Making Pastrami

My first attempt at homemade pastrami.  I purchased a fairly inexpensive chunk of beef.  I could not identify the cut.  It is one of those pieces that they often call London Broil - meaning it is just a piece for a roast.  Beef brisket has gotten way too expensive. 

I followed the recipe in Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn, Charcuterie: The craft of salting, smoking, and curing. 2005.  I used their recipe for the bacon I made around Christmas.  I was out of town and the meat was in the brine one more day than recommended.  I smoked the meat for 3 hours with a pepper-coriander rub.   Then I wrapped it in foil and put it in a 180 degree oven until it reached 160 degrees.  (It was about 120 F when I took it out of the smoker.) 

The pastrami was very good but a bit salty.  Perhaps the extra day was one day too many.  I cut the meat in thin slices and put it in simmering water for 2 minutes to get some of the salt out and then put it on a hot griddle.  Slap on some Swiss cheese, add a little water, cover to melt the cheese.  Put that sucker on one of my homemade hoagie rolls.  A little course ground mustard and kosher dill slices and you are good to go.

I tried a new recipe for the hoagie rolls.  The recipe calls for a little citric acid and uses part whey and part water.  The rolls came out very nicely with a slightly chewier crumb and perhaps a hint of tartness.  Overall, it was a success.

To get the whey, I made a batch of mozzarella cheese.  I am going to try and make ricotta out of the left over whey.

 Slices cut from the pastrami.

The sandwich looked better.  The lighting makes it look a bit pale.

 

It was good!  

 I'm thinking I will have to try and make a bacon, pastrami, cheese burger.  I will make the buns to go on my homemade pastrami and bacon.  Looks like I need to start learning how to make more types of cheese -  Swiss cheese.