HOMEMADE PASTRAMI!

     After St. Patricks day you will most likely to find supermarkets will put their leftover surplus of corned beef on sale. This is a GOOD thing! tired of eating corned beef? Turn it onto homemade pastrami! I have always been huge fan of pastrami, but once I've learned how to make it homemade, I've never went back! The ingredients are not hard to find, some you might already have! The down side to making pastrami? TIME! It takes 6 days to make, 5 for prep, 1 to cook. But the results are amazing! So, for me to make it worth it? I make a lot of it and freeze it!

     Pastrami broken down it a beef brisket that has been dry cured with pink salt (curing salt), black pepper and coriander. Then it is smoked!

     Corned beef broken down is a beef brisket or round that has been brined with pink salt and pickling spice.

     What do these two have in common? They both are cured with pink salt. So, in a nutshell I will be reflavoring the corned beef to make it pastrami! Heres what you will need.

1 6-7lbs. corned beef
6 tbs. ground black pepper
3 tbs. ground coriander
1 1/2 tsp. mustard powder
1 1/2 tbs. brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp. paprika
3 tsp. garlic powder
3 tsp. onion powder

     The first step is to soak the corned beef. This will remove excess salt from the roast. Skipping this step will make your pastrami a salt lick! So, soak the corned beef for 3 days changing the water once a day. Keep refrigerated.

     The second step is drain the meat and pat dry. Mix together the pastrami rub listed above. pack on pastrami rub on the corned beef coating the entire surface. Wrap the meat tight with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 days.

     Step 3, remove meat from refrigerator and plastic wrap, allow to come to room temp. Meanwhile fire up the smoker to 225F. Smoke meat for 6 hours.

     Step 4, you meat should be fully cooked. at this point it needs to tenderize. To do that you will need to wrap the meat with aluminum foil really tight, or place in a aluminum tray and cover with foil. place covered meat back in the smoker and cook for another 2 hours.

     After the final 2 hours, You should have some nice tender yummy pastrami! Slice against the grain of the meat and serve!

Enjoy!

Irish Caviar!

     This is a cool new way to make mustard for your corned beef or pastrami sandwich. The ingredients are simple, the only odd ball ingredient is the mustard seed. If you happen to have an Indian market close by, they will most likely have it for cheap in large bags. The pic shown here is all yellow mustard seed, but feel free to mix it up with all brown mustard or half in half with both! Heres what you will need.

     1  12oz. Bottle of Guinness Extra Stout

     1 1/2 cups Mustard seed

     1 cup Red wine vinegar

     1 tbsp. Kosher salt

     1 tsp. Ground black pepper

     1/4 tsp. Ground cinnamon

     1/4 tsp. Ground cloves

     1/4 tsp. Ground nutmeg

     1/4 tsp. Ground allspice

     Combine all ingredients in a nonreactive bowel. Cover with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature for 2 days to allow the mustard seed to absorb all the liquid. If you don't desire the caviar look, place in a food processor and pulse for desired consistency. Keep refrigerated up to six months. Results are better ofter 1 week of refrigeration.

St. Pattys Day!!!

    

      I hope every one had a great St. Pattys Day! Sorry about not posting in a long time. It just seems me personal life is not allowing me enough free time to blog. But it hasn't pulled me away from the kitchen! The last few months I have been going out with some friends who are fellow foodies to restaurants to experience different food scenes. 

     We went to Suppenkuche in San Francisco, its a small restaurant that serves great german food and not to mention 2.5 liter glass boots of beer! DAS BOOT!!

     Needless to day I'm glad I didn't drive. The food there was AWESOME! Even my wife, who comes from a german family loved it! The place was simple, nothing fancy at all with it's plank wood flooring and wood picnic style tables, and in the middle was a square shaped bar with no chairs. So, if you wanted to just drink at the bar you had to stand. We had gotten there right when they opened and were the first to get in. The place was elbow to elbow with in the first 30 mins of opening. As soon as we sat we poured over the beer menu. Im got going to lie, the whole purpose of the trip originally was to conquer the boot! And we did! All 2.5 liters of it! For food we ordered different things off the menu and shared each others plate. We ordered suckling pig, roast goose, meat loaf, cured pork chop, and a brazed beef in cranberry cinnamon sauce. All dishes came with a potato dumpling and sauerkraut. So, if you are looking for a tall glass boot of beer and some legit german food? This is definitely the place!

