Homemade MONTREAL STYLE SMOKED MEAT on the BBQ!!! Booyah!

Foodies,

Today marks an amazing accomplishment and milestone for me in my foodiedom as well as my cultural background – I have successfully created my very own authentic (and possibly more authentic than “authentic” but we’ll get to that below) MONTREAL STYLE SMOKED MEAT on the BBQ!!!

i was raised in Montreal and grew up on the stuff. Love it to death. I make it a point to go out for smoked meat for dinner at least once every time I am with my family. I have always wondered about whether or not it’s possible to make my own. I finally decided to go ahead and do it.

This was a total accumulated four days worth of labor, more if you count the initial research and shopping. But is a labor of love truly labor? Not in this case. But let’s start at the beginning.

Once I decided this would be my first BBQ project of the year, the first step was to find a good recipe. I found one at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/brewburgers-old-fashioned-montreal-smoked-meat-recipe.html and another at Montreal Smoked Meat Recipe :: The Meatwave. The former takes a brining approach. The latter takes a curing approach. With no particular indication as to why one approach would be better than the other, I decided arbitrarily to do the cure method.

The next step was shopping. The most difficult part of this process was procuring proper pink curing salt that had a proper 6.25% nitrate content. I ended up finding some at Williams-Sonoma for an ungodly $11.99 CDN for a little 125 gram jar. I ended up getting two. Ironically, I would later find today at the St. Lawrence Market downtown while shopping for cheese a bulk store that sells the stuff at a mere $2.99 CDN for 100 grams. Oh well, at least I know where to go next time.

Once the salt was procured, I then bought a 2.5 kg beef brisket (~ 5 lbs for you non-Metric Yankee heathens) and a bag of standard pickling spice mix. Once I got everything home, I then proceeded to mix a cure of the following ingredients based upon the two recipes above:

• 2 TB pink curing salt
• 6 TB coarse rock sea salt
• 1 TB brown sugar

I coated the brisket on both sides with the cure and then coated it all again with the pickling spices. I then placed this in an oblong Pyrex pan and cover and let it cure on the bottom shelf of my fridge for 4 straight days, flipping the brisket twice a day at morning and at night. The brisket actually turns a very unattractive gray-reddish color during this process which made me wonder if I’d messed up somehow and managed to contaminate the meat. That would turn out to be an unnecessary fear.

Then came the desalination bath as per the cure recipe above, a move I was quite skeptical about. I took the brisket out of the pan and let it soak in a large pot full of clean fresh water for 2 hours, changing the water every 30 minutes. I actually tasted the water at each change to see if I cold detect the presence of salt indicating that some osmosis had occurred. Truthfully, I couldn’t tell a difference which made me pretty skeptical of this step’s necessity. Either it doesn’t work or requires a hell of a lot longer than 2 hours for any desalination to occur – the brisket had been curing for 4 whole days, after all.

Nevertheless, it was time to proceed. I rinsed off the brisket and then coated it with some homemade Montreal steak spice as well as the reserved pickling spices from the cure. I then smoked this on my BBQ for 4 straight hours at 200 degrees Celsius with a mixture of maple and hickory smokewood.

When done smoking, I had what I consider to be a beautiful New York style Pastrami – a tender and juicy brisket completely red on the inside proving that the curing salt had done its job but my work was not over yet. The final steaming portion had yet to be done.

Before taking this final step, out of curiosity I cut off a tiny slice from the corner and tasted the smoked brisket. Surprisingly, it didn’t really taste like smoked meat at all – it tasted like a fresh salami. I mean, exactly like a fresh slice of salami. If I’d closed my eyes, no way I could tell the difference in taste. Again, I wondered if I had somehow screwed this up – it actually tasted really good, it just tasted like salami instead of smoked meat.

Nevertheless, I pressed on by placing the now completely smoked brisket back in the Pyrex pan, pouring in enough boiling water to just barely cover the bottom of the pan, tented it with tin foil, and set inside a 300 degree oven to steam.

And this is when the magic happened. Because it was the hot steaming, not the cold water bath after the curing, that ended up desalinating the brisket. The hot steam drew moisture out of the brisket and with it went a great deal of the salt. This also had the effect of shrinking and contracting the brisket as a whole as well as softening the marbled fat inside the brisket.

So how does it taste? Exactly like what smoked meat brisket from Montreal should taste like. One tip to all of you who ever plan to visit Montreal to get some – NEVER ORDER LEAN SMOKED MEAT. Always get some medium or fatty smoked meat, because the fat will add texture to the meat and temper the saltiness of the meat as well as the spiciness of the rub and pickling spices.

