Pitmasters perfect barbecue-style pastrami
There’s a new item showing up on Houston barbecue-joint menus, though it’s familiar to anyone who’s ever perused the meat counter at a local supermarket or visited an authentic Jewish deli: pastrami.
Many people don’t realize classic pastrami is a smoked meat. Pitmasters throughout Texas do — and, seizing that smoke factor, lately they are incorporating contemporary barbecue techniques to make pastrami even tastier.
At its most basic, pastrami is an intensely flavored meat, usually beef. Like other cured or “salted” meats (prosciutto, bacon), pastrami started out as a way to preserve meat from spoiling in the days before refrigeration.
Deli-style pastrami is made using a “wet cure,” or brining technique. A cut of beef, usually brisket or navel, is added to a brine of water, curing salt and spices, then marinated for days or even weeks in a refrigerator. Once removed from the brine, the meat is rubbed with additional spices and black pepper, then smoked until partially cooked. It’s finished by steaming until fully cooked.
Barbecue pitmasters are tweaking the traditional recipe in two ways. First, instead of using only the lean or “flat” portion of the brisket, they are using the whole brisket — including the fattier “point” muscle. Second, they’re eliminating the steaming portion of the cooking process and simply leaving the brisket on the pit for as long as 14 hours to produce an intensely smoky flavor profile.
Roegels Barbecue Co. in Houston and Tejas Chocolate Craftory in Tomball both offer barbecue-style pastrami one day a week, on Thursdays.
For brothers Scott and Greg Moore at Tejas, making pastrami has been a learning experience.
“The first few times we made it produced salt bombs,” says Scott, who credits Greg with eventually perfecting the technique.
Tejas cooks only two or three briskets and the same number of plate short ribs for “pastrami Thursdays.” If they had additional cold storage, they would make more; the pastrami brines for seven days, so most of their already tight refrigeration space is taken up by big tubs of meat soaking in a curing solution.
After brining, the Moores add a spice rub similar to their typical brisket rub with lots of coarse-ground black pepper. Then they smoke the brined brisket for 12 to 14 hours.
“The brined brisket usually takes about an hour longer than regular brisket, probably because of the moisture content,” Scott says.
The result is a brisket that has a more concentrated smoke and salt flavor than a traditional barbecue brisket, whose flavor is more focused on the beef itself.
The Moores serve pastrami brisket in a Reuben sandwich and the beef ribs as a stand-alone dish. (Roegels offers those two options, as well.) The Reuben also involves house-made sauerkraut and Russian dressing, Swiss cheese and buttered, toasted rye bread.
The sandwich at Tejas is further distinguished from its delicatessen-style cousin by using thick-cut slices from the fattier portion of the brisket. The peppery, smoky outside crust or “bark” is more pronounced, too.
It is a delicious dish that melds the fragrant earthiness of rye bread with the sour of the kraut, the richness of the dressing and cheese, and the peppery smokiness of the pastrami.
However, apparently there are as many self-proclaimed experts when it comes to pastrami as there are with Texas barbecue.
“We had someone come in once and say this wasn’t real pastrami because we use the fattier end of the brisket,” Scott says.
A little more flavorful fat and smoke is the price of progress when it comes to Texas-style pastrami.