Fragrant transparent aspic is a frequent guest at many festive feasts and celebrations. For some, the main decoration of the festive table is exotic dishes and tropical fruits. But many prefer traditional, but no less tasty food, which can be attributed to aspic. It is often called jelly. However, not every young housewife dares to cook jellied meat - the recipe is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. The process has its own nuances. In order for the jellied meat to turn out not only tasty, but also transparent, appetizing and simply beautiful, it is necessary to observe some rules for its preparation. Do not neglect these recommendations - and the jelly will surely become your signature dish, a real decoration of any holiday feast.
How to choose meat for jellied meat?
The first rule for preparing clear and tasty jellied meat is choosing the basis for the dish. For cooking jelly, you can take almost any meat of your choice - pork, beef, chicken or turkey. However, many experienced housewives recommend choosing beef. Since you can cook beef jellied meat only from some parts of the carcass, you need to take meat on the bone, part of the drumstick, which is closer to the hoof, or beef shank with veins, cartilage or skin. This choice is due to the fact that they contain special gelling substances that contribute to the rapid solidification of the broth without the use of gelatin and do not make it cloudy in appearance. You can use either one or several types of meat.
When buying a meat kit for cooking jellied meat, be sure to make it fresh. If the beef has a specific “old-fashioned” smell, small spots on the surface, visible traces of frequent frosts, defrosting or too dark color - it is better to refuse to purchase such a product, since it will not work to cook a delicious jelly. Be sure to ensure that the meat set has approximately the same content of pulp and bone. If there is too much beef pulp, the jelly will not freeze. The same goes for too much bone content. Therefore, the most important thing is a measure in everything.
Product Preparation
So, fresh meat for cooking aspic is selected. Next, it must be properly prepared. Beef should be steeped - this helps to get rid of traces of blood and provide a beautiful transparent base of jelly. If the meat is not soaked, the broth will be cloudy and unappetizing. Put the beef in cold water and leave it for a couple of hours before boiling the jelly. The recipe for any housewife is the same in that the meat should be completely covered with water, otherwise the remaining blood traces and the stiffness of the skin cannot be avoided. After soaking, you can safely proceed to cutting. To do this, it is better to use a special meat knife or hacksaw with large sharp teeth - with it you can cut beef bones so that there are no small fragments. If you just chop the beef with an hatchet, then there will definitely be sharp edges on the bones. Next, strip the meat with a knife, freeing it from bone fragments, prepare other ingredients for cooking.
Ingredients Needed for Jelly
- Beef or meat set weighing from 2 to 4 kg.
- Pure cold water, better purified.
- Salt to taste (about when to salt jellied meat, below).
- 2-3 large onions.
- 2-4 large carrots.
- Garlic cloves - 6-8 pcs.
- Spices and herbs of your choice - bay leaves, black pepper, allspice peas, red pepper, parsley and celery root , dill.
The main stages of cooking jellied meat
Further on how to cook a delicious jellied meat. Place the cooked meat set in a pan and pour clean cold water. It is better to choose purified or filtered water to prepare this dish. If you use ordinary tap water, then there will be a very high probability of the appearance of a cloudy shade of the broth. In addition, tap water has specific impurities that can give an unpleasant aftertaste to the finished jelly. Water should be taken in a ratio of 1: 2 to meat - this means that for 1 kg of beef you will need 2 liters of purified cold water. Place the beef pieces very tightly so that the meat is completely covered with water. We put on the fire.
Many experienced housewives recommend boiling jellied meat exclusively on low heat - this way you can get crystal clear and transparent broth. If cooked over high heat, there is a risk that it becomes cloudy.
So, how to cook jellied meat. After 20-30 minutes, as soon as the broth boils, it is necessary to carefully collect all the foam on its surface. Foam will rise during the entire cooking process, so it is very important to carefully collect it all the time. Thanks to this process, the broth will remain transparent and beautiful in appearance. Many famous chefs recommend not to collect the foam, but to completely drain the first water, in which the meat was cooked for aspic. Drain all the water, and thoroughly rinse the beef under clean running water - this will clear the meat of the remnants of foam and bone fragments.
