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…