Sous Vide Pastrami

May 11, 2011

Sous Vide Pastrami

Pastrami starts as a plain beef brisket and ends up as one of the most recognizable deli meats there is: a dark, peppery crust wrapped around beef that pulls apart at the touch of a fork. The flavor comes from three separate stages stacked on top of each other - a long salt-and-spice cure, a smoke session for bark and color, and a slow finish that used to mean hours in a steam box. This version replaces the steamer with a sous vide bath, which does the same tenderizing job with a lot less babysitting.

The process runs over more than a week, but very little of it is active work. The brisket sits in a dry cure of kosher salt, Prague Powder #1, sugar, and spices for about ten days in the fridge, then gets rinsed and soaked to pull back the surface salt. A second, coarser rub of black pepper and coriander goes on before the brisket hits the smoker, and from there it’s sealed in a bag and cooked at a steady 135°F (57°C) for close to two days. What comes out is fall-apart tender, with the smoky, peppery crust intact.

Pastrami is a New York deli staple with roots in Jewish immigrant cooking - Romanian-style pastırma, cured and dried beef, was reworked in Lower East Side delis into the brined, smoked, and steamed brisket everyone knows today. Steaming was always the finishing step that turned a smoked, still-tough brisket into sliceable deli meat, and sous vide is really just a modern way to do that same job in a sealed bag instead of over a kettle of water.

Serve it warm, sliced thin against the grain, piled onto rye bread with plenty of mustard. It’s a sandwich built for a crowd - good for a weekend lunch spread, alongside pickles or a simple slaw, with the brisket doing all the work once it comes out of the bath.

Ingredients

Serves 8-10

The brisket

2.5 kg beef brisket, flat cut, fat cap trimmed to 0.5 cm

The cure

75 g kosher salt
6-7 g Prague Powder #1 (pink curing salt #1)
65 g granulated sugar
50 g black peppercorns, coarsely cracked
2-3 tbsp ground coriander
1¼ tsp garlic powder
1¼ tsp ground ginger
2-3 tbsp sweet paprika, not smoked

The rub

4 tbsp black peppercorns, coarsely cracked
3 tbsp coriander seeds, coarsely cracked
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp sweet paprika
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp mustard seeds, cracked (or mustard powder)

Directions

The brisket

Trim the fat cap on the brisket flat back to about ¼ inch (0.5 cm). That’s enough fat left to protect the meat through a long cook, without blocking the cure and smoke from reaching it.

The cure

Combine the kosher salt, Prague Powder #1, sugar, cracked black peppercorns, ground coriander, garlic powder, ground ginger, and sweet paprika. Coat the brisket thoroughly on all sides, then vacuum-seal it, or wrap it tightly and set it on a tray. Cure in the refrigerator for 7-10 days, flipping the bag once a day so the cure reaches every part evenly.

Once the cure is done, unwrap the brisket and rinse off the surface cure. Soak it in two changes of fresh cold water, 30 minutes each, to draw the excess surface salt back out, then pat the meat dry.

The rub

Combine the coarsely cracked black peppercorns, cracked coriander seeds, brown sugar, sweet paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and cracked mustard seeds. Press the mixture firmly into the brisket on all sides.

Smoke the brisket over indirect heat at 225°F (107°C) until a dark, dry bark has formed and the internal temperature reaches 130-135°F (54-57°C), roughly 3-4 hours. Let it cool, then vacuum-seal it again.

Cook the brisket sous vide at 135°F (57°C) for 44 hours. This is the stage that does the real tenderizing - long and low enough to turn a smoked, still-firm brisket fall-apart tender, the same job a steam box would have done in a traditional deli kitchen.

When the bath is done, pull the bag out. Serve right away, or shock it in an ice bath and refrigerate it, then reheat gently in the sealed bag in hot water before slicing. Slice the pastrami thin, against the grain, and pile it warm onto rye bread with mustard.

Notes

There’s a second school for timing this recipe. Instead of smoking first and sous viding low and slow, some cooks smoke only briefly and sous vide hot and fast - 145-155°F (63-68°C) for 30-40 hours - which produces a firmer, more traditionally sliceable pastrami, closer to a deli-counter slice than the fall-apart texture here.

For a finish closer to a real deli counter, steam the cooked pastrami to 150-155°F (66-68°C) internal just before serving instead of serving it straight from the bath.

Starting from store-bought corned beef instead of curing a raw brisket is a shortcut some recipes take. If using corned beef, skip the cure step entirely: pat the corned beef dry and go straight to the rub.