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Nothing says St. Patricks like end of all things good as well as cured meat and a dish that means less to the Irish than a soggy bar towel.
Why cure your own meat? You either are this Irish or you are this fucking bored, shit you are reading this, I must have had you at the meat; lets read.
Actually, as far as the meat endeavours go this was simple. Make the brine, measure the water, and trim the meat. I am certain that factories will never give the care that I might elect to give here. I am more interested in taking out all the bad from the meat and selecting what I choose to eat.
For the comparison we purchased 1x brisket from Edwards Meats and 2x from Costco. I am interested in how the two stack against each other. Cost comparison the much more trim cut was $75 (Around 9 lbs) and the way more fatty cuts were $55 each and weighing around 16+ lbs each. The larger story was the meat; serious 40+ lbs is what we had, this went from a hobby to now a meat endeavor.
Then it was time to trim and measure the shit necessary to pickle the meat.
And now time to take the trimmed meat to the brine solution of spices and salt.
The meat is now in the cure. The plan, is to wait a little bit (you know, sit out and ferment, meat is so much more delicious this way), and more on the pastrimi, let it be in the brine for bit more before we smoke it. The corned beef, the plan is to eat it before St. Pats or on St. Pats. Not sure, we got this project going a little late.
Interesting process. Looks like you’ve got some help there. Always fun learning a new process from someone who’s done it before.
I really like the fact that Costco gets USDA Prime packers. I smoked one on my stick burner a couple of years ago. Took 12 hours but it was to die for in the end. I priced one of those packers from Edward’s Meats and thought it seemed overpriced. I recall it was like $98 for the thing. I could not see the total weight, but it appeared to be roughly the same size as the ones at Costco that were about half that price (same grade of meat). Maybe I was missing something. Love Edwards for the service and meat quality (plus I just love that there is a store based simply on the sale of MEAT!) But they can be pricey at times.
I did have some help from my neighbor, as there is no possible way I should be consuming 38 lbs of brisket this year. Neither of us had done this before. Most of my inspiration for these projects comes from the Ruhlman book “Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing”. If you have never seen the book before it is the bible of cured meat.
On the topic of Edwards meats vs. Costco. I do have to say even though I dropped $120 at Costco on the meat that totally felt like a bargain compared to Edwards where I spent $75 on a brisket that was roughly 1/2 the size. I will add that the preparation needed for the Edwards brisket was virtually nothing compared to the Costco slabs, the Edwards slabs were really nicely trimmed up and clean. Both of the Costco slabs had huge portions of dark colored fat, skin and sections that I deemed way to gross to eat. So in the end I assume that I removed at least a pound of fat from each of the Costco briskets. It is nice now that I have a grinder that I can keep some of the better edible fats I removed for sausage making.
I will keep the updates coming on these projects. Hopefully this is a project that pays some large dividends later on.
I have outlined all of the ingredients for this project and documented them here for posterity.
I notice you are processing your meats in your brewing area. Someone gave me guff for that once, when they saw me trimming meats for a smoking event in the Bier Barn. My smoker is pretty big with a fair amount of cooking space. And of course it’s a stick burner, so I need to tend the fire throughout the duration of the cook, so it makes sense to be as efficient as possible….so I do LOTS of meat at a time (you can always vacuum pack and toss it in the deep freeze). This person arrived while I had ribs, brisket, brined salmon, etc. sitting all over the place (and piles of trimmed fat in the trash can). I guess they saw it as a possible bier-ruining contaminant). My argument was that I wasn’t trimming meat in the cellar (my primary fermentation area), but rather the brew house. Big difference I think!
BTW….now that you’ve sent these high resolution photos. Everyone’s mouth is watering. You’ve heard this before, but at some point we’re all going to want a taste!
Interesting point Jim. I do not yet brew in the kitchen yet, I do ferment in there. I have never completed a meat project on the same day as a brew session. Additionally, I get pretty wild with the star san spray bottle on both meat days and brew days. I really don’t see how I would easily get a cross contamination the brews are fermented inside a chest freezer with the air lock. The chambers I do ferment my meats in is located in my basement, but in another room. It is an interesting point but I also think of it being akin to people doing partial mashes in their kitchens.
Don’t worry Jim, there will be treats to share with the boys the next time we meet up.
So a little late to post this now. This project was finished recently and stored in vacuum sealed packages for freezing over the coming months.
All recipe information is stored here.
The corned beef ended up looking like this when it was finished with the wet cure. The color really changed when it came out. We debrined it for 2 days in clean water to pull some of the salt out.
We cut the slabs of corned beef in half so they could be cooked easier.
We cooked these up for St. Pats. We didnt boil them in water but rather add some beef broth to the bottom of the pan and let the maillard reactions happen. The end result was that fat cap got nice and crispy and an amazing cut of meat. This easily was the best corned beef I have ever had. This made the store bought corned beef at St. PAts taste like generic crap.
The end of the corned beef story. It is all gone now; I can’t wait till next year to do it again.
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Now for the story of the pastrami.
We maintained the beef in the brine for 3 more weeks till we could get to it. We followed the de-brine method to pull excess salt out and let the cured flavor rest a bit. Then we dried and seasoned them and let them age with the seasoning bark on them for 2 days in the refrigerator.
Then into the smoker they go for a 14 hour smoke/cook.
Once completed cooking we wrapped in foil tightly and then let cool in the refrigerator for 2 more days. This let the meat rest while slicer repairs were in action. Which I did learn finding belts for a 60 year old slider is rather difficult. Once all of the meats and slicer we did a Saturday slicing/packaging party.
The pastrami loss about 40% of its weight over this process. Thus making it not money saving at all. But in comparison to the best deli meats you can get this blows them out of the water. Each of our takes in the end was 8 lbs of pastrami; which is a lot of sandwiches. Hoping to figure out how to make some amazing rye bread in the future.
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