Sous Vide Pastrami

Huy_63293

Need help with the Sous Vide Pastrami recipe? Post your questions here!

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hueezer

I love this recipe! I tried it and it came out great...good job guys!

Matt_H_63094

Hi guys,

I'm planning on making a fairly large batch of pastrami soon. I think I'll need roughly 10kg's. That means that I'll need 22.5 litres of brine... which is quite a lot of brine!!

I'm wondering if there's any reason that this recipe, like the one in MC, requires the water to be 225%. This may turn out to be a dumb question, but will using less water have any impact on the way the brine works?

If I were to scale this to weight of meat it should come to:

Sugar 5%

Salt 2.9%

Instacure 0.46%

If that's the case I'd rather use closer to equal weights of water and meat.

Does that sound about right? It would be enormously helpful if I didn't have to find space in the fridge for 22 litres of brine +meat!!

Many thanks,

Chris_Young_80640

@Matt, using less water will make it more like a traditional brine initially, which will make it go slightly faster. In the extreme, you add no water, just the salt, and let it wick water from the meat and dissolve to form a saturated brine. Using less water can speed things up, maybe by as much as 20% or so based on a few experiments I'm aware of.

Another tip, try a hybrid approach where half of the water is added as ice. Mix everything in a big cooler and then add the meat. In the shade you'll be surprised but it's probably plenty cold for several days. When it starts to get a bit too warm (above 10 ° C / 50 °F), remove something like 25% of the brine and replace it with a measured amount of the spice mix and ice to cool everything down. This way you can brine outside of your refrigerator.

DiggingDogFarm_65362

I equilibrium brine in zip bags with small amount of water, usually no more than 30% of the weight of the meat.

The following calculator makes it easy if you have access to cure that's 6.25% nitrite. Add the meat and water weights together, salt, sugar and ppm nitrite can all be adjusted.

http://www.diggingdogfarm.com/page2.html

~Martin

Matt_H_63094

Thanks for the advice guys, and for the link @DiggingDogFarm that should come in very handy.

@Chris, I'll definitely use the ice method, it's probably best if I don't tamper with a perfect recipe!

Just to satisfy my curiosity, I was wondering if you could help clarify the process a little further as I don't completely understand how it all works...

My assumption was that as long as the ratio of salt to weight of liquid and meat was kept equal (2.9% in this case), the quantity of liquid wouldn't actually matter? I always figured it would scale the same way and take the same amount of time, but felt that I ought to ask as the 225% seemed significant. Clearly I'm going wrong somewhere..

Why is it that it works faster with lower levels of liquid? Do you think that there's a qualitative difference

I assume I'm missing something fairly obvious here, but my brain isn't up to the challenge today!

Brendan_Lee_56950

The general idea, as I understand it, is less water = more concentrated brine at first. Then when the meat begins to lose some moisture it then evens out the concentration of the brine because it will be adding more liquid to the party. So obviously using X amount of salt per Y amount of water will give you a particular concentration but if you used the same amount of salt in a lesser amount of water it would be therefore a higher salt concentration.

Chris_Young_80640

@Matt_H — The concentration of your salt brine is very much like heat. The higher the concentration, the faster diffusion of ions goes. It's analogous to the higher the temperature, the faster heat energy flows into the meat. The difference is that the diffusion of salt ions is hundreds of times slower than the flow of heat.

Starting with less water just means starting at a higher concentration, but with the ice method I advocated above, the ice will dissolve over time, diluting the brine to where it should be. When all of the ice has melted, and the liquid brine has become too warm. You'll want to replace the brine with a bunch of ice, but also add some extra salt to the remaining brine so that as this second round of ice melts, the brine doesn't become too dilute.

Chemistry of brining/curing point for those that are interested: at low salt levels, water doesn't actually flow out of the meat, it flows into the meat. At higher salt levels, the process is reversed and water does indeed flow out of the meat. The chemistry is surprisingly complex, but we're working on a lecture to explain how brining really works.

Matt_H_63094

Ah.... it's all so obvious now... for whatever reason I didn't make the distinction that the weight of the meat remains constant... so of course the salt concentration in the brine starts to get really high in low volumes of liquid when you factor in the weight of the meat too. I was thinking more along the lines of a 1% salt solution is the same thing whether you have 1ml or a 100 liters, so why would it make a difference to the speed... Sigh. Now I know.

Many thanks for your assistance. I'm off to go bang my head on something in the hope that it'll work a little better.

ipreferale

MC calls for removing the product from the brine, boiling the brine and removing the scum. Chilling the brine, and then adding the smoked product with a portion of the brine, vacuum sealing and then SV for a length of time. Is this step necessary or has this step been eliminated as the recipe evolved?

Chris_Young_80640

@RED — What recipe in MC are you thinking of that calls for doing this? (Sorry, don't have all 2400+ recipes memorized, and I can't remember a recipe that we suggested doing this.)

ipreferale

@Chris - The recipe in 3-213 and 6-121 for beef cheek pastrami. Step 15 call for vacuum sealing smoked cheeks with 1 kg of cooled brine and then SV.

Chris_Young_80640

@RED — The recipe has evolved. Grant and I don't prepare it that way anymore.That's the nice thing about the web, we can change recipes as we improve them ;-)

Ryan_Casey_34900

I looks like there's a typo in the Pastrami recipe. While the amount of water listed for the brine on the left side of the page looks correct at 9kg, the printout and step-by-step instructions list the water as 9g.

Chris_Young_80640

@Ryan Casey — Thanks. This is a new bug and we'll get on it.

michaelnatkin

@Ryan Casey - this is fixed now, thanks for the heads up!

Manuel_Filipe_Freire_de_Andrade_29825

Hi guys!! One question, I want to do the pastrami in my flat, so smoking is very complicated, what would you recommend? mixing the rub with liquid smoke and roast the meat and then sous vide? Thanks!!