pastrami

[Habanero Smoker]

There are two curing methods contained in my recipe. If you use the dry cure, as it is written, you won't have a problem with saltiness. I use that recipe almost all the time, and only used the wet brine a few times during development; in my early days of curing. I'll probably be doing another wet brine test in a few weeks; but using a less expensive cut of beef. I'm going to drop the added salt to 7 ounces. So including the additional salt from the cure will give the brine about 10 ounces of salt per gallon.

[_Bear_]

They are the Jacobson's, Otto and Cathleen (Kay) were my aunt and uncle and Eric and his family are still there, but I think they sold off the dairy operation. I remember stuking hay and shooting coyotes on the farm as a kid. I spent many summers there.


I will probably stick to the dry cure unless I hear of a better method from you Hab. Thanks again

[manfromplaid]

bear  we know the family, not well but my kids went to school with a bunch of them. not the dairy my wife worked at...  I used the wet cure due to the size of my brisket at first. it was long and I cut it in half to fit in my brine container.. which means I could of done the dry cure on 2 pieces. since I want to use the pastrami in the fridge I went ahead and made up a black bean soup for my supper. blending 1/2 the beans makes it nice and thick and there is enough fluids to smooth out the extra salt in the pastrami. thanks for the info habs.

[TwistedSanity]

Thank you all for the info on this post.

I have copied it all over to a word doc to goin my recipe binder.   I will be giving this a try next summer.

[Habanero Smoker]

Make sure you include the changes that have been posted in this thread. I mainly cure just the flats. If you have a whole brisket, I would separate the two muscles. It's best to either cure the flat, and the point separately. I saw that my local Walmart is selling whole briskets for about $3.50/lb. They have a huge fat cap, but for that price I may just pick one up.

[TwistedSanity]

Will do :-)

[manfromplaid]

this is an older post but since I recently made another pastrami using the same process I thought I would do an update. (no photos) started out with a seven pound brisket. same brine, in for 6&1/2 days. because the first one was salty I let this one soak in cold water much longer. changed out the water 3 times total soak almost 2 hours. oak for 3 hours at 225 then transferred to my pellet grill at 275 until temp was 165, wrapped in foil till 205 into the house to cool. fridge overnight and sliced thin. used 1 lb for the same soup (its awesome so try it) salt level was perfect. just used a simple pastrami rub I looked up on the net.

[manxman]

Excellently timed post manfromplaid. ;) My local butcher has brisket flats on special at the moment, I have a couple in the fridge and your post saves me some searching on the Bradley forum whilst this thread also provides the link to Oldman's recipe site.

Plan on wet curing one for pastrami and having never made the soup that is now on my list of things to do!  :)

[Habanero Smoker]

I haven't made that soup in a while - I almost forgot about it.

This post also reminded me it's been a while since I've cured anything. I'm going to keep my eye out for a flat.