     When it came time for the next adventure we decided to go back to San Francisco to check out House of Prime Rib. I wish I had taken a pic. The place is NICE on the inside! The staff and the service they provide is top notch! When they serve you, they give you a brief story of the prime rib and the sides it comes with. Food is simple there. They only serve one thing. It just depends on what size cut you want. Ranging from the english cut which is 3 thin slices of prime rib to the enormous King Henry cut which is a 14oz. bone in cut. All meals came with fresh sourdough bread, salad, yorkshire pudding, and a choice of creamed spinach or creamed corn, and mashed or baked potato. The sides for me were good, but I was never a fan of creamed veggies. The star of the show was the beef! A man wheels a massive egg shaped cart to your table, when he opens the lid, inside are several whole cooked prime ribs, your cut is sliced table side. So in my honest opinion, House of prime rib is #1 for Prime rib for me!

     The last adventure was a place called Colosseum New York Pizza in Milpitas, Ca. A friend of mine is originally from New Jersey and living in California, he misses the food from back home. So when I heard of this place, I ran it by my Jersey friend. You should of saw the look on his face when he saw they had cannolies on the menu.

     So we went there with some friends on a friday night for pizza and beer. Arriving there the place was filled with locals. The owner took our order is originally from Jersey, so it was legit! We ordered and all meat pizza and a cheese pizza, a sromboli, a chicken parmesan sub, a meat ball sub, and the eggplant parmesan sub. Oh yeah we got connolies too! Every thing was great! My least favorite, the chicken parmesan. My most favorite, the connolies!!!! After having them I can't to this day stop thinking about them!

     On St. Pattys I had some friends over and I prepared the traditional corned beef, red potatoes, cabbage and carrots. But what I LOVE doing is Making corned beef into Pastrami! Once you make Pastrami, you will never go back to store bought. Its a lengthy process that takes a week to make pastrami. In a nutshell, Corned beef is cured in a brine of curing salt and pickling spice to preserve and give it its signature flavor. Pastrami is cured with curing salt and uses coriander, mustard seed, black pepper, and smoked for its signature flavor. So since corned beef is already cured, to make corned beef into pastrami you need to reseason the meat and smoke it.

      The end result? Yummyness!!!

Roast Beast! (standing rib roast)

     Oh yes! My favorite Christmas dish, Roast Beast!! The official term is Standing Rib roast, unless your cut of meat is prime grade, then its Prime Rib! The method of prep I do takes about 14 days for this, but sooooooo worth the wait. My wife and kids look forward to this dish the most out of all my other holiday dishes, even my BBQ. I know what your thinking, 14 days??? Its actually 15 days prep, but 14 days are spend dry aging the meat. Taking this step does 2 things. 1. Most whole packed meat is packed in water. Dry aging the beef will evaporate some of that water thus increasing the beefy flavor! 2. The cell structures inside the meat start to break down over time, making the meat more tender. Win win right?! Thats why I take this step! The down side is this beast will be taking up real estate in you fridge for the 15 days.

     What you will need is a nice prime rib or standing rib roast (bone in). These come in different sizes ranging from a small 2 bone roast to a large 7 bone roast. This here is a 7 bone. Rinse all the blood off the roast and pat dry with a paper towel.

     Place the roast fat side up in a large tray and loosely cover with aluminum foil. Foil must have enough space to allow air to flow through the meat to dry it. Place the roast in the fridge for 14 days. Its good to check on the roast every few days just to make sure there is no mold or anything that could spoil the meat. A funky smell and darkening of the meat is normal.

     Ok Mind you looking at the photo stamps this is only 10 days, But after aging, your roast should look something like this. It should have a nice hard crust covering most of it.

     The next step involves a sharp knife. Trim all around the roast to remove all the dry oxidized parts. Do not remove all the fat.

     When you have finished trimming, your roast should look like this! Beautiful right? The meat should be nice and firm, not flappy, and the cross sections should resemble something from a butchers ad.  Liberally season the outside with coarse sea salt and fresh cracked pepper, granulated garlic and onion powder, and some dried rosemary. If you cant to use a store bought rub instead? Go for it! just remember you still might need to rub some coarse sea salt on the out side. most rubs have fine ground salt and it won't penetrate the massive roast. After seasoning, place the roast for another day in the fridge for the rub to work its magic on the meat!

