Tag: cured meat

5.4 Cured Meats – Completed!

#446 Lincolnshire Chine

In the cooking and eating of #446 Lincolnshire Chine I have now ticked off all 17 recipes (by my reckoning) in the Cured Meats section of the Meat, Poultry & Game chapter of Jane Grigson’s English Food. The recipes contained within it were key in developing my own skills in traditional cooking and I acquired skills I didn’t think I had in me: dry and wet curing, pressing, smoking, potting, etc. Aside from acquiring new skills, cooking the recipes really made me appreciate good food, properly made: proper ham, bacon and salted (corned) beef – foods that have now largely become diluted-down commodity products. The majority of the recipes are pork-based; it seems that Jane wasn’t keen on fresh pork (there are just 2 recipes in her Pork section that use fresh pork joints) but finds pork products delicious. I must say I’ve never been that keen on roast pork myself, I’d much rather have a glazed ham!

A beautiful illustration of smoking meat from Dorothy Hartley’s Food in England

In English Food, Jane opines on how ‘bacon was once our passion’ but is now outsourced to the Danish who turned pig farming into a real industry well before British farmers. As a country that in general prefers cheapness over quality, often discounting false economies, means that bacon filled with brine and injected with smoke flavouring has become the norm. So many of us have never eaten proper dry-cured butcher’s bacon, and I am glad to have been educated so well by Jane in the preparation of these foods that are considered very British – and the bacon sarnie is certainly one of those foods! And it’s not just a ‘cheerio’ to shrinking, scummy bacon: it’s a big ‘see you later’ to gammon and ham made from reformed offcuts, similarly injected with brine and additives.

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We’ve forgotten just how important cured meats used to be to households all across the country. When autumn began to wane, all livestock, except for the breeding stock, were killed: of course, some fresh meat was eaten straight away, usually the offal because it didn’t keep and couldn’t be cured as well as meat from the carcass, which was salted down and eaten throughout the winter – this is why bacon was our passion. For many households, this meant ploughing through a great deal of bacon, gammon and ham, but beef was salted too, as was duck and even lamb and mutton. Salt beef was extremely important to the crews of sailing ships on long voyages: a sure way of providing protein to hardworking sailors.

Not my finest photo, but a great dish: #366 A Fine Way to Pot a Tongue

I remember putting off any of the curing for a good while, fearing it slightly, but eventually I had to put my trust in Jane and her instructions. Of course, everything worked. Whenever things went awry, it was due more to my naivety than anything: for example, I used joints that were far too small to poach successfully; luckily I now know to cook as large a piece as possible, and pot what isn’t eaten in the next couple of days. Jane also taught me the importance of aromatics: cures are not simple brines, but they are flavoured with dark brown sugar, juniper, bay, allspice and nutmeg (to name but a few). The only thing I haven’t taken with me is the liberal use of saltpetre. Also going by the name potassium nitrate, saltpetre cures meat well and also gives the meat a nice pink colour, but there are associations with whole a host of diet-based diseases, so these days I miss it out. I don’t mind my bacon being a little less pink.[1]

The very delicious #228 Spiced Salt Beef

One of the most fun elements of this chapter was potting: there were simple ones like #205 Potted Tongue, more complex ones like Elizabeth Raffald’s #434 To Pot Ham with Chicken, and then Hannah’s Glasse’s #366 A Fine Way to Pot a Tongue: a whole pickled and poached ox tongue stuffed into a boned chicken, immersed in spiced butted and baked. Glorious stuff.

One of the best recipes didn’t use cured meat: #375 Boiled Silverside of Beef (not boiled, but gently poached) was sublime, cooked with vegetables and eaten with horseradish. If you can spare the time and resources, I recommend #441 Smoking Meat (the only 10/10 score) and attempting the aforementioned potted tongue by Hannah Glasse (9.5/10). The most revisited recipes are Jane’s #150 How to Cure Meat in Brine, and #228 Spiced Salt Beef – the latter being very good indeed, and which makes a delicious potted beef; something I used to sell on my market stall right at the beginning of my career in food.

#331 Boiled Ox Tongue: To Serve Hot (in this case with sour cherries)

As usual, when I complete a part of the book I give you the stats for the section.[2] Cured Meat scored a mean of 7.53, putting it on level pegging with Pork and Poultry. The median score was 8, and there were two modes: 7 and 8.5. The only significantly better scoring section of the Meat, Poultry and Game chapter thus far is the section on Meat Pies and Puddings.

Below, I have listed the recipes in the order they appear in the book with links to my posts with their individual scores, so have a gander. It is worth pointing out, that my posts are no substitute for Jane’s wonderful writing, so if you don’t own a copy of English Food, I suggest you get yourself one.

