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pastrami desalination question

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    pastrami desalination question

    So i made pastrami last week and it was a success and a little bit of a failure. i bought corned beef from a local store. one was a point and the other was a flat. i wanted to do both to see which i prefer. there were a few problems in my process though.

    one was that each part was from a different company. they had different solution percentages. the flat was in a 35% solution but the point was in a 45% solution.

    i thought that if i soaked them for 24 hours it was be ok. the problem i found was that the bowl i found and tried to use was not big enough to fit both of them and have them completely submerged the whole time. as a result some of the meat was above the water for a while. at 12 hours i changed the water and flipped them but i don't think i did enough.

    at the end of the 24 hours the flat was a softer pink but the point was a dark red. look at the difference

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    this is why i am making this post. the flat came out great. the point is too salty for me to eat. i can't eat much of it at all and if i do i need a lot of water. what kicks me is if i had more experience with it i might have known what to do. i had the time to fix it. i put the rub on and let it sit in the fridge for 2 days while i waited for my window to open up to smoke. i could have had the rub on for 1 day and spent time desalinating.

    so obviously the things i did wrong i know - not a big enough bowl, not covering the meat entirely with water. but is there a way to know when the meat has desalinated enough? should i always look for that pale pink and if i see red should i keep going? does color not necessarily mean anything? it is a certain amount of time per percent of solution? i can't help but think there has to be some kind of metric or indicator involved in this.

    FYI: i smoked it with hickory at ~270 for ~12 hours until it reached 203. i never wrapped at and stopped feeding water to my water bowl and the bark came out insane.

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    #2
    DeusDingo , I soak my storebought corned beef in a large 2 gallon plastic bag. I put in the beef, add water to completely cover the beef, squeeze out any air (not much air, since water takes up most of the room), and place the bag in a 9x13x2 glass casserole dish and put the whole shebang in the refrigerator. It's easy then to pour off the water every 6 to 8 hours and add fresh water to the bag. I don't double-bag because I've never had a problem with leaking. I always position the bag in the casserole dish so the seal is pointing up.

    The last time I made pastrami, I had two flats and a point. I bagged each of them separately in their own water bath. Two fit in one casserole dish and I used a second casserole dish for the remaining one.

    FWIW, the Grobbel's brand that I used had 950 mg sodium per 4 ounce serving, which is 40% of the Daily Value. It was in a 36% salt solution. In fact, each pastrami that I have made from storebought corned beef has been in a 36-40% salt solution, according to my notes. I usually soak them 24 to 48 hours, depending on my schedule. I haven't noticed any difference in the saltiness of the pastrami between the 24 hour soaks and the 48 hour soaks.


    Kathryn

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      #3
      I made pastrami twice last week (first two times). I soaked mine in a huge soup pot. I let it soak for 48 hours and changed the water at 12 hour intervals.

      I never paid attention to what the solutions were.

      And now the local supermarket has corned points on sale, and I have no room in my freezer!

      Comment


        #4
        The different color is more likely from the two different muscles than salt content. You'd have to test with two pieces of the same piece of meat to find out if color is really an indicator. If I have more meat than I can soak covered at once, I soak one piece for 24 hours, take it out and rub it, and soak the other piece for 24, then rub it. Then in two days both are ready to smoke, probably even one day would work. I just did a point and flat to compare. I haven't tried them yet, but "quality control" samples did show the point as redder.

        Comment


          #5
          ok thanks for checking yours and for the tip. it is helpful to know that color doesn't necessarily indicate saturation.

          Comment


            #6
            My store's corned beef is in the 35% range for salt content. I soak the ~4lb pieces for 10hrs in a stock pot in I'd guess 1.5 to 2 gal water, no water changes, and it was perfect for my family. I went 8hrs- still too salty; went 24-way undersalted.

            Comment


              #7
              The ones I recently made were in the 35% range. I soaked them about 8 hours and never changed the water. Just took them out and rinsed them. No problem with saltiness.

              I would suggest you use the saltier one for pastrami hash. The saltiness will be cut by the potatoes, onions, and bacon fat . I bet it's delicious in hash.

