I thought I would chronicle my effort to make a pastrami in the hopes that whether it turns out good or bad it might benefit others. Following is my report. At the bottom of the post are photos of the stages. Before beginning I read and reread the thread here about thoughts on pastrami, and ended up trying a combination of techniques from DLS and Todd G. Thanks to everyone on that thread who kept a great conversation going for over a year.
Living in Bangkok, it's not so easy to get decent beef. Thai-French beef is, quite frankly, bad. There are some international grocers that import beef from Australia, New Zealand and USA. There is an Australian butcher near my house where I get most of my meats for smoking. It took them a month but they got me an Australian beef brisket.
The brisket weighed 5kg (11 lbs) untrimmed. It was a flat with somewhat of a small point and a medium layer of fat. I removed the point (gave to the housekeeper to make some soup) and trimmed the fat, leaving a small amount on the brisket.
Last year I looked all around Bangkok for curing salts, and came up empty. I could probably find a restaurant that could get me some but I made a trip to the USA in March and brought back some Tenderquick. This made my choice of cure a simple one -- I used Todd G.'s recipe which uses TQ. Additionally, there is no such thing as pickling spice here, so I found a recipe online and made my own. I scaled the recipe amounts for my weight of meat, made my cure, chilled it, then covered the brisket with the cure in a pan. I also injected some of the cure into the thicker portions of the meat but this was difficult. I had thought I was intaking only liquid but I must have gotten some small spice pieces in there too, which clogged the needle. Next time I'll strain the cure before injecting. Unfortunately I don't have a pan with a cover so I topped off with additional cold water, covered with plastic wrap, weighted it down with a heavy cast iron pan and a mortar, and placed in the fridge. The brisket was turned once each morning, and allowed to cure for 5 full days.
During this period I began my search for some other requirements. I found 2 bakeries relatively nearby that make authentic German rye bread, and I plan to pick some up later this week. I also went in search of a mandoline, but they were all very low quality plastic designed for light vegetable use and I wasn't confident they would slice the meat. I found an affordable entry-level electric slicer, and I'm hoping this will work.
After removing from the cure, I rinsed thoroughly making sure to remove any of the spice residue remaining from the cure. I made a small cut into the meat because I wanted to see whether the cure did its job. I'm not sure this was a good idea and I'm not sure I learned anything, but I've read that the brisket at this point should be a tiny bit grayish on the outside, and a vibrant red color like normal raw meat on the inside. This is how it looks, so I"m hoping my curing step was successful. I guess after I cook it if any parts on the inside turn gray that will mean the cure didn't penetrate everywhere.
I then began a 5 hour cold soak, changing the water hourly. I intended on 4 hours but didn't get home in time, and my housekeeper did one extra water change.
After patting the brisket dry, I seasoned very liberally with a minor variation on the mixture recipe from Todd G. In order to cover both sides, I used:
- 1 cup cracked black peppercorns
- 1/2 cup cracked coriander seeds
- 1/4 cup cracked mustard seeds
- 1/8 cup minced garlic (that's all the garlic I had on hand, and didn't want to use powder)
Originally I made half the above but barely got through the first side of the brisket, so I made another batch (the above measurements reflect both batches combined). I have no idea whether I applied too much rub, I guess I'll find out when I taste the final product. Note: I have a small electric processor and while it easily cracked the coriander and mustard seeds, it did nothing to the peppercorns. I had to take the mixture to a mortar and pestle to finish. In the future I would recommend grinding the peppercorns separately, so that the other items don't get over-ground going through both the processor and mortar/pestle.
I set the brisket on a tray, covered with plastic wrap, and weighted down with a combination of heavy garden planter trays and free weights. The plan is to leave it there for the next 19 hours, and tomorrow morning begin my smoke. (Note: after taking the photo below, I put a second tray on top of the plastic wrap, under the weights, hoping it would more evenly distribute the weight across the entire surface of the brisket).
