 briskets that I was going to do in a bbq sauce, but I temporarily overcame the fried brain stupor I've been in for the past month and realized that corned beef would be WAY better. Problem is that now I don't have the time to soak it in brine for 7-10 days before canning it.
Gotta get it done pretty much by Tuesday.

I've been trying to find, to no avail, a pickled beef recipe that I could do in the jars. I don't care whether it's raw or hot pack, but everything I've found thus far calls for doing the curing process before canning, and I don't think those brine formulas would work for long term storage. Too salty, too strong, etc.

Anybody tried something like this?? Any recipe ideas. Since having this epiphany, I've returned to my overload stupor, and just can't face one more page of google searches. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Named'em Tamed'em]

My grandmother used to can straight beef,salt, pepper and a pinch of oil. It was used for stroganoff, tacos, gravy and rice.

Not sure if that's what you are asking, but it brought back memories granny taught me to can.

 

[Kingfisher]

It's Thanksgiving....you could allways give em away and avoid the hassle.. . Or eat em

 

[Jogeephus]

You could use one of the recipes you have only discard all mention of salt in the recipe and cure the meat in the jar using an equilibrium brine. This is a much slower process but since your are canning the meat it will be ideal.

To do this you will need to take a few samples and get an idea of how much meat will fit in each jar and weigh it and determine an average. You will also need to do the same with the liquid required to cover the meat and weigh it. Add these two weights together and use this as your total weight. Once determined you will have your weight of the total and the weight of the water and the meat. What you will then want to do is add 1.5-2% salt to the liquid portion but this percentage is based on your total weight of both brine and meat. Once processed and given time the salt will permeate the meat and equalize throughout the jar and come to rest at 1.5-2% giving you the your desired saltiness.

 

[CottageFarm]

Named 'em...I am doing the beef several different ways, including the way your Gram did.
I was just hoping somebody might have an idea for a short cut to corned beef.

Thanks Kingfisher :lol:

 

[Jogeephus]

What I posted will work for corned beef.

 

[CottageFarm]

You could use one of the recipes you have only discard all mention of salt in the recipe and cure the meat in the jar using an equilibrium brine. This is a much slower process but since your are canning the meat it will be ideal.

To do this you will need to take a few samples and get an idea of how much meat will fit in each jar and weigh it and determine an average. You will also need to do the same with the liquid required to cover the meat and weigh it. Add these two weights together and use this as your total weight. Once determined you will have your weight of the total and the weight of the water and the meat. What you will then want to do is add 1.5-2% salt to the liquid portion but this percentage is based on your total weight of both brine and meat. Once processed and given time the salt will permeate the meat and equalize throughout the jar and come to rest at 1.5-2% giving you the your desired saltiness.

Oh, thank you Jo!!
I was thinking I should be able to do something like this but couldn't figure out what the brine strength should be.
I'll taste test both 1-1/2 & 2% to see which I think will result in appropriate saltiness, or somewhere in between.

 

[CottageFarm]

Thank you again, Joe.
We were typing at the same time!

 

[Jogeephus]

Its hard to gauge it from testing just from taste. When you do be sure you are testing the non-adjusted brine that is truly 1.5-2% because your adjusted brine strength will be much more salty. Also, I can't exactly explain why but the meat will taste less salty than the pure unadjusted brine itself. You can also hedge your bet by adding a little brown sugar - about 25% of the salt weight.

Let us know how it works out. Should take about 30 days to equalize.

 

[CottageFarm]

It's been a couple of weeks since we did this, but just wanted to update you on the initial results.
Jo, I used a modified version of your corned beef recipe.
We had one jar that didn't seal so had to use it right away, and it was really good.
We're really looking forward to trying a jar after they've achieved full equalization. I do believe it was a successful experiment and will definitely do it again! We liked it so much, in fact, we used the same process with some of the other cuts also.

 

[Jogeephus]

Glad to hear it turned out well. What did you ever decide on the salt percentage to use?

 

[CottageFarm]

Ended up right at 2%.
The 1st batch was 1.8%, but decided to increase that to 2% after tasting the 1st batch.
It's not exactly the same as corned beef, because you can't use the preserving salts when canning (Morton doesn't say why, just that you can't do it) but it's really close, and really tasty.