Salt Beef

Traditional Salt Beef: Rich, Flavourful & Expertly Cured
Salt beef is an ingredient growing rapidly in popularity, prized for its deep, savoury flavour and melt-in-the-mouth tenderness. Whether served hot with poached carrots, seasonal greens, and a splash of the deeply flavoured cooking liquor, or cold in tender slices stacked on rye bread with plenty of mustard and pickles, this traditional cut delivers exceptional taste.

Often referred to as corned beef due to the coarse salt crystals used in curing, our salt beef is made from premium beef silverside, dry-cured using coarse sea salt, unrefined brown sugar, and a blend of aromatic spices. This time-honoured process enhances both flavour and texture, producing a salt beef highly sought after by our restaurant community.

Chef Valentine Warner’s Salt Beef Inspiration
"Preferably served hot, salt beef is the undisputed king of sandwiches. Whether in London or New York, I brace myself, jaw unhinged like a snake, pickles tumbling onto grease-stained paper. Inelegance is inevitable with a proper salt beef sandwich on rye. And for me, there’s only one true accompaniment - Cherry Coke or root beer to wash it down.

In a sandwich, lashings of Dijon or German mustard are pretty key - though horseradish is equally joyful. Or go violent and have both. Pickles? They’re law. Sliced tomato and celeriac rémoulade are also welcome additions, though in the case of the latter, adjust any extra mustard levels.

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

Sealed in tight and a low, 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."

⭐ great taste® 2024 Judges' Comments
"This handsome piece of corned beef has a good cap of fat. It is beautifully tender throughout with tons of flavour. The spicing is lovely and the sweetness spot on. It slices well to reveal a deep ruby meat. Delicious.

We thought the salt beef had real kerb appeal - a handsome piece of meat and deliciously flavoured, the meat sweet and salted to perfection. The spicing is subtle and distinctive - bring on the rye bread and pickles."