Anyone Ever Make Pastrami

Hi, Everyone. Over the weekend I became obsessed with Pastrami (blame Guy Fieri binge watch session). So hard to find good pastrami anywhere and when you do it’s so good.

Then I learned it’s just smoked brisket with a little (ok a lot) of prep beforehand, but nothing I shouldn’t be able to do myself with my new toy, the Kamado Joe. But there’s like no one talking about doing it yourself (a few YouTube videos, but not much)

So has anyone on this site ever done it and if so, any recommendations/heads ups/best practices before I get started. Think I’m going to pick up a prime from Costco mid-week and start a 5-10 day brine in advance of a next weekend (3/19) smoke.

Any/all advice appreciated.

Thanks.

Mike

I’ve never cooked it but you can mail order pastrami from Katz’s .

I’ve made pastrami 7 or 8 times now using the chefsteps recipe which is pretty fantastic. They use bone-in plate short ribs which are really rich and amp up the flavor quite a bit. If you’ve got the right size cambro to hold multiple slabs of ribs for pickling I would do two or three just because of the length of the time it takes to make pastrami from start to finish.

I’ve done it a couple of times including yesterday. There are loads of recipes online, but the simplest way (and the way I did it yesterday) is to take a corned beef, soak in water for 8 hours (to desalinate the brisket), smoke to 165, refrigerate and then steam for 2-3 hours, Katz’s style.

Better call Saul.

His Wagyu pastrami at Bazaar was legendary.

Just one word……. Langer’s.

Their whole pastrami requires about 3 hours of boiling to finish. The results can be outstanding and provided you order at least $100 (for free shipping), the cost per pound is considerably less than getting a sandwich on-site.

If you can get past his quirkiness this is a good video.

Have made a traditional pastrami from brisket a couple of times. Great taste but I have yet to master the bark. Frequently make duck pastrami from store bought duck breasts, a much quicker process and just as tasty. As mentioned prior, lots of info on line.

This is also my method, they sell whole corned beef briskets locally.Have had great results!

This is one of my recent favorite YT chefs. His bread/baking skills are also off the hook and he goes the extra mile with most of his recipes, but often showing alternative methods to shave off some time if you don’t want to do everything from scratch.

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Ewww, call the Deli Police.

Aren’t YOU the deli police?

Slab BBQ makes their own killer pastrami. It’s on Mondays only though…

Lousy picture, but here’s what we had last night, after we steamed for 2 hours (which was more than enough time)

Is that a dog food bowl? I don’t necessarily have a problem with it-I’m just asking questions.

I make Landreth’s recipe. It’s a whole process but the results are unbelievable. Sometimes I’ll bring a whole pastrami flat to one of my hockey games – the guys go crazy for it in the locker room.

I am just finishing up corning(pickling) a whole brisket original plan was to finish 1/2 as corned beef and the other half as pastrami.

Question: Timing has gotten a bit crunched- If I wanted to push out the pastrami half.

What would be the effect of Freezing that half and defrosting/smoking/steaming when ready

Or how long can I keep the corned (not cooked) piece in the fridge?

Or other options I am missing?

I cure my pastrami for 2 weeks. I’m thinking you could leave it for quite a while but not sure how far I’d go. I don’t think any bugs could actually live in there.