Salt Beef

Delicious hot with poached carrots, seasonal greens and some of the deeply-flavoured cooking liquor, or cold, tender slices stacked in artisan bread with plenty of mustard and pickles on the side, salted beef is a delicious ingredient growing in popularity.

Salt beef* is often referred to as corned beef, due to the size of crystals being similar to a corn kernel. We opt for silverside and dry-curing with coarse sea salt, unrefined brown sugar and various spices to produce a product that is very popular amongst our restaurant community.

Chef Val Warner inspires:
"Preferably served hot and primarily salt beef makes for a king among sandwiches. From London to New York and dislocating my jaw like a snake, pickles falling to the greasy paper below and unavoidable is the inelegance of negotiating such meat and rye bread. My preference will always be for cherry coke or root beer to wash it down.

In sandwiches and lashings of Dijon or German mustard is pretty key while settling for horseradish equally joyful. Alternatively go violent and have both. Pickles are not up for discussion, they are law! I do like sliced tomato and indeed celeriac rémoulade but concerning the latter then adjust any levels of extra mustard.

Served simply alongside peeled, boiled potatoes, sauerkraut and Dijon mustard or with lentils vinaigrette is a pleasure.

Sauce gribiche is rather delicious with salt beef.

Leftovers: strung out or ‘pulled’, serve the shreds in their own retained liquor with hot mustardy wilted leaves and maybe a few root vegetables. I love adding simply salted raw cucumbers to such a restorative broth.

Given that breakfast is rarely given the attention it deserves and incorporated into a hash sees salt beef make a winning start to a cold day. Sauté onions and mix into buttery grated potato or mash with a tonne of cracked black pepper. Fry hard and when crispy beneath turn out onto a plate and then crown with a fried egg and crispy capers. Dog that I am and squirt liberally all over with barbecue sauce.

Return the meat, strung or cubed, into its own cold broth with fresh herbs such as tarragon or chervil and cubes of boiled potato and set it using gelatine into a cold jelly. This is delicious on hot buttered white toast with sliced caper berries.

So too mash up any remnants of salt meat and cook up with plenty of spice and some shallot in dripping. Allow to cool and then again use toast as a vehicle for such potted pleasure.

Cooking salt beef needs to be approached with patience in a braising liquor that may incorporate a few of what I feel to be essentials. Onions, celery, a big bunch of fresh dill, fennel or caraway seeds and maybe a bit of cinnamon or some star anise plus an obligatory volley of black peppercorns.

Sealed in tight and a low and a slow braise in water is essential, the internal reading seeing this release from under lid and foil at about 63-65°C. I’d cook it at a temperature of about 140°C.
Let it cool and then blister it with an industrial amount of roughly ground coriander seeds, maybe a healthy scattering of brown sugar, then to be finished over charcoal (under a lid) or returned to the oven on a trivet to get a little colour and crispness of edge. Cook at 160-170°C but remembering that woodsmoke will lend an extra dimension to the end result."

*All Swaledale beef is native breed and raised on independent farms and smallholdings dotted around the wildly beautiful Dales. Slow grown and free to roam on lush Yorkshire pasture; the results are exceptional.