Scalloped Beef

Meat for scalloping may be either minced or cut in small slices. Put a layer in a greased baking dish and season it to your taste with salt and pepper, adding minced onion if you wish and covering the layer with gravy. Next strew fine breadcrumbs and lay over them small bits of butter, and sprinkle grated cheese. If you have material repeat the layers. Bake in a hot oven till the top layer of breadcrumbs is brown, and serve with a tomato sauce, with pickles or with horseradish.

Creamed Dried Beef

Have half a pound of dried beef sliced thin. Break it in small bits. Let it stand five minutes in cold water which is gradually growing lukewarm, then drain. Put it in a saucepan and add a pint of milk. As the milk heats add slowly two large spoons of flour dissolved in half a cup of cold water. Cook till the milk thickens. Take from the fire, stir in a beaten egg, tip on a hot platter, drop small pieces of butter over the whole, sprinkle with pepper, and serve hot

How To Cook Smoked Beef

Have the smoked beef cut very thin. Put the quantity needed in a granite fryingpan. Cover with cold water. As soon as it comes to boil, pour off the water. Cover with milk, add a little salt and a very little pepper. Taste for seasoning. Have ready flour and water mixed smooth, allowing a tablespoon of flour to a cup of milk. Pour gradually into the middle of the hot milk. Stir well with the back of the spoon at first, and stir again to mix. Let boil slowly, stirring constantly until the milk thickens. When thick enough take off the fire and add a tablespoon of butter. Serve in a hot dish.

Corning Beef

Brine For Corning Beef

When you have your beef ready for corning be sure it is perfectly cold and free from animal heat. It should lie protected from flies or any attacking insect and become solid. Two full days of cool weather should be allowed for this.

Have your corning firkin or barrel of clean, sweet, firm wood. Then have it perfectly scoured, and set upon logs so that air can pass between its bottom and the cemented floor of the cellar. Have also flat, square, scoured boards to put in over the meat to keep it from floating. Smooth, large, clean stones should be at hand for weights on the boards.

In making the brine use a big kettle, or take the washboiler, scour it perfectly, and use that weigh out twenty pounds of coarse salt, two pounds of sugar (or two quarts of pure New Orleans molasses), and use half a pound of salt peter. Measure fourteen gallons of water. Put all these ingredients into the kettle or boiler, set over the fire, and when the scum begins to rise begin to skim. By the time the brine boils you will have it clear. After it boils a few minutes set it from the fire to cool.

Pack your beef in the barrel so that the brine may run easily between the pieces of meat, lay on top your boards and stones, and pour over the cold brine.

If after a week or two a scum appears on the brine, take out the meat, scald the brine, and pack anew.

How To Boil Corned Beef

Corned beef is often spoiled through ignorance of the right way to cook it. In the first place it is well to note that small and moderatesized pieces require about the same time for cooking. Wash off the brine from your piece, and into a kettle having enough boiling water to well cover it drop the beef. When the scum begins to rise, as the meat heats through, skim it off, and after the meat has begun to boil, move the kettle to the back part of the stove. Keep it gently boiling four or five hours usually the longer time and when the meat is done lift it into an earthen jar or wooden bowl, pour over its liquor, and let it grow cold.

This treatment makes a great difference in the taste of cold corned beef. The beef that is taken from its liquor and allowed to grow cold in the air is apt to be dry and tasteless, when the same piece would be sweet and wholesome if kept in its liquor and allowed to absorb the juices its liquor contains.If the meat is to be pressed, it can be as easily pressed in its liquor, by laying a plate and weights upon it, as out of its liquor.If some of the corned beef is to be eaten hot, serve it hot and then place to cool the remainder in its liquor.

An authority of today insists that by putting an unpeeled onion in the water in which corned beef is boiling, the meat is made more juicy and tender.

Corned Beef Hash

Chop cold corned beef quite fine, and chop, not so fine, potatoes cooked the day before, and therefore firm and cold. Take two pint cups of chopped meat and three and a half pint cups of chopped potatoes.

Put them in a saucepan with enough hot water to show through the hash, add a piece of butter the size of an egg, also salt and pepper to taste, and cook gently, allowing the hash to brown upon the bottom of the iron saucepan and scraping up the browned hash to let other parts brown. When done add one slightly heaping teaspoon of mustard, which has been mixed rather thick with water, salt, and a little sugar. Serve very hot and quite dry.