PRESERVING MEAT.

Motueka Star, Volume IV, Issue 169, 3 April 1903, Page 4

PRESERVING MEAT.

A great drawback to- the life of a farmer, especially if lie is in the back blocks with very few neighbors, is the great difficulty in getting a sufficiency of fresh meat. This may appear strange to some readers who imagine that a farmer possessed of several thousand sheep, and a few hundred head of cattle may never lack an abundance of the finest and freshest meat. But this is not so, as most farmers know well. A sheep is, as a rule, too much for the average family to consume in a fresh state, and if the weather is hot, they have only the-pleasure of a few nice chops for one or two meals, and the Test has to be salted down, and thus they live on salt meat all the yen r round. The iollowing simple method will alter all this and allow the fa finer to be nearly if not quite, in as good a position as the city dweller who has fresh meat brought to his door daily.

First cut the meat into convenient sized junks, and then pack into ' a water tight keg or barrel of course making sure of the meat being as clean and as free of blood as possible - Then make a brine of salt and water (with a very little salt-petre added pf sufficient as will allow and egg to float). Boil the brine, skimming off the *eum as it rises to the top. When boiling hot and clean pour the brine over the meat, and see that the meat is thoroughly well covered with the solution. If, in a few days time, the brine appears to be bloody, pour off and make fresh as before, the effect of the hot brine on the meat closes up the pores, prevents decay and the salt from permeating the meat. Thus you will have a supply of fresh meat all the year round, which can be roasted or cooked in the same manner as you would if newly killed meat were used. The writer has adopted this method time and again and has recommended others to do so, and the results have always been satisfactory.