After 19 hours the brisket was notably flatter, and pretty much even thickness across the entire brisket. I think using the tray to distribute the weight worked well, and should make the smoke go more evenly throughout the brisket.
At 8:15am I began my smoke at 200* on the middle rack of my SM045, using 3 oz. of hickory and 1 oz. of cherry. I have two remote probes in the meat and will watch carefully throughout the day.
To my delight, the two probes indicated identical temperatures throughout the entire smoke. I reached a bit of a plateau just before my target of 163F. Eventually I removed it from the smoker after it had been at 162F for a half hour. Here are some recorded temperatures during the 4 hour 45 minute smoke:
08:15 am Begin smoke (smoker at 200F after 25 minute preheat)
09:30 am 115F internal
10:15 am 136F internal
11:00 am 147F internal
11:30 am 154F internal
11:45 am 156F internal
12:00 pm 158F internal
12:20 pm 160F internal
01:00 pm 162F internal
The pastrami is now resting in foil and once it cools down I'll place it back in the refrigerator, weighted down, until tomorrow's steam.
After 14 hours weighted down in the refrigerator, the pastrami was taken out at 6:00 am to come to room temperature. When it was time to steam, I realized that due to the size of my miniature Thai oven there was no way a full size pan would fit inside. So I had no choice at this point but to cut the brisket in half. I'm not sure what, if any, effect this will have on the cut points, I guess I'll find out after the steam. However this gave me the opportunity to see whether the cure worked, as I expected pink meat throughout. It looks OK to me, perhaps not quite as pink as other photos I've seen online however that could be due to the color saturation of the photos. No matter, it looks safe. The meat is now inside the oven, on a cooling rack inside a brownie pan filled with an inch of filtered water. The whole thing is wrapped tightly with foil. I'll monitor temperatures hourly, targeting about 185F internal temperature.
After 3-1/2 hours in steam the internal temp hit 184F. I removed the pastrami and wrapped in foil to rest. The pastrami was refrigerated overnight (no weights this time).
The next day (Saturday) it was finally time to eat. The electric slicer worked great. I found that if I went too thin (around 2mm) a lot of the coating was taken off of the meat. The sweet spot was about 2.5mm. We ate sandwiches using a rye bread baked 24 hours earlier at my local bakery. He normally bakes rye only on Saturday but since I needed to take it out of town with me on Friday he did me a favor and made a loaf specially for me. We sliced the bread by hand. The rye was fantastic.
We grilled sandwiches on a grill pan. The sandwich included sliced pastrami which I steamed for about 60 seconds on the stove, sauerkraut, a bit of Swiss Cheese, and a schmeer of our doctored mustard (mostly yellow mustard with a dollop of mayo and ketchup, and a killer hot sauce we had shipped from the USA). Sorry to the pastrami purists, but I have to say the sauce was a perfect match with the meat.
Without a doubt this is the best sandwich I've eaten since moving to Thailand 7 years ago. In fact I loved it so much I ate two! My cousin said it tasted like Katz's, and everyone enjoyed it. It was a ton of work for sure, but it was fun along the way and eating it made the whole effort worthwhile. As I said at the top of this post, I have to thank everyone in the forum who contributed their experience and expertise.
Andy
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Photos of the process:
Brisket from the butcher:
After trimming, I mixed up the wet cure per Todd G.'s recipe:
Here is the brisket after 5 days of curing:
And then after a thorough rinse:
I cut into the meat to see if I noticed any problem with the curing process. Looks OK to me:
Pastrami seasoning liberally applied:
Seasoned pastrami weighted down in fridge until tomorrow's smoke:
After 19 hours under weights in the fridge:
Pastrami straight out of the smoker at 162F internal temperature:
Pastrami after being halved in order to fit into the oven for steaming:
Here is the slicer I bought:
Sliced pastrami:
Grilling the sandwiches:
The final product:
Absolutely delicious:
