EZ Corned and Pastramied Beef Brisket on the GM Daniel Boone

My first sandwich is made on toasted rye bread and then I added a generous amount of the pastramied beef brisket, three slices of baby Swiss cheese, and a big helping of horseradish sauce. This is probably my most favorite sandwich.

My local Kroger store had some Corned Beef Brisket Flats on sale so I purchased 4 of them for my treat. Got home and found out that they were the points which is about too fatty for good pastramied brisket. Took them back and they called another Kroger store in the next town and found me some flats. Wife picked them up and when I opened them up, I found whole briskets that had been cut in half diagonally. Man, I can’t win!

Anyway, I started with the 4 purchased corned beef brisket halves  and then trimmed them up of most of their fat.

The cuts of meat were not as good as I usually get but I will make them work. Had to cut off way too much fat with these lousy briskets.

Since the purchased corned beef brisket is bathing in salt water and brine, which will work great for something like corn beef and cabbage but not good for making into pastrami, I need to de-salt the meat somewhat for my treat. I do this in this container for about 24 hours changing the water 3-4 times during this period to remove the excess salt.

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/OldDave/Pellet%20Cookers/IMG_1210.jpg[/IMG]

This is the meat ready to go on the cooker. I piled on a rub consisting of large butcher cut black pepper, coriander, brown sugar, and a few other spices.

I loaded my meat into my Green Mountain Daniel Boone and set the cooker for maximum smoke and ran it that way for the first 3 hours and then turned it up to 290 degrees to finish my cook. 

I took the meat off of the cooker at an internal of about 185 degrees and it looked pretty good. 

Put all the meat thru my slicer.

The finished meat looked ok but the slices were not very wide.

We kept out enough meat for a couple of sandwiches and then vacuum packed the balance for the freezer.

Ready for the freezer.

Start of my sandwich on toasted rye bread. 

I added a small tomato salad and had a fine lunch.

Corned & Pastramied Beef Brisket Flat on the Davy Crockett

How about a Reuben sandwich? Take a couple of slices of fresh rye bread, and add a generous amount of corned and pastramied brisket flat slices, slap on about 4 slices of baby Swiss cheese, add a layer of homemade kraut, a big dollop of Thousand Island dressing, and just fry it up in a skillet,  and my friend, it’s about as good as it gets!

We use a lot of this meat and make it several times a year but always do it from scratch (corn our own beef) until this week. I decided to try it with corned beef brisket flats  purchased from our local Kroger store. 

Purchased four of the corned beef flats that weighed around 3.40 pounds each at a price of $2.98 a pound from Kroger. My total was 13.51 pounds. 

First step was to de-brine them to get some of the salt out of the meat as we didn’t plan to cook this meat with a big pot of veggies or add the meat to a pot of cabbage where the salt would be needed. I soaked two of them at a time in the fridge for about 9 hours changing the water about 3 times to remove some of the salt. 

I made up my pastrami rub with the following spices. My recipe is for 6-7 pounds of meat. 

9 TBL Black peppercorns (coursely cracked)

3 TBL Coriander seed (coursely cracked)

3 TBL Turbinado sugar 

1 tsp Granulated garlic

1 tsp Paprika

1 tsp Montreal Steak Seasoning

I dried the meat after the de-brining process and added a heavy amount of rub to each piece and put the meat into freezer bags and then into the fridge for an overnight stay. 

The meat ready for the cooker.

Brought the Davy Crockett pellet cooker around to my cooking patio and fired it up and set it to a good smoking temperature of 165 degrees which will produce additional smoke for the first couple of hours. Later, I moved it up to 280 degrees to finish the cook. 

Got an early start and had the meat on the cooker before daylight. 

I just removed them from the cooker as they reached a finish temperature of 185 internal degrees and of course, they didn’t all come off at the same time. The cook took about  7-1/2 hours total.

You know, for a quicker method for this treat, this worked out nicely. While not quite as good as starting from scratch in my opinion, it is still very good. Sure be better if a fellow could purchase larger corned beef flats to start with. 

Scratch Corned & Pastramied Brisket / Weber Ranch Kettle

This is my recipe and method of corned and pastramied beef brisket and the cooking and smoking process was done on my Weber Ranch Kettle.



The meat was four beef brisket flats and the average weight was 7.1 pounds each. The four bowls contain my corning rub which is a blend of Morton Tender Quick, brown sugar, fresh ground black pepper, dried parsley, dehydrated onion, sea salt, pickling spice, and ground cloves. The mesh bag contains 2 pounds of garlic. The four quart containers are filled with the brine which is made up with water, Morton’s Tender Quick, brown sugar, and garlic powder. 



I trim the fat off of each brisket flat and then cut each flat in half for my process. 



Next step is to inject about 3.0 oz. of the brine into each pound of meat. 





