wkw wrote: ↑Sat May 23, 2020 12:09
Is your pastrami cure posted here?
Thanks
Ken
I may have posted something a while back about making corned beef but I can't remember and I stink at search but if you are interested in trying this I'll give you the details. It may not be the "right" way of making it but it works for me.
When I started I was going to make corned beef using the dry equilibrium cure method.
With this, I chose to use 2.5% salt plus 0.25% cure 1 and on a whim I added some sodium erythorbate to insure good color.
To this I added 1.75% spice mix.
To make the spice mix in a frying pan I toasted
3 tablespoons black peppercorns
1 tablespoons brown mustard seeds
2 tablespoons yellow mustard seeds
2 tablespoons coriander seeds
to. bring out the fragrance and the oils. I then added this to
1 tablespoon smoked hot red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons allspice berries
1 tablespoon whole mace
2 broken cinnamon sticks
6 fresh bay leaves, microwaved for 10 seconds to release fragrance
2 tablespoons whole cloves
1 tablespoon ground ginger
I then combined all this and ran it through a spice grinder to form a fine powder.
Mixing 1.75% of this spice powder to 2.5% salt and 0.25% Cure 1 I rubbed the brisket down well with it and then vacuum sealed the bag and set it in the fridge for no less than 14 days. I did 20 because I can't stand seeing areas of uncured meat in the center of my stuff and patience will prevent this from happening.
Once this was done I placed the bag in a sous vide tank for 2.5 days I was going to do do 3 full days but I was fixing to hot smoke some chicken that day and I decided I'd make pastrami.
So with the change, I just removed the brisket from sous vide and patted it dry then coated it well with the normal pastrami spice mix black pepper and coriander then placed it in the smoker with the chickens and hot smoked it in a heavy smoke between 220-300F (mostly on the cooler end) for about 45 minutes to an hour until the exterior spice coating looked like it had set well and I felt it had picked up some smoke flavor,.
A lot of little things over time but nothing really that hard and in the end it was really worth the time.