First Pastrami, any tips?

Now you're hooked!

In addition to Ron's good advice, I strongly suggest reading Brother Thirdeye's blog on Pastrami.

http://playingwithfireandsmoke.blogspot.com/1996/05/beef-pastrami.html

Im in the middle of prepping for my first pastrami. I started with raw brisket and cured it myself into corned beef. I put the rub on on Monday and plan on throwing it in my smoker either thursday night after work or early Friday morning!

+1 on the soak out. The first 2 pastrami I did were a bit salty, I've soaked out for at least 8 hours on each since and they have been much better.

Hi Cheese said:

Nice! Can't wait to see your results! I'm going to try one more store bought corned beef, larger in size and a better rub. If it comes out good (how can it not, lol) I might try starting with a fresh brisket.

Oh, and BTW - my wife was pretty ticked off I ate the rest. :mrgreen: She actually seriously yelled at me. :blah::blah:

Click to expand...

The biggest issue with the fresh brisket is the time and cost. Don't get me wrong if this turns out right im doing it again. But the spices alone costed me approx 120-150. Now granted I am a little retarted and for my first time making this decided to make it for about 40 people so I am making 70lbs worth.

I have always live by the saying "Go big or go hoe"!!! lol, I should have pics up by the end of the weekend

Make your own corn beef

Make your own. It is seriously easy and will be the best tasting one you've ever had I bet. The cool thing is, you don't even need to use brisket. Get another fatty, stringy, sinewy, cut that is on sale (like beef short ribs for example) and you can corn and smoke it as well.

All you need is some space in your fridge, a plastic bag or container to hold your meat, and some pink salt (cure #1) or Morton's Tender Quick and whatever spices you want. Brine it earlier in the week and smoke it on the weekend with a pepper/coriander rub (traditional) or make up your own.

You can control the salt content if you do it yourself and it won't be super salty like the store brands. Also, you'll get more bang for your buck. Store bought corned beef in those cryo-packs is injected and placed in a salt brine so that up to 1/3 of the weight in the package is just salt water solution.

There are recipes abound on the interweb on how to do this, I use my modified version of Micheal Ruhlman's.