Making pastrami at home [from General Topics]

[Sal Vanilla]

Can you make pastrami at home? Please tell me you can.

[ellen4441]

I'd LOVE to find that out, too...!!
I would need a "Pastrami making for dummies" guide , though, cause I'm very culinary challenged!! (I can grill up a good Hebrew National Hot Dog, but not much else)

[ganeden]

If you have a smoker, you can make pastrami. To cure it (in other words, to make corned beef) you need Morton's Tenderquick (or Prague Powder) and spices of your choosing (including cloves, garlic, pepper and ginger), either rubbed on the meat or made into a brine with water (many recipes in the web), then rinse or soak in water to remove some of the salt, then smoke using a rub of a mixture of corriander, black pepper and other spices. No more complicated for the smoking than making bbq. More difficult for the curing because it takes at least a week, often 2, during which time refrigerator space must be devoted to it.

[paul balbin]

Sal, of course you can. the easy way is to buy a corned beef package from the
grocery store meat dept. The ones sealed in plastic. Smoke the corned beef for 6 hours
in a smoker. Check out the Meco smokers. I use the simple one with the electric heater
since lots of things take a long time to smoke. It is also easer to get along with the code
police if the device is electric in stead of charcoal. Put some sticks of hard wood on top
of the element to provide smoke. The hard way is to buy a full brisket, shoot it up with
cure and put it in a big zip lock bag for a couple of weeks. Smoke for 18 hours.
I prefer a milder cure than Mortons Tenderquick so I get my cure from Eldon's Jerkey and Sausage in Idaho. Look under their heading of Curing corned and dried beef. Let me know if I can be of any further help. My email is in my profile.

[phantomdoc]

I tried making pastrami from a packaged corned beef. It came out way too salty. Maybe soak in water for a few hours before spicing with rub and storing. I spiced with powder coriander, cracked pepper and fresh grated garlic. I will try again but will soak corned beef overnight before proceeding.

Reminder: You can order from Katz's, arguably the best there is.

[Sal Vanilla]

Paul! Why have I never considered smoking a corned beef? What a freaking great idea. We have an actual slow smoker that we barely use (we usually smoke on the grill), but this experiment seems like a fantabulous reason to break that monster out. Maybe we will smoke a turkey while we are at it! Oh I am so excited.

I think I will take Phantomdoc's idea of presoaking. Maybe I will do one with a soak and one without!

Lordy - I should not get so excited over pastrami. I miss it though.

[Karl S]

Remember, there are two main cuts of corned beef, and three of pastrami. Corned beef typically comes from the round (very lean) or brisket (fattier, and better). Pastrami typically comes from the plate/navel (fattiest, and best for hot pastrami), brisket and round (round is typically what is used for "lean pastrami" that's not intended to be heated but eaten cold). I suggest if one is going to buy already-corned beef to smoke, look for brisket instead of round.

[scubadoo97]

I always think the corned beef from the round is awful. There just isn't any comparison to a brisket flat or point/navel for corned beef. I use brisket point or flat for making pastrami.

[Karl S]

I agree that corned beef from the round is awful, but it's what dominates in supermarkets and many deli counters, as best I can tell. One of the myriad concessions to low-fat distortions of food. (Mind you, I like round, but very slow roasted until medium rare and sliced thinly; it's not good as corned beef or pastrami.)

[Sal Vanilla]

I went out and got a flat cut corned beef. I wonder if that is a brisket cut.

I was not joking when I said I was excited. I went out and got me some meat.

[scubadoo97]

The flat is the large flat part of a whole brisket

[scubadoo97]

With a smoker you can even buy prepared corned beefs in the bag. Some with high salt contents will need to be soaked to leach out some salt. You will need to do a fry test by cutting a small sample and cooking it to taste it. This will give you an idea what your salt level is at.

The corned beef is then coated in a mixture of crushed black peppercorns and corinander and smoked for a few hours. I like to remove mine from the smoker at internal temp of 160f and finish it in the oven covered and steamed over water till the internal temp is 200-205f. Once cool enough to handle it can be easily sliced as thin or thick as you like.