How to achieve a transparent color of the finished dish?
The question that torments not only novice housewives: how to make jellied meat transparent? Everything is simple here. Place the washed parts of the meat set in the pan again and fill with water, chop again if necessary. After that, the pan can again be put on a small fire. Now, when foam or fat appears on the surface of the broth, you can simply remove them with a slotted spoon. As mentioned above, aspic is cooked over low heat - that is why the whole process of cooking this dish can take from 5 to 10 hours. Do not try to speed up the long cooking process to increase the fire - the broth will become cloudy, and your jelly will turn out to be unattractive and unappetizing. In addition, prolonged cooking over low heat contributes to the perfect solidification of the finished jelly - you do not need to use gelatin or other substances.
Rules for adding spices and herbs
After the jelly has been boiled under the lid for 4-5 hours, it is time to add spices and herbs. This happens until the moment when salt jellied meat (including beef) will be necessary. You should not add these ingredients earlier than the specified time - by the end of cooking they will lose their taste and characteristic spicy aroma. For aspic, it is recommended to use whole vegetables without chopping them. You can take carrots and other vegetables directly in the peel without peeling - just rinse them thoroughly under running water. If you don’t like this method, peel the vegetables, but do not cut them into pieces. Many put a whole unpeeled onion in the preparing jelly - this trick helps to give the broth a light golden hue. Cloves of garlic can be put in any form convenient for you - whole or chopped. At the same time, add various spices to your future jelly to your liking - black pepper, allspice, peas, celery or parsley root, bay leaf give a special piquancy and incomparable taste to the dish. But in no case should you be very zealous with the amount of spices - the prepared jelly has an incredibly delicate and refined taste, which can easily be spoiled with hot spices.
When to salt beef jellied meat?
The basic rule of a tasty and mouth-watering dish is proper salting. When to salt jellied meat? Remember that jelly must be salted 20-30 minutes before the end of its preparation. If you salt the dish earlier, the result will certainly disappoint you. The meat strongly absorbs salt. And even a small amount of it, poured at the beginning of cooking, can make your dish simply inedible. In addition, the broth should be simmering for at least 5 hours - during this time, the water in the pan will boil strongly, so the salt concentration in the broth becomes excessive. The best option when salting jellied meat is half an hour before the end of cooking.
Grind cooked meat properly
After the jellied meat is cooked, turn off the heat and carefully use the slotted spoon to remove the prepared meat from the pan. A whole onion and carrots can also be removed - they have already fulfilled their purpose. Cool the cooked meat a little. Next, cooked meat must be carefully chopped. This can be done simply by hand or use a small knife with which to carefully separate the flesh from the bones and cartilage. Many people prefer to use a food processor or meat grinder to grind meat, but in the case of cooking jellied meat, it is better to avoid such methods, since with this method of grinding the finished dish loses its unique refined taste. Make sure that the finished meat does not have small bones, the remains of skins or cartilage. Grind garlic cloves through a press and mix them with the resulting meat. It is better not to cut the garlic with a knife, but to crush it through a special press - this way it will mix better with beef, there will be no large sloppy pieces.
Pour the cooked meat correctly
At the bottom of deep plates or trays, put the meat chopped and mixed with garlic. If you want to make your culinary creation brighter and more original, you can put slices of boiled yolk or carrots on the bottom of the plates, as well as any other products of your choice. The meat must be poured with the resulting salt broth (we already mentioned when to salt the jellied meat). To do this, it should be carefully filtered through a fine sieve or a doubled gauze cloth. Thus, small pieces of cartilage and bones, excess fat are removed from the broth. As a result, it acquires an even, pure color and a pleasant shade. Slightly heat the strained broth in a saucepan over low heat and fill them with cooked meat. If you use gelatin in cooking jellied meat, it's time to add this ingredient to the broth. To do this, take a glass with the already prepared and filtered broth, dilute one bag of gelatin in it and add the resulting mixture to the rest of the broth before pouring it into the molds.
