When I first started writing the essay that ended up being about brisket (https://www.leahcutter.com/2023/11/essay-all-about-brisket/) my initial intent had been to talk about all the different types of meat that I’d been cooking. That would have included all the special items that I’ve made.
However, the brisket essay turned out to be long enough just on its own, so think of this essay as part 2, MORE MEAT!
I’ve made a couple of specialty meats recently that I wanted to go into more detail about. The first one is the pastrami that I made.
Pastrami and corned beef are traditionally made from the same cut of meat that you make brisket from. There are two parts to that cut, the fat cap and the flat. Pastrami is made from the fat cap, while corned beef is made from the flat.
They start life much the same, that is, brining them (also called a wet cure) for a week or more before their paths split. The brine is often the same as well.
For my pastrami, I used curing salts. I won’t try to “naturally” cure something (using celery juice) for a while yet. I need to get more experience with what I’m doing before branching out. You must cure these meats properly, or you risk botulism. (Here’s a good article on the science of curing meats: https://amazingribs.com/tested-recipes/salting-brining-curing-and-injecting/curing-meats-safely/?p=22364).
The spices you add to pastrami for the brine or wet cure can vary. In addition to the curing salts, you generally add additional regular salt to that spice mix. Then, add whatever other spices you want, such as brown sugar, pickling spices, perhaps some vinegar, or even apple juice.
Then, I put my meat in a vacu-seal bag, put in all the spices, then instead of adding water, I put in ice cubes. This lets me seal the bag without having to worry about all that extra water getting in the way of the seal.
I wet cure the meat for however long I need to. I used the calculator found at the bottom of the page about the science of curing meats.
Now, the first time I made pastrami, I cured it for seven days. When I cut it open, in the absolute center of the meat were some gray spots. I should have cured it for eight or nine days. It was still cured well enough that I felt secure enough that it was safe to eat.
After I did the wet cure, I missed a step and went straight to the dry cure.
You really, really, need to rinse all the wet cure off the meat and desalinate it. The resulting pastrami that I made was a little too salty. Still really good though.
The dry cure I used turned out amazing. I based mine on the recipe here: https://heygrillhey.com/homemade-pastrami/. Because I can’t do nightshades, I replaced the paprika with 1 T cloves and 1 T cinnamon. Then I let it sit in the fridge for another day or so before I cooked it like a regular brisket.
Honestly? One of the better pastramis that I’ve ever had.
One of the other specialty meats that I’ve made recently was bacon from pork belly.
OMG so good.
I followed the recipe from here: https://whitneybond.com/how-to-make-bacon/#recipe, the fennel-cured bacon. I would so strongly recommend this. That little hint of fennel at the back of the bite made the bacon so tasty.
It’s much the same process as for making pastrami: make the spice rub and include the curing salts in it, add those and the pork belly to a vacuum-seal bag, add in ice cubes instead of water, then seal it up and let it wet cure for seven days. (Or longer, if your pork belly is thicker, according to the calculator above.)
You don’t desalinate your bacon. You want that to still taste salty. But you should let it rest for some time in the fridge afterward. (There is some controversy over that last step, but I did it.)
You’re just smoking the bacon after that, cooking it low and slow for a few hours until the internal temperature reaches between 150-160°.
Let the bacon cool, because cold meat is much easier to slice than warm. You may even want to stick it in the freezer for up to fifteen minutes to get it cold. Then cut your bacon into slices. We went with a thicker cut the first time, and will try for slightly thinner slices later.
I have another pork belly that I want to make bacon from. After that, I may try branching out and making some beef bacon from the flat of a brisket. Use the same cures et al.
And that’s it for this edition of MEAT.
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