This is the two pounds of garlic which I have put thru the Suzy and you can’t really have too much of this great seasoning. I will use 1/2 pound of the garlic on each brisket flat.  





After the meat is injected, I pack on the garlic to both sides of the meat and spread it around being very careful to not push any of the brine out of the meat. I then add my corning rub to all sides of the meat. 



The meat goes into Zip-Lock bags and then into the fridge for 4-5 days. I turn the meat over about twice each day. 



On smoking day, I take the meat out of the bag and then wash all the rubs and garlic off each piece under a running sink faucet. The meat then goes into a pan of water to soak for about an hour. 



The meat comes out of the pan of water and then is dried off with some paper towels and then placed on drying racks for about 40 minutes to finish drying.

At this point, we have some wonderful corned beef brisket.







The final rub is made up of gobs of fresh cracked black pepper, fresh cracked coriander seed, and brown sugar. I apply it to all sides of the meat before it goes onto the smoker. 



I set the Ranch Kettle up using four of the Weber charcoal fences with two on each side and then load about half a chimney of Stubb’s cold charcoal on each side. I then heat up about 2/3 of a charcoal chimney of  Stubb’s and pour about half of the chimney over each side of the cold coals. I then add some hickory chunks for my smoke and I am ready to cook. 



Place the meat on the Ranch Kettle and start the cook.



I did have to add a little charcoal once as the cook took about 9 hours to finish.



I smoked the brisket flat pieces to about 185 degrees internal and this is what they looked like when I started getting them off the kettle.

The meat was covered in foil and cooled for about an hour and then the meat went into the fridge overnight as I like to put the meat thru the slicer cold. However, I did slice enough off with a knife for a sandwich.





My first sandwich with this wonderful treat was about a half pound of the pastramied beef on rye bread with 4 slices of Swiss cheese and then a generous helping of horsey sauce over the top of the meat. Add a dill pickle spear and some chips and enjoy.





The next morning, we put the meat thru the slicer. Sure looked great. 





We then vacuum sealed the meat into one pound bags for the freezer.

My 28 pounds of brisket flats netted me 12-1/2 pounds of corned and pastramied meat. 





My second sandwich was a pastraimed Ruben made with about a half pound of the meat along with 4 slices of Swiss cheese, some fresh made kraut from a neighbor, and some Thousand Island dressing on a couple of pieces of buttered rye bread. I placed the sandwich into a hot cast iron skillet and fried it for a few minutes until done. Served with some garden tomatoes, a dill spear, and a pepper.

Now that is some good stuff!

For the folks that need my exact recipe for this wonderful treat, it can be found here:

http://olddavespo-farm.blogspot.com/2012/09/corn-and-pastrami-beef-from-scratch_11.html

Corned and Pastramied Beef Brisket

We like to keep this meat on hand and did use up the last of what we had frozen a few week ago so it was time to do up another few pounds. 



I started with 3 choice brisket flats that weighed slightly over 21 pounds total. I also made up my first round of spices and seasonings. I also got about 150 cloves of garlic ready for my treat. I made up the curing brine that will be injected into the meat.





I trimmed up each brisket flat and then cut each one in half.



I injected the brine into each piece of meat.



I put the garlic thru my Suzy and packed a generous amount on each piece of meat. 





I packed on the spices and herbs and placed each piece of meat into a Zip-Lock bag. The meat went into the fridge for 4 days and was turned over about two times a day during this curing period. 





I took the meat out of the fridge and washed all the spices and seasonings off under running water at the sink and placed the meat into a pan of water for about an hour.  I then toweled the meat off and let it air dry for about 30 minutes.



Made up the second round of spices for the smoking process and packed them onto the brisket pieces and they were ready for the smoker.

Decided to use the Hasty-Bake for this smoke and rolled it around to my cooking patio.



I figured I would need about an seven hour smoke time so I setup a fuse burn for about an eight hour cook to be sure I had enough to finish my treat. I placed a couple of firebricks in the charcoal pan and then added 13 pounds of Wicked Good charcoal  briquettes. I then added some hickory chunks for my smoke. 



I fired the cooker up and brought it up to temp and loaded my 6 pieces of meat. 



A beautiful morning but a little chilly at 41 degrees and windy.



The meat got done a little quicker than I expected and I got the first piece off at about 4 hours and the last piece off at about 5-1/2 hours into the smoke. The meat was smoked to an internal of about 185 degrees.





Put the meat thru the slicer and it sure looked great. It will be packed into one pound vacuum bags and frozen for future use or....







A fellow might take about 1/2 pound of this meat and put it on some big slices rye bread and then slop on a few dollops of horsey sauce. He might add 3-4 slices of Swiss cheese and fold this sandwich up and serve it with a dill pickle. OH MY!!  It just don’t get any better than this.