#212 Bradenham Ham8.5/10

#150 How To Cure Meat in Brine 8/10

#151 To Cook Salt Pork and Hams 1: To Eat Hot 7/10

#265 To Cook Salt Pork and Hams 2: To Eat Cold 7.5/10

#446 Lincolnshire Chine7/10

#441 Smoking Meat10/10

#161 Boiled Beef and Dumplings 8/10

#375 Boiled Silverside of Beef 8/10

#202 Pressed Beef 8.5/10

#228 Spiced Salt Beef8.5/10

#258 Boiled Ox Tongue 1: To Serve Cold 5/10

#331 Boiled Ox Tongue 2: To Serve Hot8.5/10

#205 Potted Tongue 4/10

#434 To Pot Ham with Chicken7/10

#366 A Fine Way to Pot a Tongue 9/10

#296 Tongue and Mushroom Crumble 6.5/10

#292 Isle of Man Salt Duck7/10

[1] Correlation is not necessarily causation of course. If you want to know more, I wrote about it on the other blog a while back. Read that post here.

[2] Is anyone interested except me?

#446 Lincolnshire Chine

It’s been a while since my last post hasn’t it folks? Well thanks for sticking with me. After over a year, I have a new recipe for you: Lincolnshire Chine.

Why has it taken such a long time to hunt this one down? Well, the cut of meat required to make this regional speciality is only available in Lincolnshire, and even then, it is pretty tricky to find. It’s also a long way from Manchester!

Jane Grigson explains the special cut needed: ‘It is across the back of the neck, across the backbone, a  section of which is included.’ Hence the name chine. The resulting piece of meat which is square in shape is then dry-cured.

I researched the chine and discovered so many other Lincolnshire specialities that I thought I should make a podcast episode about it. I was lucky to talk to chef Rachel Green about chine and Lincolnshire food in general. She also managed to get me a square piece of chine from one of her suppliers: Woldsway Meat and Game.

Listen to the podcast episode here:

Today the original chine cut is no longer used, instead, a square cut taken from the side of the spine is taken. The meat is then cut with deep slashes, stuffed with parsley, wrapped up and poached. After cooling it is sliced to reveal stripes of meat and parsley. Rachel said there should be no other ingredients, however, Jane includes several more in hers: marjoram, leeks, onions, and even optional lettuce and raspberry leaves. Rachel had never heard of any of these ingredients being added to the stuffing of a chine. Later, I found an article Jane wrote in the Guardian way back in 1984 where she said that, indeed, today just chopped parsley is used. Her additions come from a very curious source: the 19th century French poet Paul Verlaine who ‘in the mid-1870s, spent a year as a schoolmaster just north of Boston [Lincolnshire]. He like chine so much that he tried to find it elsewhere in England but without success.’ It was his description that Jane used as the basis of her recipe, and it is he who described the unusual ingredients listed above.

As it would turn out, weighing in at 6 kilos, the chine Rachel gave me was far too big for any cooking vessel in my house, so I had to divide it in two, freezing one half for a future stuffed chine. As it would turn out, a 3-kilo piece of chine, is what Jane calls for in her recipe.

With the meaty side facing up, I cut deep slashes going to within a centimetre of the skin about 1½ centimetres apart in the direction of the grain of the muscle. If you have somehow got your hands on an old-fashioned chine cut, make cuts toward the bone, then turn over and repeat on the other side.

Next, I prepared the stuffing from 2 very large bunches of parsley, stalks and all, plus two, trimmed and cleaned, leeks. (Jane gives an alternative to the leeks in the form of 2 bunches of spring onions and a lettuce.) I roughly chopped the greens and put them in my food processor for chopping, along with some fresh thyme and marjoram leaves. Jane also suggested a handful of young raspberry leaves as an optional extra; it’s the wrong time of year for raspberry leaves, so I had to give those a miss. I seasoned the whole thing with ground mace and black pepper and then chopped it all finely – don’t go too far with this, they should be chopped, not made into a paste.

I took the stuffing and filled the slashes as deeply and evenly as I could – it was quite a satisfying job actually, sort of meditative. Next, I wrapped the meat tightly in a double layer of muslin and tied it into place with butcher’s twine.

It now needed to be poached, but it was still too big for any of my pots, so instead I popped it into a large roasting tin, poured over hot water and sealed it with foil before gingerly sliding it into my oven set to 160°C. Whether you go by this method or simply bring it to a simmer in a stock pot, it should take 3 hours cooking.

When it’s ready, remove from the water and sit it on a chopping board or large plate, place another board on top and then a weight (I used my heavy-based food processor) so that the meat sets: it makes the meat firm, easier to cut, and it removes any air bubbles, lengthening its shelf-life. Cool overnight; my kitchen is cold, so I left it out overnight, but if you’d rather, do this in the fridge.

Next day, unwrap the meat and slice it as thinly as possible. I was very impressed with the look of it I must say: pale pink flesh and deep green stripes. Very effective.

Jane suggests eating the chine with a vinaigrette, bread and butter, and salad. I also tried it sprinkled with a vinegar and sugar dressing (approximately a 2:1 ratio) as suggested by Rachel.

#446 Lincolnshire Chine. After all this effort and after being told it was an acquired taste, I was worried I wouldn’t like the chine, but it was really good. The meat was tender and salty-sweet, and the parsley intensely grassy, and aromatic from the marjoram and spices. I have to say, the sugar-vinegar dressing elevated it from a good dish to a very good one. If you can get hold of a chine, have a go at making it. I shall certainly be making it again. Score: 7/10.

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