How I turn Corned Beef Brisket into Smoked Pastrami

Hello, welcome back to how to barbecue. I'm Malcolm Reed and today I'm going to show you how I make

smoked

pastrami

. What I have today is a four and a half pound

corned

beef

brisket

, which you can find at your grocery store. store this time of year are great for st. On St. Patrick's Day I cooked with some cabbage, but I want to take it a step further. I'm going to get all that salty brine solution out of that meat. Spread the outside well with pepper. Turn it off in the smoker we are going to light. put it in

pastrami

let's start cooking so the first thing we're going to need to do with this

corned

beef

brisket

is put it in a little bit of water.

I want to soak that saline solution out of the meat, it will take all night. I need to change the water a couple of times, I just use a big container, put the brisket in it, put some cold water on top and put it in the refrigerator, you know, give yourself enough room, you want to keep it nice and fresh. all the time and every four hours just pour the water out and add fresh water, we're getting rid of that salinity and it's going to be a good platform to build that pastrami on, so this is what we have when we take it out of that. so call now, change the color of the top, it's kind of a gray look, but we're going to make it very nice, we put the mixture on the outside and we take it out with a little bit of smoke, so it takes a good pastrami mix. a lot of coarsely ground black pepper and some other flavors it always has cilantro, you just get a touch of sweetness with a little bit of sugar, but mainly that black pepper is what gives us all the flavor, so now we have the whole season out.

I'm going to let it rest. I'm going to go out and light my big green egg. To make smoke. Let's put this pastrami on the grill. I'm using Blues pork charcoal and a couple of wax. buckets to start the fire today in the big green egg, you want to leave the lid open and open the bottle one hundred percent so we can get some air flowing now, when a nice bed of coals light up, you want to go ahead and close the lid and open the top vent all the way, we're really going to get the air flowing and it's going to make the temperatures go up if they go up to where we want it to be, about 250 degrees, go ahead and adjust that.

Vent and close the bottom air outlet because we want it to be nice, let it stabilize to get some smoke. Today I'm using some wood for grilling, pieces of walnut and cherry give us a nice smooth smoke. It will be perfect for pastrami, what is the wood area? we're going to put our heat deflector in place, we

turn

on the grill to cook, now we're ready to get to work, once there's some smoke coming out of the vent it's time to put the pastrami on the grill, we just want to center it. right on the grill, close the lid and we'll need about three hours in the smoke, so I cut the lid closed on the smoker for three hours so the pastrami has been there, getting happy developing a nice crust which is exactly what I want to see , but now we have to make it tender, so I have a small skillet set up here with a little bit of beef broth in the bottom and I dropped one of my chicken racks in there to hold the pastrami out of the liquid what that's going to do is creating steam we're really going to soften it up astronomy that's what's going to make it great you just want to place a probe thermometer in the thickest part and we're aiming for an internal temperature of about two hundred and two degrees it would be perfect to cut the lid off, which with paper aluminum is placed back in the smoker and only those temperatures are maintained.

It will need about two more hours to cook. We should be right where we want to be. our alarms go off it means our pastrami has reached our internal temperature it's been in this meat sauna for two hours per hour total cooking time it's been five hours so far you can see all this steam coming out you know the tender pastrami is going to be juicy But we haven't finished cooking yet. I want to put it back on the rack just for a few minutes to tighten it again. I just want to give it a little more color.

Then squeeze the crust a little. we'll be done, okay, our pastrami has been hardening here for about 15 to 20 minutes, that's all it needs to go back on the grill, let's take a look to see what it finally became. Oh, look, that's what I want to see. I want to see this crust on it, it's tight, we steamed it and we wanted it to be almost like a crust on the outside again, this is what I want my crust to be, I don't want it to be real sauces I want that one seasoned with pepper it's ready it's all the time it needs we're just going to take it inside let it rest before we cut it into slices we'll be ready to eat a delicious pastrami look that's beautiful okay then I just looked at the pastrami and hung it on the cutting board for a bit before I started to cut it.

Let's talk real quick about what we did. We started with the four and a half pound piece of corned beef I bought at the supermarket. store I wanted to say levy to get all this salt out of it, so I put it in a soap, just let it sit overnight, changed the cold water every four hours, I want to leave it in that refrigerator, put together a good pepper seasoning that we covered for out we took it out on that smoker I was using about 275 today it's great tenth for making chaff it had a little bit of

smoked

pecan and a piece of cherry in there so it's going to get very happy there we let it sit for about three hours before of wanting to start the steaming process.

We prepare a pan with a small rack and a little beef broth so that our liquid generates steam while we cover it with that aluminum foil. Leave it like that until we reach an internal temperature of about two hundred and two degrees, perfect temperature for pastrami, now that it's rested, we're ready to cut it and I'm going to try it, so let's see what we're working with here, let me move on. over here where we can see you just want to make thin cuts a beautiful color take your time we're going to make Destry sandwiches you know serve it with cabbage if you want for st.

St. Patrick's Day I like to make what I call a straw, Reuben, really great with fresh pastrami, looks amazing, has a spicy crust on top or do I make it just sliced ​​with lots of juice, this is what I call a pile of fresh smoked pastrami this is no better than that crispy crust let's take out a piece here a little bit of a fatty bite something tender since it can be so juicy nothing salty that soap really takes it away but you can taste that spiciness bite into that dressing we put on it outside, you know you thought brisket was really good, you're going to love pastrami like this, it's so easy to make right on your smoker.

I mean, just look at this pile of pastrami we have here, it's enough for several sandwiches I'll have to make one in a minute I know what I'm having for dinner tonight hey, if you like what we're doing here, how to make barbecue, you want know when we will publish new videos? Go ahead and subscribe to our channel, you can also send those questions and comments to Facebook or Twitter, we love them, see you next time.