3/2/2021 – Kelley and the girls are arriving in 12 days and will be here for Spring Break week. She talks often about the Rueben Sandwiches we made with my homemade Pastrami in Houston. So, this prep will follow the last one that is the post Corn Beef-Pastrami–5th Time. Hard to believe that was in 2017.
This time it is made with two small points bought trimmed from Winn-Dixie. I did a bit more trimming to remove some heavy hard fat layers but not much.
The Curing Calculator provided the following that was mixed and shaken on evenly.
- Meat – 2229 gm (5.06 lbs.)
- Cure #1 @6.25% – 5.56 grams – Measured with small accurate digital scale.
- Salt @ 2% – 39.36 grams
- Sugar at 1% – 22.29 grams
- Total – 2296.22 grams
Then mixed the following and sprinkled it evenly over the meat and on top of the above cure & seasoning.
- 1 Tbsp garlic powder – (wish I had had granulated and used 1½ T)
- ¼ tsp Ground Cloves
- 3 Bay Leaves chopped small
- 1 tsp rounded ground Coriander
- ½ tsp rounded Yellow Mustard Seeds
- 1 tsp thyme
- 1½ Tbsp cracked black pepper.
Put them into separate one-gallon zip lock bags and into the outside refrigerator to cure for two weeks; i.e. until Tuesday, March 16th.
3/16/2021 – Pastrami Rub
Prepared and rubbed on the Pastrami Rub made of:
- Part 1 – Roasted spices
- 2 Tbsp coarse ground black peppercorns
- 1 Tbsp Coriander Seed, cracked
- 1 tsp Allspice Berries, cracked
- 1 tsp Yellow Mustard Seed
Put the seed part of the rub (above) into a hot skillet and roasted while stirring until very fragrant. Then put them into a heavy glass measuring cup and added:
- Part 2
- 1 tsp heaping dry Thyme Leaves
- 1 tsp heaping of ground Bay Leaves
- 1 tsp Juniper Berries, chopped in half to release flavor and improve distribution
- 1 Tbsp dry minced Onion
- 1 Tbsp dry granulated Garlic
Mixed well then sprinkled on all sides of the two pieces of corned beef. Put the rubbed meat back in their zip-lock bags and back in the refrigerator for about 20 hours; i.e. St. Patrick’s Day. Note – Did not rinse off the initial rub/cure. Added this rub on top of the rub/cure mixture as done before.
3/17/2021 – The Smoke and Final Cook in the Oven
3/17/2021, 9:00 AM – Put them into the Weber Kettle with the SNS insert and pan and about 10 partially burning Kingsford Original Blue Bag charcoals in one end of the SNS. Added 2 small pecan limb chunks for smoke. Note – The 2017 smoke resulted in the point being “overdone” so we thought, but at the correct internal temp per the recipe being followed then.
The thinking for this cook is that previous one did not cook long enough or get hot enough to cause the colagen to break down. This cook will be at 210° to 240° bringing the internal temp up slowly.
1:00 PM – Removed the pieces from the smoker and wrapped in aluminium foil with ACV. Put them into the oven preheated to 250° with the temperature probe set to turn off at 190°.
