Good Pastrami with 10% of the salt

[johnec00]

I crave salty foods and my doctor has been nagging about cutting down for years. In a recent visit, he basically threatened me with unpleasant results if I kept ignoring him. So I've been working on it. docblonder has a recipe for dry cured pastrami on his site HERE that uses about 10% as much salt as more conventional recipes. Decided to give it a try with a piece of (select) boneless beef short rib I had in the freezer. Here's the pictures:

1.75 pound boneless beef short rib.


Equilibrium cured with 1.9 gram cure#1, 1.0 gram pickling salt vacuum bagged in fridge for 5 days.


Applied our version of pastrami rub and refrigerated 2 days loosely covered.


Smoked at 220º for 8 hours (IT 175º), chilled vacuum bagged and refrigerated for about a week.


Sous vide per David Parrish method HERE at 195º for 4 hours.



Baked a batch of no-salt rye buns.


Sandwich with pastrami, Boar's Head low sodium munster, no-salt refrigerator pickle, tomato, mustard, mayo.



Great sandwich, about 250mg sodium, same sandwich with conventional ingredients over 1500mg.
My palate would prefer more salt, but that's sort-of the idea, doc says I'll get used to it.

Overkill? Probably, but interesting experiment and this is my new go-to pastrami recipe. Just put a small well marbled tri-tip with this cure in the fridge. (Tri-tip was on sale at Seabra and I grabbed a couple).

[holehogg]

No InSalting that meal. Looks delicious.

[DiverDriver]

hmm. I would eat that in a NY minute. But kraut would be added.

[Jerod Broussard]

Yeah, I tried and definitely too little salt for me. Bland City. Glad you found something!

[holehogg]

How come you still burning coal beneath your name.

[johnec00]

I agree, it's bland and not salty enough for my taste buds, but supposedly my heart likes it. This has about 0.3% salt in the cure. More conventional corned beef cures are in the range 2.5% to 3%. Some day when I'm is a "science project" mood maybe I'll try various salt percentages and see how much is needed to make it "salty enough".

[Huskee]

"Doc says I'll get used to it" Lol. Good on you for overcoming hurdles and still eating good in the neighborhood. Looks wonderful!

[johnec00]

Yea, I forgot to ask my Doc if he passed his taste bud training class at med school.

[Troutman]

That sir is some killer looking pastrami. I love the cut of meat as well, I know that had to be delicious. Also like the fact that you equilibrium cured it, something I've been meaning to try. Thanks for the great post & pix.

[fzxdoc]

Looks delicious. You can always add salt to the sammie if you prefer, and for sure it wouldn't be as much as the amount of salt you originally eliminated. I think you should send a copy of your post and photos to your doctor.

Congrats on being a good patient and taking wise advice to heart. Literally.

Kathryn

[johnec00]

Thanx.

[smokin fool]

We must have the same Dr. as I am a well known sodium fiend.
Great job on that samage.

[tbob4]

Great looking cook and write-up. As you find more subs, keep posting them. There are likely a lot of members in your position who would like to hear about your successes and failures in recipe adjustments.

[David Parrish]

Looks great! Coincidentally, I credit
docblonder for the 4 hours at 195Ëš F Sous Vide portion of that recipe I posted a few years back.

I met him in Boston while traveling for work, and he'd mentioned that while we talked pastrami while eating pastrami!

[docblonder]

Great looking pastrami. Up here in Boston, squirrels are storing nuts, and I smoke and vacuum-bag-freeze a couple of 10 lb pastrami slabs for the winter- just in case the snow fall gets out of hand. Leaves time for concentrating on baking rye bread.

[johnec00]

Thanx docblonder Here in cntral Florida we haven't had snow since Christmas Eve '89, so that's not a worry. I have been eyeing your Danish rye process for a while, but have not gotten up the nerve to try it. Another of those "some day" things. BTW, the I couldn't find a source of the Goldrush starter, will any available sourdough starter work? How about just the local flora?

[docblonder]

Any sourdough starter is fine- but the rise time will vary. Someday there will be time for rye....

[IowaGirl]

johnec00 -- you wrote "...Equilibrium cured with 1.9 gram cure#1, 1.0 gram pickling salt vacuum bagged in fridge for 5 days...."

You also say the starting meat weight was 1.75 lb (795 g). And in Comment 4.2 you say "0.3% salt in the cure".

0.3% of 795 grams calculates out to be 2.4 grams of salt, not 1.0 gram. What am I missing or misinterpreting? Set me straight, please!

[johnec00]

Troutman is correct. There's also some round-off involved. Here's the calculation . . . Best I can estimate, docblonder 140ppm sodium nitrite works out to 2.24g/kg cure#1. Then his 2:1 ratio is 1.12g/kg salt (assuming approximate same weight/volume for #1 and pickling salt). My piece of rib weighed 839g, so it needed 1.88g cure#1 which contains 1.76g salt. Adding 1g salt gives 2.76g, or 0.33%. The 1.75 pound was just a sloppy wag, Sorry for the confusion.

[johnec00]

By the way, none of these numbers need to be taken too literally. Cure#1 quantity ±10% would still be perfectly OK and probably would not change the taste much. Salt anywhere from 0 to over 3% or more would be OK, although at the extremes inedible.

[IowaGirl]

Ah.... Makes sense now. Thanks for setting me straight on the numbers, johnec00. I appreciate you taking the time to explain.

[johnec00]

Tried another batch of the docblonder cured and Sous Vide finished boneless beef rib pastrami. Increased the salt percentage in the cure from 0.3% to 0.5% and added 10 grams more sugar to 50 grams rub. Both my daughter an I thought the taste was much improved. The extra sugar seems to add flavor to compensate for lack of salt. Here's some pictures:

Raw

Rubbed

Smoked

Finished

And packaged for freezer

[klflowers]

Man, I just ate my last slices of pastrami. You got me wanting more more more...

[Oakgrovebacon]

That looks amazing! I have only used brisket in the past-now I want to try other cuts!