First pastrami experiment complete. Some observations..

I recently got a 5.5 pound brisket point to make pastrami from.  The butcher basically lopped the point of the whole packer, and so there was a pretty good size chunk of flat included with the point.  It was an unusually large packer, according to the butcher, incidentally.

So, I separated the flat, and ran a couple approaches on prep side-by-side for the two pieces.

Both pieces we pickled into corned beef for 7 days, as per the popular Goldwyn recipe:  https://amazingribs.com/tested-recipes/beef-and-bison-recipes/making-home-made-corned-beef-scratch

I did an 8 hour fresh water soak on them both to desalinate, as per recommendations.  I'll come back to this later.

For the cooking phase for the point, I did a 36 hour, 150F sous vide.  This was the point all ready for his swim:



I decided to go ahead and just rub and smoke the partial flat per the traditional approach, and not do the sous vide step.

That piece came out horribly salty, like bacon.  We ate it, and thankfully it wasn't a huge piece.  Maybe 1.5 pounds finished.

The sous vide point was rubbed then smoked up to 168F internal, and sliced.  It came out wonderfully!


There are a few variables here - cut of meat, and thickness - though they both seem to have had brine penetrate the whole way through.  But mainly, cooking method is the difference I think (not an expert).

A lot of water came out of the point in the sous vide bag during the cooking process.  I suspect a lot of salt came out with that water, but this is conjecture.

So, next time, if I don't want to do sous vide, I'm going to cut the brine salt in 1/2, and skip the desalinating step.  If I do sous vide, I'll change nothing, because it was wonderful.  I definitely think the point is a better way to go than the flat too, for the pretty (and tasty) marbling it offers..

Anyway, just some observations to share in case they help anybody..  The rub I used on them both was the Goldwyn rub for pastrami too, BTW.

Eric