Oh right, the taste. Absolutely perfect and authentic. The fatty parts were perfect, the fat blending in with the spicy meat perfectly and the smoke falvor was palpable on the aftertaste. The lean parts still tasted very much like a hot smoked salami, albeit a lot less salty now, but anyone who has ever had lean smoked meat from Montreal knows that’s pretty much how it tastes. These are better off being chopped up and throw into a spaghetti sauce or eaten in a sandwich where the rye bread and mustard will again temper the saltiness.

So why do I say this is more authentic than “authentic” smoked meat from Montreal? Because I recently found out via Internet research that apparently the more famous smoked meat places in Montreal do not:

• Smoke their own meat from scratch but instead buy it wholesale from commercial suppliers like Levitz
• Cure or brine their smoked meat properly but rather inject the meat directly with cure including liquid smoke flavoring
• Cook their smoked meat in a hardwood smoker but rather just roast them in a large commercial oven

If any and/or all of these are true, it would rather ironically leave Toronto as the one place left in Canada to procure authentic Montreal style smoked meat – from me. This info certainly makes me think twice about getting it anymore in Montreal although I will have to at least once to compare to my own.

Regardless, I am quite happy with the finished smoked meat brisket and its authenticity. That was a long four days but it was so worth it. Wonder what wine goes with smoked meat? Hmmm… I’m thinking this needs a sparkling wine…

Tran…Great post. I was born in St. Laurent…left Montreal in '79. Been several years since my last visit, but Snowden and Orange Julip are must stops for me. Will be in Toronto in May…I hope to make it to Centre Street Deli.

Are you an Expos fan? Great new book out…Up Up and Away…bringing back a lot of great memories.

Hey Adam, my dad was always a huge Expos fans and we watched every weekend game on CBC on TV or listened on the radio by poolside up at the country cottage we used to own in the Laurentians with Dave Van Horne’s inimitable voice commentating.

This was during the glory days of the 80’s when Warren Cromartie, Andre Dawson, Gary Carter, Chris Speier, Tim Wallach, and Tim Raines were on the batting team and Scott Sanderson, Steve Rogers and Bill Gulluckson were leading the pitching team as they made their attempt to make it to the world series via the NL Championship but just barely lost out to the LA Dodgers after beating the equally impressive Philadelphia Phillies to get there.

IMHO, the beginning of the end came when they traded Gary Carter away to the Mets. After that, they lost their place as Canada’s baseball team in the hearts of the fans to the Toronto Blue Jays. In the 90’s they might’ve been world champions but for the damned 1994 baseball strike. Had that happened, things probably would be a lot different today. Ah, memories…

Schwartz’ Deli is looking for you!

Thanks Tran. My mother - from Winnipeg - is always talking about Canadian smoked meat. Now I understand the idea. I will make this shortly. One question - you said you smoked it at 200 degrees CENTIGRADE. That is extremely hot. Are you sure you didn’t mean FARENHEIT for us Yankee heathens.

Jay, you are correct I got my terminology wrong. It is 200 degrees Farenheit you should be smoking with. 200 degrees Celsius will turn your brisket into a lump of carbon in no time! Sorry if I caused confusion.

Glad you like the idea and are willing to try it out. The most important aspect of this process is that, like corned beef and pastrami, you are essentially making one giant pickle out of your beef brisket first before you even think about smoking it.

This is the major difference between real Montreal smoked meat and the equally delicious but completely different smoked briskets in the “It’s Time to Smoke a Brisket” thread. I love doing that as well, but it’s a completely different food item.

I think of Montreal style smoked meat as a version (using brisket instead of the fattier “navel” cut) the original way pastrami was made: dry rub for a week at least, smoking with wood smoke, steaming. I make that a couple times a year. (There is a good recipe in the “Mile High” deli restaurant (NY) cookbook.)


To me the pastrami and smoked meat are different from corned beef, which is more “pickled”. And, most “modern” delis (like Katz’s supplier) do use wet brines and brining equipment, so the evolved difference between the two is less. I’m told that no one uses wood smoke anymore due to regulations, but rather the smoke from the meat dripping in the closed container as it cooks. (I think Schwartz’s does use wood smoke; Mile High does.)

The other “major” difference between Monteal smoked meat and smoked brisket is that the former uses cure (nitrates/nitrites) and is steamed before eating. The smoked brisket uses no preservatives and is slow roasted the whole way, with the smoke. The color is totally different as a result. http://www.followmefoodie.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Shwartzs-Montreal-Smoked-Meat-3.jpg

THAT was a great read. Thx.