SC - On a Tangential, OT Note - Was: Potato salad+pastasala

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Cindy Renfrow wrote:
> 
> Amendment of salt meat.  Take a fair linen cloth/ & put therein a dishful
> of oatmeal, bind it, & hang it in thy bot down to the bottom. Set it from
> the fire & let it cool/ afterwards set it again to the fire/ & draw out thy
> cloth & that is good.
> 
> HTH,
> 
> Cindy Renfrow/Sincgiefu
> ============================================================================

What she said! The basic principal, which can be found in other period
sources, is to cook bland items with the meat in order to increase the
overall mass across which the salt is spread. Diffusion does the rest.
So what you get is, instead of, say, three pounds of really salty  beef,
is three pounds of beef and two pounds of any bland food such as a grain
or even potatoes, or five pounds total, just over half as salty as it
would otherwise have been. Well, you should account for the mass of the
cooking liquid too, but you get the idea. Now, it's not clear whether it
is intended that the salt-absorbing oatmeal be thrown away or eaten, but
I suspect it's your call. I know I've desalted soy sauce in restaurants
by cooking a potato in it, and threw _that_ away.

BTW, you ought to pre-soak your salt meat first, scrub it well of
surface salt encrustations, and blanch it once or twice, changing the
water in between. Each batch of water you flavor with salt and then
throw away is that much less salt in your final product.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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