Why don’t you try dry brining? As Harold McGee pointed out, wet brining makes the drippings useless for making a sauce.
Does anyone wet brine beef? I can’t recall ever seeing it done, which leads me to suspect that the culinary science types have tried, and rejected the resulting meat. What IS used to tenderize beef is bakng soda. I have used the wet soak for cubed pork and beef in making stirfries, and can vouch for it.
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That’s just not true. While I have never wet-brined beef, I do it all the time with pork and poultry. This is the basic recipe. Soak meat anywhere from 30 minutes (boneless chicken breasts or pork tenderloin) to overnight (whole poultry over 6lbs or larger pork roast or ham)
1/4 cup Diamond Crystal kosher salt
1 quart water
Any herb or spice you like
Drippings are never too salty as long as you use low salt stock or broth.
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I do dry brine. Quite a bit, too. I’ve had great success dry brineing. But looking at my beef “project” above, you’ll see an absolute lack of fat on the cut. Past times, I would turn a nice looking piece of beef like this into shoe leather in our oven. Don’t want to do that ever again.
Isn’t that mostly a question of temperature and time? I usually braise such cuts. I give them a nice sear and then cook them in the oven, covered with some liquid–mostly wine and soy sauce or tomatoes–at 125-135 degrees C (257-275 degrees F) depending on how tough the cut is.
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If you are happy with the results of wet brining, then you should keep on doing it. I tried it once with chicken breasts, and thought that they were watery. Then I saw McGee’s comments, and they made perfect sense to me
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Today the Food52 Facebook page had a tip for more tender ground beef in a chili recipe. Combine the meat with 2tbsp heavy cream, yogurt, or buttermilk and refrigerate overnight. The lactic acid tenderizes and also bonds the fat inside the meat so it doesn’t render off when the meat is browned. The discussion notes that this doesn’t work on thick cuts of beef unless the cream is injected into the center. I assume you would also need to put the slab into a baggie with a bit of cream, then squeeze/suck out most of the air so the cream remained in direct contact with the meat surface.
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Same here. I used to wet brine a lot more before discovering the wonders of dry brining - for a lot of items, having the drier surface makes searing so much easier. (and also takes less space as @Miss_belle mentioned)
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I have, for pastrami, but I found a dry brine for that too.
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Prepped and baked the beef shoulder roast today.
Out of a 14 hour Kosher Salt wet brine, and lathered with a homemade rub:
Slow oven bake at 275 degrees for 4 hours, 15 min.
I would do this again.
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Is it tender?
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Yes.
No pink, but juicy and tender.
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