Pastrami
Pastrami is one of my favorite things to eat on a sandwich when done right. Ever since getting my traeger smoker I’ve been wanting to try brining a whole brisket and then smoking it for that perfect smoked meat bite I crave. I stumbled across a video by Bradly Robinson on his Chuds BBQ youtube channel that explained the process for making home NY Style pastrami which is what I used for this recipe.
The Brine
For the brine he gave the following mix in his video:
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1 gal Water
350g Kosher Salt
350 Brown Sugar
42g Pink Salt
10g Coriander
15g Mustard Seed
15g Black Peppercorn
3 Bay Leaves
3 Cinnamon Sticks
5g Red Pepper Flakes
4g Juniper Berries
4g Allspice
2g Cloves
60g Crushed Garlic
The Rub
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* 2 parts pepper.
* 2 parts ground coriander.
* 1/2 part mustard powder
* 1/2 part garlic powder
The Process
Some Note’s I took while watching Brad’s video:
- Brine the brisket for 7 - 14 days in the fridge. Flip the meat occationally throughout the process to make sure you get even coverage. This tip worked out well. I did not end up with any spots on my brisket that were discolored or missing brine.
- When you’re ready to cook, rinse the meat off in the sink. You want to make sure all the salt, brine, spices, berries, etc are removed from the outside meat.
- Pat the meat dry. It doesn’t have to be bone dry but definitely use some paper towels and remove the exess moisture from the brine and rinsing process. This is also a good opportunity to do any last minute trimming before the rub. On my particular cut there were some bits of fat that had plumped up that I trimmed away so as not to have them burn off on the pit.
- The Rub! You can go a bit heavy on the rub if you want because there’s no salt in the rub. All the salt comes from the brining process itself.
- To cook I put this on the pit at 225 degrees fahrenheit, fat side up. I was using oak pellets in the smoker and Iw let it cook at that temperature until the internal temp on the flat read 170 on my probe.
- Once it reached 170 degrees internal I used a Foil boat (still fat side up) and I also turned the heat up to 300 degrees until it reachde an internal termperature of 200 degrees.
- Brad recommends a long heated rest for his smoked meats. I did this as well for this cook, over night (approximately 12 hours) in the oven at it’s lowest setting (170 degrees fahrenheit for my oven)
- Once the cook and rest process were completed I took the brisket and put it in the fridge to cool off completely and firm up before slicing it on my deli slicer.
Results
Honestly I was rather shocked this recipe worked the first time out. The flavor is really good. I chose to brine my brisket for 14 days. When I do this again in the future I think I’ll only do it for 5-7 instead. I feel like its a bit too salty for my taste and I’m hoping if I brine it less time it will help with that.
Another take away we had was with the rub. The flavor was really nice and in the video Brad says you can go heavy and not worry about over doing it. I’d say there is definitely a way to over do it, we went extremely heavy with the rub and while it tastes good I would absolutely prefer a lot less of it on the outside. It also made slicing messy because the bark was just sliding off.
All of that aside this was an excellent recipe especially for a novice like myself and the results are really delicious.
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