Question on adjustments to the pastrami recipe

Hiya,

I'd like to take on that pastrami recipe and give it a shot myself. I was only able to find short-rib already off of the bone at costco. I'm assuming everything will need to be adjusted for this - brine, length of brine, length of smoke, amount of rub. Any suggestions for how I should go about adjusting those?

Thanks

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Johan_Edstrom_5586

Not really, you don't brine past a few mm of surface, your smoke retention is about 3-4h, and cooking is roughly the same, think of bone as a problem when you look for - how quickly can I do this.

Brandon_Byrd_40557

Got to disagree with Johan on this one, at least about the brine. A brine is not a marinade; when you brine pastrami, you're doing a wet cure and the salt and nitrites in the cure will penetrate to the core of the meat, but it takes time. While the flavor molecules in marinades are too large to transfer far into the interior, salt (and Instacure) are small enough to make it through. Bones, however, are basically impermeable to brine so you have to brine longer for bone-in cuts.

The scaling for the ChefSteps pastrami brine recipe is basically the same as the one for Modernist Cuisine's beef cheek pastrami, at least with respect to the amount of salt and Instacure relative to weight of the meat. The MC recipe also includes recommendations for how long to brine other cuts besides beef cheek... bone in and bone out short ribs, tongue, and brisket. The ChefSteps recipe suggests a 7 day brine for bone-in short ribs, but MC suggests 6. But what's interesting is that they recommend a brine of 3 days for boneless short ribs, suggesting that the meat will cure much faster without a bone. I'd imagine that anywhere between 3 and 3.5 days will work just fine for you. They make no other adjustments; I wouldn't try to futz with the brine strength or smoking time. Just brine for less time and let us know how it turns out!

Johan_Edstrom_5586

I'll disagree with myself on the brine too. I've been debating marinade ad naseum on FB...

Manfred_18311

Just a few days ago we had a discussion to a similar subject:

http://www.chefsteps.com/forum/posts/ribs-v5/comments/a678b055-5bd0-4658-ac7f-bbdf55070115

For clarification and better understanding; brining in cold liquid (wet curing) for an extended period of time produce a different result in – to core flavoring- compared to the penetration of flavor during temperature cooking (pot/ bag) when a physical process on the protein is triggered, thus external flavor additives (spiced liquid) penetrates only a few millimeters in the goods.

Brining/ curing = Biochemical process

Cooking = physical process

In both processes the meat loses cell water what accounts to the preservation value. Whereas only brining, the biochemical process, account to an imported flavor value.

Jeremy_66734

Thanks so much. I figured the brine length was probably the most crucial and the change in strength and amount of rub were probably less so. I'll probably lightly season the back since there is no bone and I read someone else complaining that the rub was a bit strong in their pastrami, but otherwise I'll go with the 3ish day brine. Cheers