Since today is St Patrick's Day, most supermarkets have had corned beef on sale for the past month. However, most supermarkets usually only stock the point cut which is the fattier cut that protects the leaner flat cut. I did manage to find just the flat cut at our local Target so I bought a small slab intending to smoke it to make pastrami. Both corned beef and pastrami start out the same at the delicatessen - fresh beef brisket is first corned or brined with various spices - coriander, allspice, peppercorns and mustard seeds plus pink salt or sodium nitrate to maintain the red color of corned beef - it's left in the brining solution for several weeks. In the case of corned beef, the brined brisket is then boiled and/or steamed then sliced for your sandwich. For pastrami, the corned beef is then smoked then steamed before it's sliced for your sandwich. When I purchase corned beef to make pastrami, I simply let the packager do the brining...
After 2 hours in the smoke box, it looks like the product above - its was only about 1.6 lbs - otherwise I would have smoked it up to 4 hours for a whole brisket...
I then wrapped the smoked product in heavy duty foil, added about a half cup of dark beer and securely wrapped it then placed it in the oven set at 250F for another 3 hours which ended up looking like the picture above...
I then sliced it and enjoyed my pastrami sandwich using Jewish rye bread (the lighter type of rye) and brown mustard. I skipped the steaming step as I did that last year but it almost melted the meat where I couldn't even carve slices... Since most markets carry corned beef year round, you too can make homemade pastrami any time of the year!
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