[phantomdoc]

Thanks for the fry test advice. My next attempt will be point cut brisket. Fat is flavor. I like the fresh garlic in the coriander and pepper rub. I wrap in plastic for 3 days after seasoning before smoking. I will report back when I try again.

[scubadoo97]

I am lucky enough to find Crown brand corned beefs in my grocery store. They have very little salt compared to other brands. Just 220 mg of sodium per 4 oz. I've made a few pastramis from this brand of corned beef. The pictures above are from a Crown corned beef I smoked and steamed. Excellent flavor and no soaking needed. It's labeled as kosher style. The flavor has a good amount of garlic. The steaming really made it super juicy. The best I've made so far.

[phantomdoc]

I will look for it. Crown

[ellen4441]

Those are SUCCULENT CORNED BEEF pics, scubadoo97!!!
Thanks for sharing...

You really seem to know your coating, smoking, and steaming.....way to go!

[Sal Vanilla]

Thank you for the pics. I love the pretty pepper coating. I am gonna try it tomorrow and will be sure to post back on it here. Thank you phantomdoc and scubadoo.

[Sal Vanilla]

Scubadoo and phantomdoc - I just wanted to post a quick note about my successful pastrami making the day before yesterday. We make 2 of them. One we soaked to get the salt out of and the other we didn't. Noth were flat cut with a heavy fat flap on top. Both we coated with peppercorns. We smoked them to 130 degrees because they seemed to be getting dry on the edges and then popped them in the oven to steam.

They came out so darn good. They were not tight grained like other pastrami but... I wonder why I had not considered this before? It was not perfectly pastrami ish, but we had 4 friends over for some fun tasting (and did a turkey as backup). The turkey was hardly touched. About the soak/no soak. We liked the no soak, but the soaked was also delicious but more smoky. We will be doing it again and next time we will take pics.

If you are considering doing it - start early in the morning. That way you can jigger the steaming. I cannot emphasize the imprtance of the steaming. Lord it was good. Both pieces of meat were gone... 6 people and a TON of other food.

Thanks guys!!

[phantomdoc]

Thanks for the report Sal. Please tell me what brand of corned beef you used. My use of Freirich point cut came out way salty.

[Sal Vanilla]

I don't know and I do not have the bags anymore. I will tell you that I got them at Safeway back in March and had frozen them. For a flat cut they had a pretty sizable fat flap. I think that was really key to their utter juiciness.

I asked my husband if we put coriander on them. He said we did, but not a ton because the bottle was nearly empty. He thought for the two pieces he used 4 tablespoons dry. They were really big. There was some shrinkage, but we cannot agree how much. Somewhere in the 30% range. They looked very similar to scubadoos. We completely smothered them with pepper and spice.

For steaming we used this giant vat that someone gave us for our wedding that we have only used two or three times in 16 years. It has a double boiler style set up in it. But next time, we will use the throw away pan like for a turkey and use a long legged rack inside it to steam.

[fourunder]

Check out the information from this thread. There are some good suggestions and great tips. The topic is Corned Beef, but it discusses Pastrami enthusiastically.

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/587319

[scubadoo97]

Sal, glad it turned out well for you. At a minimum I coat with crushed black pepper and coriander. The coriander it key to the pastrami taste.

Don't be too concerned with the appearance on the outside. You will get a good crust but it will still be reddish pink due to the sodium nitrite used to cure the meat and it will be plenty juicy. I take mine to 200-205 to finish but pull at about 160+ to go into the steam. I used a big disposable foil pan lined with a cooling rack to set the meat on. Boiling water was added to the pan, it was covered and into a preheated oven set at 225-250 until the meat is done.

Here's a pic of the point and flat from a prepared corned beef which I had posted about up thread. This is how they looked when I pulled them from the oven in the steaming pan. They had a good crust from the smoker but plenty juicy inside as you saw from the previous pictures..

[bear]

Here's an interesting blog entry from Michael Ruhlman. Scroll down to read about his shortrib pastrami experience.

http://blog.ruhlman.com/

[rich in stl]

http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/pas...