Last time I did corned beef to pastrami, this is the recipe/method that I used and it came out pretty tasty.
5-6 lb beef flat cut brisket - trimmed to 1/8" fatcap
on the other side is a membrane, remove it
Cure the beef.
Soak it to desalinate. (At this point it's corned beef)
Rub.
Smoke/cook
Steam it and serve. (At this point it's pastrami)
The brine for curing the brisket
3 quarts water
1 cup Morton's coarse kosher salt (NOT table salt)
1/4 cup pink curing salt (known as curing salt or prague powder- NOT Himalayan pink salt. Ordered at
Amazon)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light or dark brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 tbsp pickling spice
1 tbsp whole coriander seeds (ordered from
Amazon)
1 tbsp whole yellow mustard seeds
4 cloves garlic (just smash 'em)
To make the brine, fill a medium to large stockpot with 3 quarts water.
Add the kosher and pink salts, granulated and brown sugars, honey,
pickling spice, coriander and mustard seeds, and garlic.
Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring often to fully dissolve the
salt and sugar in the water.
Immediately remove the pot from the heat once the brine boils.
Add 3 quarts ice cold water to a 2-gallon or larger food-safe
container (I used an old fashioned enamel turkey roaster pan - yep, one of the old blue speckled suckers)
that will fit in your refrigerator. Pour the brine into the container
and place the container, uncovered, in the refrigerator until
completely cool, stirring once in a while.
To cure the beef, put the trimmed brisket into the food safe container and pour the
COOLED curing liquid over the meat to cover. If the meat wants to float just put a
dinner plate on it and that should be enough to submerge it.
Into the fridge for 7 days. Flip the brisket each day and also stir the liquid
and spices up.
At the end of the cure, remove brisket from liquid and rinse well. Now, put
the brisket back into the container and cover with fresh cold water and soak
for a day. This is to remove a good portion of the salt.
Now remove from water and rinse it again.
At this point, it's Corned Beef
If you want to take the corned beef to pastrami:
Apply spice rub liberally and pat onto entire surface of the brisket.
use about 4TBLS per square foot and press it into the surface to adhere it.
Apply less to thinner parts of the brisket
Rub ingredients:
2 tablespoons fresh black pepper (I used 4 and it was very strong until I scraped the outer coating of spices off)
2 tablespoons whole coriander
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon paprika
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon mustard powder
Make sure things are ground into a pretty fine powder. Start by grinding up the pepper and Coriander and then
blend in the remaining ingredients.
Now, back into the fridge UNCOVERED for a minimum of 2 days.
Get the smoker to 225dF and smoke the corned beef until it
reaches 150dF. At that point, the temp will probably "stall". You can do
the same thing on a charcoal grill as long as you can regulate the temp.
Probably need to put lit lump charchoal (Please, NO briquettes! Lump charcoal at a minimum)
on one side of the grill and figure out how to get the temp on the other to 225 tops which
may be tough. I suppose you could do it in the oven at 225 You could go even lower temperature.
Low and slow would really be the key.
When the interal temp of the meat is at 150ish, remove and now move on to the steaming step.
Next step is steaming. Yes... steaming.
If you have a bamboo or metal steamer in which the meat will fit, you can use that. If not, you can make a
steamer by putting a wire rack in a baking pan. If necessary you can sit the rack on wads of foil to keep
it out of the water. Line your rack with foil and do not slice the meat first.
If you made a steamer with a baking pan, cover it with foil. If the pan is steel don't let the foil touch the meat.
The salt, the water, the steel, and the aluminum can interact and create electrical charges that can melt the foil!
I used an electric skillet with a rack sitting on aluminum foil so the meat was out of the water.
Steam the meat until it reaches 203dF internally and pull it. From there you can slice it VERY THIN and serve on
sandwiches or whatever you want.
First time using the cure calculator we will see how it goes.
