Conference turris::cooks

According to The Joy of Cooking (a great reference for making a lot
of stuff totally from scratch), pastrami is hot-smoked corned beef.
On the assumption that you can't buy corned beef in Germany either,
I'll start with the corned beef recipe...

CORNED BEEF

Combine:

    4 quarts hot water
    2 cups coarse salt
    1/4 cup sugar
    2 tablespoons pickling spice
    1 1/2 teaspoons saltpeter (sodium nitrate)

When cool, pour over a 5 pound piece of beef brisket or tongue which
has been placed in a deep enameled pot or stoneware jar.

Add 3 cloves of garlic.

Weight meat to keep it submerged and cover the pot.

Cure in refrigerator 3 weeks, turning meat every 5 days.



PASTRAMI

To convert corned beef to pastrami it must be smoked.  You may also
want to experiment with a more elaborate marinade, substituting red
wine vinegar for half of the water and adding one or more of the
following:

    2 tablespoons ginger
    1 tablespoon coriander
    1 tablespoon paprika
    1 teaspoon pepper

After marination, commercial pastrami is cooked entirely by hotsmoking
at 320 degrees farenheit for 6 or 7 hours.  Because the relatively high
heat required is hard to maintain in domestic appliances, one of our
correspondents produces pastrami by attaching the marinated meat to
a continuously revolving rotisserie and smoking it outdoors over a
barbecue grill, using plenty of charcoal and oak and hickory chips.
This procedure takes about 10 hours and may or may not meet with complete
neighborhood approval.

re: .0

>I've looked all over this conference for a reference to
>Pastrami, which is a vareity of meat that I believe is
>of Italian origin.

James Beard says it originated in Romania.  That sounds quite plausible
to me, given its ubiquity in US Jewish delicatessens and the large
percentage of US Jews that are of eastern European descent.

Beard also gives slightly different directions.  This is from "American 
Cookery" (note that this is a larger quantity than the previous recipe) :

PASTRAMI

    20 pounds beef brisket
    2 cups salt
    1/2 cup sugar
    4 teaspoons saltpeter (sodium nitrate)
    1/2 cup ground ginger
    1/2 cup crushed pepper
    4 or 5 cloves garlic

Rub the meat well with the other ingredients and place it in an enamel
pan or porcelain or glass dish.  Cover with foil and on this place a 
board that can be weighted down.  Store in the refrigerator 20 days.
At the end of that time dry under a fan or in a warm dry room.
Then smoke 3 to 4 hours at 150 to 175 degrees.

To cook, cover with water and simmer 3 to 4 hours.  The less fat left
on the pastrami after cooking, the better.  If you do not wish to cook
all of the meat after smoking, it can be frozen.  Do not store in the
freezer more than 5 or 6 months.

    If you can't get anything in the way of ingredients or in this case 
    Pastrami I've always found that a trip to the local "" restaurant (in this
    case italian) will usually bring results,they'll either sell it to you
    or tell you where they get it. 
    Its gotta be easier than making it,sounds yummy though on the barbie.
    Geoff.

As -3 says, Pastrami is east European/Balkan in origin, as might expect from the
fact that it's an Americal deli staple. There's a Turkish/Greek variant called
pastourma. At least, I think it's a variant of pastrami: it's the same colour
and made of beef. Also seriously chewy.

I'm pretty sure that you can get pastrami in the fancy but disappointing food
market in the basement of Hertie in Munich, if you can bear to pay their prices.

Helen

I've been thinking about this some more, and i suspect the James Beard
recipe in .2 is probably more accurate than the Joy of Cooking one 
in .1, since all of the deli pastrami I've ever gotten definitely had
a "crust" on the outside.

Now that you've put the idea in my head, I think I'm going to try to
make some in the next few weeks, just to prove that I can.  (I make my
own beer, too.  It's a sickness. :-)

-Hal

Thnaks for some great suggestions - I'm definately going
to try and make my own.


Scott

    Can you tell me where to locate a porcelain crock, or some other
    suitable container to usefor this recipe?  I would like one that I can
    use to make pickles and such as well....in the greater Atlanta, GA
    area????
    
    	-VT

re: .7

>    Can you tell me where to locate a porcelain crock, or some other
>    suitable container to usefor this recipe?  I would like one that I can
>    use to make pickles and such as well....in the greater Atlanta, GA
>    area????
    
I'm planning on using an enamel-on-steel pot or roasting pan (or whatever
I can find that will fit in my refrigerator).  The enamel-on-steel stuff
is non-reactive and pretty inexpensive.

-Hal