Holiday Curing: Making £17 Topside into £47 Ribeye

What brought this on?

I went on holiday last week. For anyone labouring under the misapprehension that Bray Cured is a curing behemoth with foundations set deep into the foodie landscape of England, thank you, but it ain't like that. We're distinctly new and artisan, and that means hustle, and that means no rest for the wicked.

So going on holiday is SUPER BIG NEWS. For the first time in 3 years, I went away and just switched off. The team dealt with everything and far from worrying about whether the building had burned down in my absence, I returned to a place better than I left it.

Any entrepreneurs out there will know how big a deal this is for us. It makes me really happy we've come that far.

Meaty Alchemy

Anyway, that's just the context. This blog is about curing, and in particular, a splendid little tip for meaty alchemy, where we take the meat alternative of base metal and turn it into gold. You too can be a meat alchemist, and turn £17 topside into £47 ribeye with a few grammes of salt.

It came about because on holiday, one must almost always barbeque, and I was planning to do so. David (Master Butcher) and I had a chat about what might be nice to do, and landed upon something we've been experimenting with at Bray Cured HQ, which is lightly curing cheaper cuts of meat to create a brilliant steak experience.

Is it possible to take braising cuts and turn them into delicious steaks?

You bet your beef it is. The muscles on cattle that supply us with braising cuts, like topside, silverside or chuck (the ones you slow cook, or have to roast with liquid), work harder than the steak cuts. This makes the meat tougher, but also more flavoursome. 

So the challenge is, to unlock that flavour in a steak cut, without the toughness. Nobody wants to eat a boot sole.

And curing is the answer. Think about how the charcutier can turn any cut of meat into something that melts in the mouth. What are our tools? Time, for one thing, but as importantly, salt. In curing, salt is key. It preserves, but it also breaks down the proteins, leading to a change in texture.

If we can use salt to tenderise a tough cut, that's great. We just have to make sure it doesn't become too salty. So it's a light cure we're after. And as my holiday BBQ proved, the results can be spectacular.

The flavour of a slow-cook cut, the texture of a great steak, for about a third of the cost.

How do you do it?

More good news - it's absolutely simple.

• Get a topside, silverside, brisket or chuck-eye.
• Cut it into steaks, against the grain. Make the steaks chunky, an inch to an inch and a half. The reason for this is the ratio of outside surface to inside needs to be a bit bigger, and also because you'll slice the steaks before serving and you want decent-sized slices. 
• Lightly salt all over - heavier than seasoning, lighter than curing. If you want a precise number, try 0.5% of the meat's weight in salt.
• If you'd like to flavour your steaks, add dry herbs and spices with the salt and those flavours will penetrate like a marinade.
• Seal the steaks into a vacuum bag or ziplock bag (with the air squeezed out).
• Refrigerate for a minimum of two days, and up to a week.
• Cook as you like on a hot BBQ, searing hot pan or high grill, bearing in mind the surface of the meat will be firmer from the cure, so if you're judging doneness by feel, factor that in.
• Important: to serve, slice the steaks in advance, against the grain once more. Slice the steaks as thin as you can, because the salt flavour from the cure will be magnified in chunkier slices.
• I serve is like a tagliata di manzo, with the steak slices plattered up and surrounded by rocket, tomatoes and roasted garlic.

With a few days' planning ahead, you can create a brilliant steak from a humbler cut, getting far more beef for your buck, thanks to a bit of curing magic.