     Ok remove the roast from the fridge and pre heat your oven to 425F. Bake roast at 425F. for 30 mins. This will make a crust on the meat. Reduce heat to 325F. Roast until meat has an internal temp of 125F. Remove from oven and cover with aluminum foil. Allow meat to rest until internal temp is 135-140F. The roast should be a perfect medium rare. 

     While the roast is resting its time to make the red wine reduction sauce! Remove roast from roasting pan, drain fat and place roasting pan right on stove over medium high heat and deglaze with beef stock, about 32 oz. Make sure you get all the bits dissolved that were stuck to the pan. Poor in some red wine. about 1cup. Salt and pepper to taste. Crank the heat up to high and bring to a boil. when liquid has reduced by half, you have a nice red wine reduction to dip your meat in!

     Remove rib bones from roast, slice and serve!

Yorkshire Pudding!!!

   If you reserved that fat from the roasting pan you can make yorkshire pudding! The recipe is simple and its a nice light and fluffy bread to sop up meat juices!!!

     1 cup eggs (about 4)
     1 cup milk
     1 cup flour
     salt to taste
     1/2 tsp dried herbs for savory flavor

     Pre heat oven to 425F. In a muffin tin coat the bottoms of each tin with about 1tsp of fat from roast. Place muffin tin in the oven until the oil gets hot and starts to smoke (about 5 -10 mins). Mix all the above until smooth. Once the oil in the tins are starting to smoke poor mix in each tin 3/4 full and bake for 20-25 mins. The yorkshire pudding should be puffed up double in size and crispy brown. Enjoy!

Holidays Are Over!!!

     I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New years! Sorry for not posting anything on my blog these past few weeks. For those who know me. December is the busiest time of year for for my job. Plus trying to to all the holiday things like getting a Christmas tree, shopping, decorating, baking, not to mention i have to be a parent and a husband on top of all that!!! Something had to give... So I chose to put Bakers Meat Shack on the back burner until the holidays blow over. But, that doesn't mean I haven't spent any time in the kitchen through all that. Here's what I have been up to The past few weeks.

   

     The sauerkraut was a complete success!!! I was a bit skeptical because the cabbage kept creeping above the brine, my plastic baggie with water wasn't weighing it down enough. Every few days I had to go and press that sucker right back down! Pushing the cabbage below the brine, causing my fingers to smell like fermented cabbage. Yummy right? So I was worried that this would affect the outcome of the sauerkraut.

     Here you can definitely see that some of the brine had evaporated , but it most defiantly smells like sauerkraut!! So I had to taste it just to be sure my 3 weeks were not in vain.

     

     The flavor was spot on! The cabbage retained a lot of its crunch too!! Plus the caraway seeds were a nice addition. If any of you out there have store bought sauerkraut, I find there are 2 kinds. 1 being the stuff labeled sauerkraut, which to me is your everyday run of the mill stuff that you get at any supermarket, hotdog stand, or ball park. 2 if you go to some specialty market or any german deli, you can find German sauerkraut. This stuff tastes like the german kind!!! So if you ask me was it worth the 3 weeks fermentation? YES! My only regret is that I should of made more, since my family managed to eat it all with in a weeks time.

     I also smoked some ribs for some of my coworkers as a surprise! For the month of December some employees were bringing food to work for the fellow coworkers. So I thought What the heck, Ill make ribs on a sunday, then reheat them monday morning and bring them in to work! 

     I also made some gingerbread. I friggen love gingerbread! Just an FYI, I did frost them, I just was too busy eating them to take a pic! The thing I regret not doing was make a gingerbread house. My youngest daughter and I made one last year and we had lots of fun doing it. But I had been so busy as stated above, I elected not to do it.

     And let us not forget about the Roast Beast!! Every Christmas I make standing rib roast (prime rib). Sadly this pic doesn't do it any justice. It looks Medium well, but trust me, it was very much Pink and juicy in the center! In my next post I will show step be step on how I dry age and cook this beast! Until then, I will try to be more regular on posting to my blog.