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Porkstrami

Matt_H_63094

I was day dreaming earlier about pastrami... Something I do quite a lot.

It dawned on me that there's scope for doing a pork based pastrami. A bit of Googling uncovered some mentions out there, but the final product appears to simply be a fairly firm ham, with a smokey, spicy crust... and it looks like it needs to be thinly sliced. I was thinking about trying to re-engineer the chefsteps recipe and use it with a hunk of pig to produce a similarly fall-apart extraordinary mouthgasmic piece of meat.

Has anyone done anything like this - any feedback on success/failure? I'm thinking belly or maybe a shoulder. Question is whether to trim away some fat from the belly, and whether to try butcher out a shoulder into something a little flatter and more uniform. Times and temps might also be tricky to get right first time...

Thoughts? Wasting my time or potentially onto a winner?

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Brendan_Lee_56950

I would go with shoulder if I were doing this. I think the cure would be best if it was on the lighter side though so it doesn't get that ham consistency.

DiggingDogFarm_65362

Sure, original Romanian pastramă is made from pork, lamb, goat or goose, much the same way that beef pastrami is made.

I use the pork collar, the same cut used for coppa.

FWIW, here's a link to a few pics showing how the collar is removed from he shoulder butt.

http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8603&hilit=capicola

~Martin

grant

Shoulder works, lots of cuts work. But you need to think about what application you would like. I have done pork cheeks, shoulder, ribs, tongue, ham, trotters, neck, and belly. You want something that wont dry up when curing and the muscles in the shoulder are hit and miss. You would need to chop or pull the pork afterward to get a nice blend of muscle qualities. I would try cheeks and or belly first, can't go wrong with those.

Matt_H_63094

Sounds like I'm a little late to the party on this idea

Thank you guys for the advice

Going with @Grant, I'll start with belly... I'm still not hugely knowledgeable when it comes to brines and quantities, but as a starting point, I was thinking of doing a 72 hour equilibrium soak using:

5% brown sugar

2% salt

0.4% Insecure 1

plus a heap of spices

Does that sound about right(ish)?

Thanks again!

grant

Why not use our pastrami recipe?

Matt_H_63094

I was thinking it would probably be slightly over kill for pork as it's not quite as robust as something like a short rib... but hell, why not, I'll give it a try. Your pastrami is just about the best thing I've ever eaten after all...

ren_74229

sounds like pepper crusted bacon...but cooked somewhat differently

grant

@ren, It's nothing like bacon! Bacon is a heavy competitor though. Bacon should be slightly fermented with bacteria for the real flavor and mostly be smoke. Our pastrami is very light on smoke and heavy with botanicals. The only thing you need to consider is how much do you want a serving to be. Ours is very rich and heavy on all the salt, sugar and spice because we serve a 50g potation at the most. If you want to serve more you need to tone everything down a bit.

Matt_H_63094

The end product in my head is something a lot more tender than bacon. Something that can either be served in thick slices or cubes with a relatively flaky texture. Or I was thinking of a couple of long fat slices in a hot dog bun with a suitably acidic slaw.

In most cases I prefer the meat to be really rich and then balance it off with appropriate sides and sauces... I'll do some experiments and report back - it depends just how rich it ends up being with the chefsteps recipe.

grant

60c/48hrs is my favorite.

ren_74229

@Grant Thanks for the clarification...I come from a simple understanding of bacon, namely curing salt, and lots of smoke...which in a similar understanding also pretty much sounds like a hot dog to me.

But now I see...bacon != hotdog !=pastrami (ignoring the base protein for now)

Along those lines, is there a significant difference in the definitions of corned beef and pastrami? At the moment, I understand pastrami to be corned beef + smoke + black pepper.

Always lots to learn!

grant

Accurate.

Matt_H_63094

F'ing incredible!

I need to do a little tweaking and maybe back the salt level off slightly, but damn it was tasty. I tried 80'c for 12 hours and 60'c for 48. I preferred the 80'c version as it rendered a lot of that fat which made the meat incredibly unctuous, the 60'c version was still exceptional, but a little more firm than I would like...

Cheers for the advice on this, I think I'll be doing it regularly!

ipreferale

@Matt_H- Any chance you have some image to show what the differences were?

Matt_H_63094

Unfortunately no... I'm really bad for that; I'll cook something, devour it, then think... "Maybe I should take a photo"... Too late every damn time.

I'm going to get another belly tonight and try some adjustments, so in a week or so there'll be some pics!

Matt_H_63094

*if I remember...