For Sunday dinner today, we had fresh made smoked pastrami served on a freshly made rye bread. We haven't had this since Katz's Delicatessen in New York City. So this past week, I went up to Sam's Club in San Marcos and purchased a Groebbels corned beef. On Thursday, I prepared rub made of freshly ground coarse black pepper and corriander and a few other things and rubbed the corned beef. I placed this in the refrigerator overnight. On Friday morning, I fired up the Yoder Pellet Smoker and placed a pot of water in there while it came up to 225 degrees in temperature. I cooked it until we had a stall at 147 degrees internal temperature at which time, I placed it into a foil baking dish and covered this with aluminum foil. I also added chicken broth and some teriakyi and worcestorshire sauce to this as well. I removed the meat when it hit an internal temperature of 205 degrees. As you know as corned beef is just a cut of brisket corned. So the process is as if you are cooking a brisket. Just to let you know, it took 10 hours to complete this process as the flat brisket was a little over 4 lbs.
Today, I steamed the brisket for serving temperature. What I did is got one of our roasting pans and placed a grate inside and filled the bottom with water. I placed the meat on the grate and covered the meat with tin foil to create a steamer effect.
This morning, I began the process to make a home made New York/Jewish style Rye Bread with caraway seeds just like the real thing. Here it is missing one end as my wife likes hot fresh bread and butter.
Here's a few pictures of the pastrami and how it came out and served in a sandwich.
It was really good. And it was nice to treat ourselves to something that we have not had in a long time. My wife is going to go out tomorrow and pick up some sauer kraut and swiss cheese to make reuben sandwiches for dinner.
The days of a good Jewish Deli are gone so I guess we have to make do for ourselves if we want a taste from the past.
Have a great day!
Ed
