Binging with Babish: Pastrami from When Harry Met Sally...

So since I don't want you to get in trouble with your spouse or employer, I'm going to keep talking about the scene until she's done making all the noises and there we go, I'm going to take what she's eating, hey what's up guys welcome again? to

binging

on

babish

where this week we're taking a look at being positively orgasmic astre me When Harry Met Sally now it doesn't matter that Sally looks like she's eating a turkey sandwich, but we're also talking about Katz's world famous

pastrami

is something that There is no way we can recreate it, but we can at least imitate it.

Here I have a whole breast that is made up of two parts, the main flat part and the fat on each end. Katz lets you choose between either. /or then let's do a little of both. You'll notice that I'm cutting the brisket in half, which is enough to make any butcher cringe, but I'm doing it so I can have a manageable piece that has flat spots and spots all in one package that still fits in my container. larger cure, don't worry, this guy won't go to waste. I'll turn it into a Texas style BBQ, but for my final flat piece I'm going to trim off as much excess fat and tendons as I can, still leaving about a half inch of fat to keep everything moist and fatty.

Now it's time to deal with our cure, which we'll do by weight using the Amazing Ribs Airtight Curing Calculator. com first, a staggering 1.5 cups is about 420 grams of kosher salt followed by about a tablespoon and a half or 27 grams of pink curing attacks. I'll also add three or four crushed bay leaves, maybe about a tablespoon each of coriander and mustard seeds. seeds 1 tablespoon allspice berries 2 or 3 cinnamon sticks, broken as best you can and capacity about 2 tablespoons whole peppercorns 1 or 2 teaspoons whole cloves 4 or 5 dried tree chiles and about a tablespoon berries of juniper then I have to add a little sweetness.

I go with about 3/4 cup or about 150 grams of dark brown sugar and wow! I almost forgot three cloves of crushed garlic. Now most recipes call for boiling the brine for safety, but if you start with distilled. water, you can skip this step at least, I think again, continue with that, so I'm whisking the sugar and the spices and everything well together with 1 in 1/2 gallons of distilled water. A small beater was neither available nor willing to participate in this task. Once everything is nice and dissolved, it's time to place our brisket and to make sure it stays submerged, we'll weigh it down with a plate or bowl or whatever you have that's safe for heavy foods and won't break. rubbing with water. then this guy goes in the fridge for at least 5 in up to 10 days and only comes out once every couple of days to turn him over to ensure even exposure to the grind and then on day 10 we take him on a field trip to my home because that's where I keep my smoker now Katz cures his

pastrami

for a month, smokes it for three or four days, and then boils it for four to six hours.

Obviously we can't do that, so I'm going to try two different methods for cooking this flipped brisket. first in corned beef and then in pastrami. Now remember that we have two different parts of the breast. Here we have the lean parts and the fat part due to their very different volumes of fat and connective tissue, making them excellent candidates for two different cooking methods. so I'm going to separate them carefully trimming off any excess fat or remaining silver skin and then I think the tips or fatty cut are going to respond better to traditional boiling to keep the lean mass nice and tender.

I think it's a better candidate for sous-vide, so after rinsing both cuts well in an effort to desalinize them, we place the ends in a large pot and cover it with a few inches of water, bring it to a boil and keep it there at a low heat we cover the floor for three or four hours, we will place it in a vacuum seal bag and then, after scrubbing my brine container well, I will fill it halfway with a drop of water on the breast, I will put my sous- vide at one hundred and eighty degrees cover it with plastic wrap and let it rest for at least 10 hours or until extremely tender but not falling apart the next day remove the bag from the water remove the fat from the bag and throw away your homemade corned beef however you can You see both cuts have gone from a pale gray to a beautiful pink, but they are not unusual, this is a result of the pink curing salts and they are extraordinarily tender.

This is what you want to see, the separation of muscle fibers does not fall apart, does not become mushy. Corned beef, tender and funky tender, is simply the chrysalis from which the pastrami butterfly emerges. In a spice grinder, I'm combining about three tablespoons each of coriander seeds and black peppercorns, grinding until cracked, not completely ground, and pouring into a bowl along with a tablespoon of white sugar and then some add-ins. optional flavor a tablespoon of sweet paprika to awaken the mind a teaspoon of garlic powder for the sole a teaspoon of onion powder for the heart and a teaspoon of mustard powder for the loins mix all this type and rub it well on the meat, make sure the meat is warm or run it under some warm water for a few seconds to make sure the seasoning sticks, don't worry so much about the sides, the most important thing is to get the top and bottom.

In a smoker at 225 degrees Fahrenheit, it is loaded with cherry and hickory wood. Once these guys are put in, you can smoke them for anywhere from one to four hours, depending on how much smoky flavor you want and how robust the rind is. Outside I want a lot of those two things, so I'm going for the full four once the pastrami comes off the smoker, let it sit at room temperature for about ten minutes before cutting and serving. You can also steam it for a few hours. for added tenderness and to further mimic Katz's method, but I think you'll find that after all the love we've given it, it's extraordinarily tender, juicy and flavorful and primed and ready to make a sammich by looking at photos of Katz afterwards from this.

I realized he was cutting mine too thick, so just a heads up, my sandwich won't look totally legit, but it will taste totally legit, stacked on top of two slices of Jewish rye. Make sure you stack it very, very high. Katz tends to test. the theoretical limits of structural integrity and sandwiches cut it in half and there you have it, folks, a real homemade pastrami served just right, uh, no toasted rye with lots and lots of spicy brown mustard and an unreasonable amount of dill with garlic and acid medium. pickles at your disposal and I was worried that the thick slices would be chewy, but they are so tender that it almost doesn't matter how thick you cut them.

This pastrami is silky and smooth without being mushy, deeply flavorful, and completely worthy of all the food it stirs. approval of what I'm doing. I'm going to go ahead and add this bad boy to the off-camera clean plate club, trust me, you don't want to see my Meg Ryan impression.