Corned Beef

Sheepy made Corned Beef last week. She said she LOVED it. Then she smoked the leftovers and it turned into Pastrami!

She sent me the recipe from here (Michael Ruhlman), asked me to try it and post about it because she looses lots of links--but not mine.

I love corned beef so of course I wanted to give it a try. Son1 loves corned beef, too, and he'll be here for the weekend.

This is a 5 day process, so it's not fast. It will be ready to cook when Son1 is here.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Here is all the prep work.

Making the Pickling Spice
 I used Michael's recipe, which he posted from a book he co-wrote called: Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing (it's on my wish list, now.)

I couldn't find any coriander seeds, mace, or cinnamon sticks at the store. My pickling spice doesn't have coriander or mace, but I added ground cinnamon after I toasted the other spices.

Toasting the spices was easier than I thought and only took about 5 minutes. It smelled wonderful!

Next grind up the toasted spices. My mortar and pestle are small so I did it in three batches. I almost plopped the whole batch in the blender instead and pulsed it, but I decided to grind it by hand so the chunks would be a bit bigger.

Making the Brine

I only found a small roast so I did a half batch of brine. Clockwise from the top: 2 tablespoons pickling spice, 1/4 cup sugar, 3/4 cup kosher salt (non-iodized), and 3 garlic cloves crushed (that's twice the amount that the recipe calls for, but we love garlic!)

Add 1/2 gallon of water and bring to a simmer to dissolve the sugar and salt. (I don't have sodium nitrite - pink salt- right now. Hubby is recrystallizing some from the lab so if it gets done in the next day or two, I'll add it to the brine. It isn't a necessary ingredient, so I didn't feel too bad about leaving that one out.)

Let it sit on the counter until the brine is room temperature. I only have one big pot so I transferred the brine into a stoneware bowl.

Put in a beef brisket (I couldn't find one at the store, so I used a roast. Too bad because he said that this works best with cheaper cuts of meat). Put a plate on top to keep the meat submerged. Cover and refrigerate.....

for 5 days!!

It's sitting in the garage fridge right now.

I can hardly wait until Saturday to cook it and see what it tastes like!

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Dehydrated Tomatoes: Update

I've lost count of how many bushels of tomatoes I've dehydrated! There have been alot!

I wanted to write down some of the things I've learned work best so that when I start this project again next year, I'll have a good reference.

1. The tomatoes in cardboard boxes lasted longer than tomatoes gathered and stored in plastic buckets, even longer than the ones in the plastic buckets with drainage holes in the bottom.
2. Lay an old towel down on the counter. It will save clean up time, and save you from slipping on the juice that might drip onto the floor.
3. Spray the trays with some sort of non-stick coating. I only had to do that once, and the tomatoes didn't stick again.
4. Wear gloves! I didn't wear gloves on the first batch and my hands were sore the next day from the acid in the tomatoes.
5. Slice at least 1/4" thick. I can dry more tomatoes that way, and they don't stick to the tray, especially when using the non-stick spray.
6. If the tomatoes are a little soft, make sure you sprinkle them with non-iodized salt. Mine don't seem to turn black that way, and they have a nicer color if they have been sprinkled with salt. 
7. However, sprinkling salt on the tomatoes will make the tomatoes drain juice a little faster, so make sure the tomatoes are done dripping before you put them on the dehydrator.
8. We some of the tomatoes dried with basil, onion granules, and salt. The ones that had marjoram as well, didn't impress me as any better tasting than the ones without. It's nice to have them pre-seasoned, so I'll always put salt and/or other seasonings on before drying.
9. 1 ounce of dried tomatoes = 1/4 cup of tomato powder. Sometimes I want to use crushed or whole tomatoes from a can, if I can weigh out the tomatoes, then I can use my conversion table easily. I found the conversion tables here at Diane Hopkins blog under the title: Power-Packed Nutrition: V8 Powder.
10. Run a fan near the dehydrators. It tends to move the moist air away from the dehydrator and the tomatoes dry faster. The dehydrator also puts out a fair amount of heat, so if the weather is nice outside, you can put the fan in the window and set it to the exhaust setting. If the weather is cold, then the fan seems to move the air throughout the house better than just letting the dehydrator sit in the room and work.
11. The dehydrator is noisy! Put it in a room where it won't bother anyone.

Tomatoes and More Tomatoes

Sheepy's Dad has lots and lots of tomatoes. The agreement is that I will dry as many as humanly possible and she gets half. What a great deal for me!!

Here are the 4 boxes that got it started.

