Try rubbing it with a combination of black pepper and coriander seed. That gives a more traditional pastrami flavor than you get with just pepper.
As for brining a brisket - to get pastrami you should use nitrites, not just salt. Without nitrites you won’t get the color and flavor of pastrami. Look for recipes that call for Prague Powder #1 or Instacure #1 (they’re the same thing). This is salt with a small amount of sodium nitrite mixed in. The reason to use this stuff is that to cure meat you need only a tiny amount of sodium nitrite, and it’s hard to measure a small enough amount if you use pure sodium nitrite. Also, if you use a dry rub instead of a brine it would be hard to get that tiny amount of sodium nitrite distributed evenly.
The advantage of making pastrami out of corned beef is that they’ve already done the brining for you. This saves a fair amount of work and time. A disadvantage is that the spicing of corned beef is a bit different from that of pastrami.
Pretty much. It’s not just brined - you’ll use a combination of herbs as well as the salt and water. My wife bought a mix from the grocery store. It might have simply been labeled “Pickling Spices” but I could be wrong about that. (In our house, she does her magic and then brings it to me for smoking.)
Essentially, you’re turning a fresh brisket into corned beef through the brine process (a couple of weeks), and then turn corned beef into pastrami by adding another layer of dry spices (a couple of days) and smoking it.
For those worried about the preserved meat scare, you can absolutely leave out the sodium nitrate. We’ve tried it with and without and found no difference in flavor, just in color. If you don’t mind corned beef/pastrami turning out brown, you can certainly skip the sodium nitrate.
Leaving out the sodium nitrite probably is safe for pastrami, especially if you hot-smoke it. I wouldn’t leave it out when making smoked sausage, but it’s probably OK for a solid piece of meat. I disagree, though, that it makes no difference in flavor. Cured meat has a flavor of its own, different from meat that’s just cooked.
Brining can contain herbs and other ingredients, as well (and quite often, if not usually, does). The main difference is the length of time, and the fact that curing is also supposed to preserve the meat.
[QUOTE=Jeff Lichtman;18849033I wouldn’t leave it out when making smoked sausage.[/QUOTE]
Well, if you’re just hot smoking it, you should be fine. But if you’re going to cold smoke it and hang it and dry it to keep it around for awhile, yeah, I’d leave in the nitrite. I guess it depends on what you mean by “smoked sausage.”
That said, I leave my curing salts in for flavor and color for things like corned beef. And as far as flavor goes, there’s science to back up that it does taste different.
The temperatures used in hot smoking are typically between 125 and 175 Fahrenheit. This isn’t high enough to kill the spores of Clostridium botulinum. The recommended temperature to destroy the toxin is 185 degrees Fahrenheit. So if you hot-smoke sausage without nitrites you’re taking the risk of botulism.
Actually, there’s some risk of botulism with any uncured smoked meat. It’s much lower with solid meats like brisket and pork shoulder than it is with sausage for the reason that any bacteria and toxins are on the outside of the meat, so they’re more easily destroyed.
Oh, we have slightly different uses of “hot smoking.” When I mean “hot smoking” sausages, I’m talking about normal BBQ ranges of like 200-250. You’re right in that 125-175 is strictly referred to as “hot smoking,” but I usually hear it in the less technical sense. So I meant it’s not necessary if you’re smoking a sausage on the barbecue at 200-250, which is what I tend to do with fresh sausages, but these are sausages meant to be eaten immediately, and not kept.
I’m looking for my pastrami recipe right now. I ‘stole’ it from the Kenny and Zuke’s guys when they were posting recipe test results on Chowhound several years ago. I buy the whole brisket and cut off the flat. I really want to find the navel plate but have yet to find a butcher that has it.
The cure is pretty standard, a wet cure with injection if the brisket is really thick. I’ll often buy the prepackaged pickling spice mix as a starter if I’m short on ingredients and time (eta: I always use pink salt. I’m not afraid of nitrites). Once it’s smoke time, the 50/50 coriander and pepper crust is a must.
The biggest secret though is the way you heat it for serving. Gotta steam it. Makes a huge difference.