God I suck at the interweb. To compound my general aversion to perform web related tasks, I am apparently emitting some sort of EM field that causes computing devices to keel over and die. Anyway, this week Citypaper ran my pastrami article, of course drastically edited down for space. Here’s a taste (nyuk):
If you live in Baltimore, you eventually resign yourself to the fact that certain food joneses just aren’t going to get resolved. That’s why it pays to have transplant friends, who you can wheedle into being grub mules when they visit home. So thanks, Reuben, for taking the train all the way to New York to get pastrami from Katz’s, and then not eating it on the train ride back here.
The pinnacle of pastrami artistry for me is Katz’s in New York. Theirs is really transcendent – smoky, spicy, tender yet with a compact grain, well-lubricated with rendered fat and hewn by hand into thick slabs. But it’s $24/lb. not including the 8 hours travel time, and the grub mule (my term for friends that bring me food during their travels) system is unreliable. I once considered pastrami too holy, too mystical, too difficult for one as lowly (and lazy) as I to attempt. But emboldened by a string of smoked/cured meat successes last year (due in no small part to acquiring a massive Tiernan “Son of Brisket†smoker), I decided to suck it up and give it a go.
Two factors needed to be addressed initially, the cut of beef and the curing process. I searched high and low for the so-called plate cuts, i.e. navel plate or pastrami cut, favored by hardcore enthusiasts for higher fat content. Wasserman’s kosher butcher on Reisterstown could get some special order, but the price I was quoted – $7.99/lb. – convinced me to stick with the more readily available brisket.
Butchers usually carry fresh brisket, with the dependable JA Regan in lexington market on the low price end with $3.79/lb and Whole Foods/Cierello’s/Eddie’s on the high end at 5.99. Yet again, Amish butcher guy was the best solution to my meat quandaries, with his grass-fed local brisket priced at $4.39. Be wary of prepackaged supermarket briskets, since they are almost always pre-brined with a nitrite solution, that typically accounts for a fifth of total weight.
As far as cuts, generally the “first cut” of flat brisket is what is most readily available. This is the typical flat, rectangular cut with a cap of fat on top. Preferable is a whole brisket, which is the flat with the cap or “deckel” attached. This piece of beef is very savory and has great texture – some feel it’s the best cut of the cow outright. Then there is the point cut brisket, which comes from further up (towards the head) of the cow, and generally includes both cap and flat, and is more irregularly shaped. Some pre-packaged briskets use this cut, which has more fat than a flat cut. I also believe grass-fed to be particularly tasty for brisket.
Anyways, here is the full, uncut, overly long pastrami project, with lots of pretty pictures of meat. Enjoy!
Read the rest of “Yeah I’d Pastrami That, I’d Pastrami the Hell Outta That” »
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