I found out that if I spray the trays with non-stick cooking spray the tomatoes release easily and I don't have to wash the trays as often between batches.

The first 9 trays. Hubby had another 20 trays at work, which he brought home a few days later when another 4 bushels of tomatoes were dropped off. It takes me about 40 minutes to wash, slice, and fill 15 trays!

I love this dehydrator! It will handle up to 30 trays, although I don't put more than 15 on at a time. Hubby has two bases at work, so I have two dehydrators going almost all the time. It takes between 18-24 hours to dry one batch of tomatoes. 

Dehydrating tomatoes is so much easier on me than bottling them. I get to work for a few hours and then the dehydrator does the rest. I don't have to babysit the canner or worry about jars breaking. All I do is slice and stack!

So, what am I planning on doing with all these tomatoes? I made my first batch of lasagna last week. I blended the tomatoes in my blender until they were a powder, added water, garlic, onion powder, and salt to make the sauce. I was very tomato-y flavored. If I had let the sauce simmer on the stove, I'm sure it would have mellowed the flavor a bit.

Here's a link to Diane Hopkins blog post about V8 Powder: although I have only dried tomatoes, the idea is the same. At the end of her post are two great tables that show how much tomato powder to mix with water to make tomato paste, tomato sauce, tomato juice, or stewed tomatoes.

I've lost count of how many bags of tomatoes I've sealed. These are the two that are ready to head to the storage room.

I am sealing my tomatoes as they come out of the dehydrator, not powdering them first. That way if I want stewed tomatoes I can crumble the tomatoes a little and just add hot water.

Making Pectin at Home

I haven't tried this, but I just got an email from my friend, Sheepy. Her hobby is food storage and emergency preparedness. She likes to do things herself and she doesn't have a big freezer, so much of what she does is stored in storage rooms. She is a great friend and a great resource to me!

Here are some links for you to look at (and for me to remember!)

Making Your Own Apple Pectin
by Sam Thayer
From The Forager

Practically Edible
This link teaches what pectin is and fruits that are high in pectin. It also describes how to test your pectin to see it's strength.

Making Pectin Stock
A great link directly to a PDF that teaches how to make pectin and how to store it on the shelf. You can store it in the freezer.... but if you don't have a freezer you need another option.

Apples Trees

My good friend, who gave us all the grapes, has a friend who has an apple press. Last year we were able to go down and press the apples from our neighbors trees into cider. It went so fast! It took us 5 hours total to pick the apples, clean the grass under the trees, and make 11 1/2 gallons of apple cider! If I had to pick only one juice to store, it would be apples because it is so fast!

Two of the neighbors trees that Vet2Be and Hubby pruned and cared for this year. I have no idea what type of apples these are. They made great apple cider last year. We just opened the last 1/2 gallon last week.

It has been a spectacular apple year. Everyone I know that has apple trees has been loaded. We had a long, cool spring with lots of rain. Very unusual for this area, but the apples loved it.

Done with Grapes

I have finally finished with grape juice! I gave away the last box because I was too tired to do them. We got about 30-ish quarts of juice from this batch.

Here is how my juicer is set up on the stove. I have to pull my stove away from the wall about 10 inches otherwise the microwave gets in the way.

I love these buckets! They are so easy to clean and move. Since they are flexible, it also makes it easy to 'pour' the grapes into the strainer basket of the juicer.

 

It always seems as if there is still some juice in the grapes when I am done with them. So I put them in a strainer which just happens to fit in my mixing bowl to get the last few drops out. I usually put the juice from the strainer into the refrigerator and drink it instead of bottling it. The chickens get the leftover grape skins and seeds. They love their treat, too.

Most of the jars of juice :) Yummy! We gave a few away to friends because we have such nice friends. It is always fun to share some of the harvest.

Grapes into Grape Juice

My good friend had a chance to pick grapes and she picked 4 boxes for us! We love grape juice and this was a wonderful gift. She is a good friend that has given Vet2Be a number of animals that she was culling from her herd. We have loved each one.


Bottling grape juice is not as much work as bottling fruit. I gave away 3 bushels of nectarines this year because I didn't have the time to do anything with them before they would spoil. The friends that got them were so excited, so I know they went to good use.

Vet2Be and I can take care of grapes because they don't take as much time as bottling fruit. Most of the time is spent pulling the grapes from the stems. Then we can let them sit in the steamer for a while until we have a few minutes to put the juice in the jars.

We got a few jars done today. Tomorrow I'll be spending lots more time getting them all juiced.

Also on the list for this week: picking and pressing 3 trees worth of apples, and shearing 3 Navajo Churro lambs.