Homemade Pastrami

Wow. Who knew it could be so easy to make your own high-quality homemade pastrami? This recipe made a lean, slightly spicy, smoky-tasting (from the smoked paprika) pastrami that certainly could hold its own with anything I’ve ever mail-ordered from New York. At less than $11/pound, it’s fairly economical, too (Katz’s Deli charges $12.50 a pound, unsliced, plus shipping).

I purchased a 3 1/2-pound flat-cut brisket from Whole Foods and mixed up the brine mostly with ingredients I already had in my kitchen. The only unusual ingredient is the pink salt or Prague Powder #1, which is salt and 6% sodium nitrite. I got it online from The Spice House.

I brined the meat in a large ceramic bowl (it wasn’t quite 2 gallons, but it was close enough) and weighted the meat with a plate. The brine is rather pungent and I was glad to get it out of the fridge after the five-day brining period! After removing the meat from the brine, I coated it with the spice mixture and, after 2 hours—during which time the meat came to room temperature and my daughter made 3 batches of cookies—I put the brisket in the oven, fat side up (not sure why the instructions would say fat side down), and cooked it for 3 1/2 hours, or exactly 1 hour per pound. At this point, the thickest part of the meat was 200°F.

The result was sublime: tender, spicy, and delicious. My only critique is that I found it a touch too salty and wonder if you could cut back a bit on the kosher salt. A tip: The meat is much easier to cut after it has cooled in the refrigerator. I would recommend cutting it no thicker than 1/8 inch. I made a deli-style sandwich with Polish rye bread, deli mustard, melted Swiss cheese, and, of course, the pastrami.

It’s pretty hard to believe that we cooked up homemade pastrami. Really. We made pastrami. Pastrami is something that you buy at a deli. But we really made pastrami. Now it’s not something that would be easy for just anyone to make. You need time, and, if you want to smoke it like we did, you need a smoker. And patience. If you have all of those things, and if you like pastrami, this is the recipe for you.

We liked slicing it far thinner than the recipe called for. We made an assortment of different sandwiches with the pastrami. Pastrami on rye with cole slaw and Russian dressing (where I grew up, this was called a “Pastrami Special”). And then there’s our version of a Reuben, with pastrami, sauerkraut, Comté cheese, and Dijon mustard on rye, grilled till golden with melty goodness.

The recipe makes quite a lot of pastrami. We’re going to seal the rest in packages and freeze them so that the pastrami can be enjoyed in the future. I’m looking forward to it.

I made the oven version of this homemade pastrami recipe. I’ve had pastrami sandwiches at several of the best delis in New York City. This pastrami was very comparable in terms of flavor and smokiness.

Never having cured meat before, I followed the instructions in the recipe precisely and the pastrami turned out perfectly. Once the brine was made, it was simply a matter of turning the meat and stirring the brine once a day for 5 days. I didn’t have pink curing salt in my pantry and so I ordered it online. The 4-ounce package provided enough for this recipe plus some leftovers, so unless you plan to do a lot of curing, purchase the smallest amount that is offered.

To emulate the full New York experience, I served it on good rye bread with cole slaw and Russian dressing and some steak fries and pickles on the side. It was good to know that I can pretty much recreate that experience in my own kitchen!

Pastrami isn’t exactly what I’d call part of my native cuisine. In fact, I can’t say for sure whether I’d ever even eaten it before making this recipe. But I have brined a lot of meat, and I’ve smoked a lot of meat, and I think I know what’s good. This was good!

Just to be sure, I took it to a party with a bona fide New Yorker present to see if it met with his approval. His response was, “Apparently I’ve been buying crappy pastrami all my life.” Everyone raved about it.

I’d like to add a clarification on the ingredients. There is also a curing salt #2 out there, which contains sodium nitrate in addition to the sodium nitrite, and that is not what you are looking for. You can buy curing salt #1 online from shops that cater to home sausage makers and hunters, as well as on amazon.com.

The author doesn’t give much direction on how to smoke the meat, but I’ll add a few tips. When smoking brisket, whether for this recipe or anything else, you want to smoke it with the fat cap up the whole time. Don’t flip it. If you’re using an offset smoker, with the firebox to the side, you may want to rotate the brisket 180 degrees during the cooking, but don’t flip it.

If you’re using a brisket flat cut, the cooking time for this recipe is quite a bit off. Mine had reached 190°F by 6 hours. I reduced the oven time to half an hour to compensate for the fact that the brisket was almost at the final temp when I took it off the smoker.

In looking into how pastrami is made, I learned that traditionally, it’s smoked first, then steamed. I think the reason behind the oven time in this recipe is to simulate the steaming step. If so, I see no reason why you couldn’t just wrap the brisket in foil and leave it on the smoker. Heat is heat, more or less, and if the brisket is wrapped in foil, it will steam whether it’s in a smoker or an oven, so you can save yourself the trouble of heating up another appliance.

The cooking time was really the only issue with the recipe. The spice rub was perfect. No, it doesn’t need salt, as it’s soaked up plenty from the brine.

I served this at home as a pastrami version of a Reuben sandwich. For the party, I made a sort of pumpernickel flatbread and let people top it with either Reuben toppings or just mustard and pickles, whichever they preferred. Leftovers went into a potato hash, which would make a nice breakfast with an egg on top. And I’ve seen a recipe for a pastrami eggs Benedict which is calling my name. Lots of good stuff to do with this delicious smoked meat.

Being that real pastrami is unavailable where I live, I’ve been looking for a good homemade pastrami recipe for a long time. So, needless to say, I was thrilled to try this recipe. I had a very large brisket (about 7 to 8 pounds), so I cut it in half and made half in the oven and the other half on my gas grill.

I’ve pickled briskets many times in the past, and this recipe is pretty straightforward. I couldn’t find pink curing salt here, so I omitted it but I don’t think it made a difference. [Editor’s Note: Actually, the pink curing salt serves a very important purpose, and is essential. We’re glad Sue loved the recipe without it, but we insist that you, dear reader, find pink curing salt. It helps to ensure safe preservation of the meat.]

Almost every single recipe for pickling or brining meat tells you that it’s important that the meat be kept submerged. Although this recipe did say to submerge the meat, it didn’t specify making sure that you keep it submerged. I placed a can of vegetables in a sealed bag on top of the meat to keep it under the liquid. I pickled the brisket for 6 days, then cut it in half and followed the instructions exactly.

The pastrami that I cooked on the grill was much tastier than the one baked in the oven. I thought the oven-baked one was okay but didn’t compare to the grill-cooked one. The grill-smoked pastrami smelled better, tasted better, and was more tender. I also think it’s important to not use a lean brisket. Look for— or ask your butcher for—a brisket with a 1/4-inch layer of fat on top.