My Pastrami w/ Q-view

[grothe]

Picked up a brisket early last week


Trimed off some of the fat cap...tried to leave about 1/4 inch


Brined it for 10 days in:
4 quarts of water
1 cup kosher salt
12 cloves crushed garlic
8 bay leaves


I was worried that my process wasn't right, so I picked up a corned brisket to compare with the one I brined


Soaked both in clean water to remove some of the salt, then rubbed with:
8TBS paprika
6TBS coriander
6TBS Brown sugar
6TBS CBP
4TBS ground mustard seeds
10 TBS minced garlic

Brisket I brined - cut in halve


Store bought corned brisket


Smoked w/ oak @230 till internal of 165


brined one sliced


Store bought sliced


Other than the color difference (brined one had no cure in it) I really couldn't taste a difference...both were d**n good!!!

Thanks for checkin this out.....mmmmm pastrami for lunch today!!

 

[mrsb]

Looks great Gene, another addition to the "to do list". Thanks for sharing

 

[solar]

Great job Gene!!

 

[curious aardvark]

good qview - going to try that rub as well. sounds like my kind of flavours :-)

Just out of curiosity. What was the price difference between the one you made (which was always going to be better lol) and the store cured one ?
ie: how cost effective is it to make your own ?

 

[grothe]

Store cured was over double the price (almost triple)!!!

I didn't want to spend the money, but wanted to be able to compare the two.

 

[cowgirl]

Great looking pastrami Gene! I like the way you compaired the two...thanks!!

 

[bb53chevpro]

Looks great. Nice comparison as well.

 

[richtee]

Nice! And of course shelf life of the cured Vs. uncured. You really did not notice ANY difference in flavor tho? Interesting... Both look excellent!

 

[grothe]

Cowgirl,chevpro - Thanks, I wanted to see if the brining was right

Richtee - There was no "Jump out at you" difference, and next time I'll cure. I was a little unsure of using it (haven't used cure before). I just got the sausage book you so rave about....big help!! Don't have it in front of me and couldn't even begin to spell his name!

 

[ronp]

Nice job Gene, both look good to me. I wish I had your slicer.

 

[grothe]

LOL!! Thanks Ron, yea I couldn't live without it....I'm not very good at slicing w/ a knife!

 

[justaplain]

Try some allspice in that rub,, Ithink you will like it and you might want to substitute for some of the others. bcs

 

[waysideranch]

Nice job there Gene.

 

[big game cook]

good job. both look very nice if i say so myself. i got a sclicer for $5 at a garage sale. a ss rivel electric. i havent got the chance to use it yet. but soon i hope. hope it works as gopod as that one does.

 

[div]

Looks good man....how long did u spend in front of the smoker with those ? lol

 

[roadrunr]

looks really good gene. i got one in the freezer for that purpose. cant wait to do mine....

 

[curious aardvark]

Okay just have to point this out.
Both were actually cured. Just slightly different processes.

Now I was going to bang on about nitrites being a recent thing - lol So I looked it up :-) They are not - I would have been wrong ;-)
http://www.graigfarm.co.uk/organic_b...am_curing.html
This is worth reading.
I'm not made of money so I would never buy graig farm meats - but they are a reputable company.

Also the paragraph right at the end of the page where it says they've only recently switched to adding saltpetre. Presumably they'd been using just salt and spices before.

Both curing methods are valid - and both have roots going back hundreds of years. Salt curing alone goes back thousands.
Also the nitrites seem mainly to be used as botulism inhibitors - so if you're not vacumn packing your stuff you probably don't need nitrites. Although the part about ham is interesting. (yes rich I'm thinking about it, I've got a couple of kilos of saltpetre around - but it's only 99.9 % pure. No way am I adding that to food lol. I'll look around for curing salt mixes. We live and learn and when we stop learning - we'd better be dead lol)

Anyway it's worth reading.

 

[grothe]

Thanks for the link aardvark

 

[curious aardvark]

been thinking about this. And it really onlyseems to be pork that needs the nitrites for curing.
Beef seems to be the same with or without. Withness your brisket and my biltong. Both beef cured without nitrites and at least as good as the commercial products that use nitrites.

Pork seems to have an odd response to salt - I have made pork biltong, tasted like salty gammon. Whereas every other meat I've biltonged hasn't tasted all that salty or changed in the way that pork changes.

it's a thought anyway :-)