Pastrami!! With Q-Vue!!

A few Rubens...


And this morning used some of the pastrami for beef bacon.  The pepper sure perked up after frying.  The eggs are free range eggs.  The smaller on is from a Silkie and the big one from a Buckeye.  Even with less greenery and few bugs and such this time of year the color of the yolks tell you those aren't mass produced eggs.  The beef bacon was terrifically crisp. 


This afternoon I got out our big slicer, a Hobart 2912. set it on its slowest automatic speed setting and sliced the rest of the pastrami and 36 pounds of buck board bacon.. After vacuum packing it all I sure was ready for a beer.


Lance

UPDATE: 02/07/19, Well we've been in our new northwest North Carolina home for a year and a half now and haven't made corned beef or pastrami since the move. The 2019 Carolina Gathering is coming up in a few months and I plan to take a pastrami brisket so I decided to get back in the saddle and make a test batch.

So, there is a new Restaurant Depot on Greensboro, NC that opened after we moved from New York and I hadn't noticed until a month ago. I had checked when we moved and the nearest one was two hours away. The new one is 45-50 minutes and is close to both the local VA medical clinic in Kearnersville and my welding gas supplier so I'll get more chances to stop in.

I stopped in yesterday to see what they had in the "Opportunity buy" section of the huge walk-in cooler and they had some Choice grade briskets marked down to 50% off. As a guy old enough to remember briskets at well under $1 a pound current prices make me cringe. The $3.40 regular price seems a bit steep but the $1.70 a pound sale price was OK so one followed me home.

It was 13.4 pounds (6.1 kg) in the bag and after trimming around 2 pounds 4 ounces of excess fat and a few dark spots off it weighed in at 10 pounds, 15 ounces. The lost pound was due to the bag and the juices in the bag. The trimmings got frozen for venison burger which we are over due in making this year....

So, 11 pounds it is. I mixed up a gallon of 40 degree salt and Cure #1 brine solution, pumped the brisket around 10% of it's "dry" weight with my injecting needle and sent it swimming in the balance of the brine. I'll flip it and check it each day for 4-5 days so and I used two one gallon zip lock bags of water to keep it submerged. If the bags leak I'll just at more salt and cure to balance the brine and give it another day. Now it's parked in the basement fridge until next week. If I were going to leave it without checking it I'd have filled the bags with brine.

I'll check back with more Q-Vue next week....

The saga continues....

The brisket spent a couple days more in the brine than I had planned due to a few scouting trips to some state parks to pick future campsites so the cured brisket got about three hours of soaking in a couple of changes of cold water to reduce the salt near the surface.

Then I toasted some yellow and brown mustard seeds and coriander seeds and added coarse cracked black pepper, granulated garlic and onion powder for the spice coating. After coating the brisket it was wrapped in plastic wrap and put back in the fridge for two days to let the spices work their magic.

In the past, smoking these on racks knocked a lot of the seasonings off so I used a pair of bacon hangers to hang the brisket in the MES 40. It barely fit and I hung it thick side up as the upper part of the smoker is the hottest. I won't do that again as the top inch or two dried out before the bottom end hit 165 degrees internal so in the future, smoking on the racks it is. Fortunately the moisture pretty much redistributed itself during the two day mellowing wait after smoking it.

As another "lesson learned" I've always lightly cracked the spice mix seeds after toasting using a little electric coffee grinder but left them whole this time in accordance with Marianski's advice. I won't do that again as every time we handled the pastrami we had little seed ball bearings rolling around.

Sooo.....

Out of the cure, cold water soaked and seasoned and it is ready for it's 2 day pre-smoking rest.



And hanging in the MES 40. It was still dark out and the flash on my tablet wouldn't cooperate. As you can see the brisket was just touching the drip tray above the wood chip box....





And out of the smoker at 165 degrees internal. It was smoked at 120 degrees with light to moderate smoke for about 2 hours then I ramped the heat up slowly (without more smoke) to 185-190 degrees until the pastrami was cooked to the 165 degree target. I weighed it when it came out of the smoker but can't find the note although a bit under 10 pounds sticks in my (alleged) mind. Now to wrap it and let it mellow for two days....except for an occasional nibble....or two.....or......





We've made Reuben sandwiches two nights and made a killer corned beef hash using the pastrami yesterday. Now it's time to slice and bag it, take some to the neighbors and vacuum bag the rest. The gentle heat kept the fat nice and white....







And the payoff is headed to the freezer....




Thanks for coming along on the journey. Have a great day and we wish you many happy smokes!

Inspired by my early childhood in New York City I steamed some pastrami and a slice of Gouda and plunked it on dark rye for lunch.

Nancy took some to two close friends next door and across the road. The couple next door are having Reubens tonight....