What is the reason for cooking in this manner?
Purportedly it’s to retain moisture and to season the meat. It’s hard to do, easy to overcook, you have to use 3 dollars worth of salt, believe me, it’s not worth it.
This is probably a really dumb question, but does the beef taste incredibly salty?
I’ve always wondered about that because they do it a lot on Iron Chef and I’ve thought about trying it.
You have to wrap the meat in something before packing salt onto it. Usually, it’s grape leaves (this is all from iron chef btw). Personally, it seems like a waste of salt to me.
I’ve done this. The meat doesn’t become salty if you do it right. You don’t have to wrap it in grape leaves - but you do have to take it out of the salt bed before it cools off. The meat, when cooking, oozes juices out so the meat doesn’t get too salty. But it was a huge hassle to get the same effect as cooking in a roasting pan using a lid. You just don’t get the drama of having to crack open dinner with a hammer.