Jellied meat is one of the most favorite dishes in many countries of the world. It is perfect for a festive feast in the cold season, as well as a hearty and inexpensive food for workdays.
Beef tails - the best basis for meat aspic
Jellied beef tails at the cost of cooking is among the low-budget dishes. Cooking it is easy and enjoyable. The only difficulty: to make the jelly sticky and solidify to a state of strong jelly, it must be cooked for at least 8 hours. In the presence of a pressure cooker or multicooker, this task is solved very simply, and time is reduced by half. Jellied beef tails are characterized by transparency, good consistency and excellent taste. Due to the content of a large amount of cartilaginous interarticular tissue, it perfectly hardens without the addition of gelatin.
Jellied meat is served on the table chilled to a temperature of 8-10 degrees and is eaten with horseradish, mustard and garlic sauces. If you want to pamper yourself or guests with jellied meat in the hot season, when there is a danger that it will melt on the table, then slightly change the recipe. Classic jelly beef with beef tails is made without special gelling additives, but in some cases 1-2 tablespoons of gelatin will not hurt.
Cooking broth
To make a delicious jellied beef tails, recipes unanimously warn: it is better to cook it on a weekend, as it will take at least eight hours. First you have to follow the cooking of the broth, then disassemble the bones, engage in meat, pouring and decoration. Usually in the morning, early, put to cook tails. They cook all day, and in the evening comes the main work, which the whole family often does.
Tails are soaked overnight in cold water. In the morning they are washed, cut along the vertebral discs, put in a large pan and set to cook in large quantities of water. When the broth boils properly, it must be drained together with the foam, and the bones should be washed and four fresh fingers filled with fresh water, that is 7-8 cm above the level of the tails, put to boil again. The broth should be cooked at a low boil for 6-7 hours. After this time, it should be salted to taste and toss peppers with peas. Next, the jelly from beef tails should boil over low heat for about another 2 hours. About an hour before the end of cooking, put marjoram, basil, celery, onion and carrots in it. At the very end, about 10 minutes before turning off, throw a couple of bay leaves into the broth. Ready broth should be filtered through cheesecloth, separate the meat from the bones and cut it with a knife. You don’t need to grind too much. After that, return boneless meat to the broth and bring to a boil.
Jelly
For 8-9 hours, the broth will be greatly respected, and you will get a very tasty, rich meat concentrate - the future beef jelly jelly. The recipe does not include any spices or seasonings, with the exception of a few cloves of garlic.
Remove the meat from the pan and put it in the molds to half their height, add a little broth, chop one or two cloves of garlic, put a few leaves of dill, parsley or celery, boil the egg, divide it lengthwise into two halves and also put in meat. Carrots, which were cooked in the broth, will also serve as an edible decoration. Most often, jelly from beef tails is decorated with carrot flowers, which are thinly cut and beautifully laid out on top. Put the molds in the cold: let them harden a little. When the jelly is set, carefully pour the remaining broth into it. It should not be hot so as not to melt the bottom layer.
Seasonings for jelly
Fans of jellied meat, aspic and jellies believe that they should be eaten with hot spices, such as garlic, crushed with sour cream or mayonnaise, vinegar, mustard and horseradish. If you make beef tail jellied meat. Recipes of several sauces will be a good addition to this dish. Spicy sauces based on horseradish and mustard are in perfect harmony with cold beef.
Mustard sauce
Take two boiled egg yolks and mash with two tablespoons of the finished table mustard, add salt and sugar to taste. Gradually, with constant stirring, add 100 g of olive oil. Bring the mass to a homogeneous state. Grate boiled beets and pickled cucumbers, finely chopped 150 g of pickled mushrooms, chop the parsley and dill, chop the parsley and dill, grind a few feathers of green onion in a mortar and salt, and pass one through the press clove of garlic and add all this to the mustard mixture. Stir and bring to the desired consistency, pouring a little bit of natural 3% apple cider vinegar. Try again if there is enough salt and sugar, add if necessary.
This sauce can be made from dry mustard powder. Then the powder must first be brewed with boiling water or milk in a ratio of 1: 1, insist for three days and then make the sauce, as described above.
Horseradish Sauce
There is a very large quantity of horseradish-based jellied sauces. Here are two options:
- Grate or grind 300 g of fresh horseradish in a blender. Add 700 g of sour cream, salt and sugar to taste.
- Grind horseradish, as described above, pour boiling water over it, cover with a lid and let it cool. In chilled horseradish, add apple cider vinegar, salt and sugar to taste. Grate 200 g of boiled beets on a fine grater and mix with the rest of the ingredients.
Helpful Cooking Tips
- You can put chicken in the jellied beef tails. Beef and chicken combine very well and complement each other perfectly.
- Since the amount of liquid in the broth is significantly reduced during cooking, there is a danger of over-salting the dish. This must be taken into account and salt at the end of cooking. In no case should the broth be diluted with water. Excess salt can be removed by dropping a gauze bag with raw rice into a pan with boiling broth.
- If you are afraid that the jelly will not harden, at the last stage of cooking add gelatin soaked in water to it, bring it with the broth to a boil and then cook as described in the article.