              Comment


                #8
                45%! Wow never seen that. Anyway, regardless of what the label says. everything I make into pastrami gets a 24 hour (+/-) soak in a 5 gal bucket of water. Stir often. That works fine for me but wife is a little "salt sensitive" so I try to stay on the low side. The red is not the amount of salt. It's the sodium nitrite in the soln.
                s

                Comment


                • IowaGirl
                  IowaGirl commented
                  Editing a comment
                  I'm seriously not sure it's possible to make a 45% salt brine at normal room or fridge temperatures. A saturated solution of sodium chloride (table salt) in water has a concentration of about 26% at room temperature.

                  edit: What might be confusing peple is the package may say the meat contains 35-45% of brine, but that's different -- that's not the salt concentration. See the pic here: https://amazingribs.com/tested-recip...ed-beef-recipe
                  Last edited by IowaGirl; March 15, 2019, 06:53 PM.

                #9
                the wide ranges of responses has been kind of crazy. either there is a large variation in what people consider too salty or maybe it has a lot to do with amount of water combined with amount of time. it seems everyone desalinates a bit different and for different amounts of time.

                i think we need some kind of america's test kitchen thing to happen so we can be told how much water for an amount of meat at a certain percent solution for a certain amount of time (4 variables...blah)...in a perfect world anyway. i know people figure it out after a few tries and they just go from there. that would be an expensive and time consuming experiment.

                Comment


                • Dr ROK
                  Dr ROK commented
                  Editing a comment
                  Send me the supplies, I'll do the experiment

                • Atalanta
                  Atalanta commented
                  Editing a comment
                  Not too expensive this time of year when you can get corned beef for under $2/lb. I'm getting a couple more this weekend. I have one sitting in a water bath right now and I'm about to change the water.

                #10
                There are a lot of different variables at work so coming up with a hard and fast guideline is pretty much impossible. First off, the salt content listed on the label is likely wildly inaccurate. It's really hard to get a real number on this because a brisket is a large cut, it's difficult to pick proper injection spots, and estimating how much salt the beef has absorbed is just an estimate. There's also a huge difference depending on how much marbling the meat has, lean meat absorbs salt, fat doesn't really. So when it comes to removing the salt, you just have to develop a feel for it and get used to the fact that sometimes you'll have something with more or less salt than you might prefer.

                For the most consistent results, corn the same spec. and same grade brisket yourself. As this is likely not ideal, then you need to be able to soak the meat in at least as much water as what you have meat. Meat is mostly water, so if you soak 5 kilos of meat in 5 liters of water, you'll remove roughly half the salt if you give it enough time to come to equilibrium. How long that takes is going to depend on the thickness of the cut, but for a full size brisket, I'd reckon at least 6 hours. Soaking past the point of equilibrium will not pull any more salt from the meat. I'd say going with 1 to 2 parts water with 1 part meat, and changing the water every 6 hours is a pretty good "best practice".

                Comment


                  #11
                  My guess that the color diff is due to differences in nitrite. As for saltiness, each company has its own recipe and saltiness might be due to that. In desalinating use lots of water, surround the meat with it, and change the water occasionally if you can. And yes, "too salty" is VERY personal. I hear people say my bacon recipe is too salty, just right, and not salty enough. Find the supplier whose corned beef you like, work up a desalination, rub, smoking, steaming routine that works for you, and stick with it!

                  Comment


                    #12
                    Slice off a small piece and cook it and taste. Will give you an idea of saltiness. When meat smokes will dehydrate so probably err on less salty to begin.

                    Comment


                      #13
                      So my local Publix only has the "lower sodium" variety of corned beef flat for sale. Will this change the desalination process? I plan to corn a whole brisket myself eventually but want to do pastrami for Sunday and I'm outta time!

                      Comment


                      • DeusDingo
                        DeusDingo commented
                        Editing a comment
                        this topic is so old you might want to make a new one to ask this question. my suggestion would be the same as what @aaronbell said, cut off a piece, cook it, and taste it. that will tell you all you need to know about how salty it is

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