Jellied Frost
It would seem that for housewives the most controversial question is the question of when to salt the jelly. But it is not so. There is another step in the preparation of this dish, which raises a lot of questions - solidification.
For complete solidification, the jelly requires quite a considerable amount of time - from 4 to 10 hours. You can leave the molds with a fragrant meat dish for the whole night. In order for the cooked jellied meat to freeze, he will need a cool temperature, which is below room temperature. You can leave the dish on the balcony or on the windowsill - but these places are completely unsuitable in the winter season. At low temperatures, the delicate jelly left on the balcony will simply freeze and completely lose its unsurpassed delicate taste. The best option for quick and high-quality freezing of jellied meat is a refrigerator.
It is better not to put dishes with beef jellied meat on the top shelf of the refrigerator - as you know, there is a zone of the lowest temperature, and your meat delicacy will simply freeze. It is not recommended to place the molds with beef jelly on the lower shelves of the refrigerator - here, on the contrary, it will not freeze. The best choice will be the middle shelf with optimal temperature conditions.
So, how to cook and when to salt jellied meat, you have learned. And they did everything according to the recipe. Now your culinary masterpiece is ready, but with what to serve it? The traditional answer to this question is various hot sauces, mustard, horseradish or adjika. You can serve a delicate meat dish with a small amount of soy sauce - it will give the jelly a special piquancy. A delicious combination will be jelly served with pickled mushrooms or cucumbers, fresh or canned tomatoes, a salad of fresh vegetables with herbs to your taste.
The most important nuances
In order for the beef jelly to turn out to be really tasty and appetizing, follow a few simple rules for its preparation.
- The basic rule of how to make jellied meat transparent is to never add water to meat that is already cooked. If you add a new portion of water to the broth during cooking, it will lose its beautiful transparent color and become cloudy. In addition, such a broth almost never freezes without the addition of gelatin. In this case, it is best to immediately pour a little more water into the pot with beef than you need - when boiling, the necessary amount of broth will remain, and its color will not suffer at all.
- We will repeat when to salt the aspic when cooking. When preparing a delicate meat delicacy, you should not do this at the beginning or middle of the process. When cooking, the broth boils and becomes more saturated, the salt concentration increases significantly. That is why even a small pinch thrown into a pan with jelly at the beginning of cooking can make it salted and inedible.
- Many do not like the specific fatty flavor that a ready-made jelly of beef or pork may have. A simple way helps to avoid such an unpleasant phenomenon - be sure to drain the first water in which the meat was cooked. So you not only remove excess fat from the meat broth, but also make the finished dish less calorie and heavy for the stomach.
- Do not try to put 10 kg of a variety of meat products in a pot with broth. Remember that the water in the pan should cover the meat at least 2-3 cm. This is necessary in order to get the required amount of clean and fragrant broth. If initially there will be too much water in the pan, it will not boil away during the cooking process, and the broth will harden poorly. At the same time, adding too little water will cause the opposite problem - it will boil away quickly and you will have to add a new portion of water to the pan. In this case, you can not avoid the appearance of an unpleasant muddy tint in the finished meat dish.
- 5-10 hours - you need to cook so much aspic. The recipe does not tolerate haste and carelessness.
- Many experienced housewives recommend not discarding the meat cartilage and skins that you will get after finishing the beef. Grind these products thoroughly with a knife, meat grinder or food processor, then gently mix the resulting mixture with cooked beef. As is known, cartilage and veins contain special gelling substances that contribute to the rapid solidification of the finished jelly without the use of gelatin. At the same time, the taste of a delicate dish does not deteriorate at all.
And finally
Since cooking delicious jellied meat is a painstaking task and requires a certain skill, do not be upset if your first student is not quite what you expected. A little culinary practice and patience - and your dish will become the main decoration of any holiday table.