I guess I'm the only Foodie here. Ohh well, too bad for all suckas that don't know how to eat, drink and share. =^b
It's that time again. I have made great Ribs before, baby back, short (Korean cut), spare and St Louis cut. This is my first try and making BB on the MES ver2.5.
I told my bro to take the meat out the Keggerator and dump the juice and set the meat on the baking sheet before he leaves for work so I could take care of it when I wake up. So 9am before he leaves, he places it on the counter in the baking sheet fore me. 11 am I get up, brush my teeth and stroll to the kitchen and what do I see? 3 racks of BB and my 2 hunks cured Pastrami. Time to make good eats!
The ribs are pretty much set to season right out the package other than removing the membrane on the back. So what do I do fist? Warm up the smoker!! I set the MES to 240F. Then I went ahead and ripped the membrane on the back of my 3 BB ribs. A good spread of el-cheapo mustard as a rub binder and a good sprinkle of off-the-shelf rub (I was too lazy to make my own this time) is lathered on both side and ribs are ready to smoke.
After I was finished seasoning the BB, I stepped outside and pulled the pellet smoking tray (see top post) that I had already filled with pellets out the smoker. I filled it up and set it inside the smoker as I warmed it up to dry out the pellets so they would catch fire and the smolder better. This will increase my chances of good smoke production which is always a good thing when you are BBQing. I then took my handy dandy gigare butane lighter/torch and went to town on one end of my pellet smoker. A good flame started and I let it sit for the 2 minutes or so as I loaded the 2 middle racks of the MES with my 3 racks of ribs. Once they were all in, I blew out the fire in the pellet tray and set it it the MES on the bottom middle in the drip tray. I will me making these ribs following the 3-2-1 method. This consist of 3 hrs smoking, 2 hrs foiled, 1 hour smoke/glazing.
Back inside I went to prepare my other slab of meat. I don't know why but I have never had Smoked cured Pastrami until about 2 months ago. I have had a decent share of Roast Beef or Corned Beef sammiches but never a Smoked cured Pastrami. Well, The fool I am because MY GOD it's divine! It's just so darn friggin good! I happen to buy it to make sammiches for a fishing trip 2 months ago and it has been my go to sammich meat.
Well, with a little research and a few online vids later, I decided to try my hand at making this tasty meat. Today I'm following this recipe with minor changes. I'm using super trimmed Brisket wince it was on sale and available.
Home-Smoked Pastrami Recipe - Barbecuebible.com
The changes I made was I drained the brine out of the zip lock bags last night and filled them with fresh water but left all the veggies and flavor stuff in the bag. Reason? Well, I had use table salt instead of Kosher salt and table salt grain is smaller then Kosher salt. This meant that I would use less table salt vs Kosher salt as the finer table salt will compact more and better in a measuring cup. This meant that I used more salt then I should have.I didn't think about it at the time but I found out and thought about it shortly after I made the brine. So, instead of tossing the whole brine and ingredients away, I decided to simple drain the brine the night before the smoke and let the meat sit in plain water to try and draw some of the salt back out of the meat. It should work, but I wonder if 1 night would be enough. Guess I'll find out. I started the brine/cure 10-19, dumped the brine/cure 10-30 and replaced with H2O and set it back in the Keg fridge.
I placed the meat on a baking sheet and put it in my Keggerator hahaa... I love that thing. I have soda, juice and other drink in there. I pretty much always have cold drinks at the house.
I had a hard time finding Coriander seeds at the local mart. I was able to find some at HEB but there were expensive! They only had Organic and it was close to $5 for 1oz! LIKE WTF! I needed it so I bought it. I went online and ordered 1lb of the stuff for $8.xx shipped to the house so I would have it when I need it. The rub for the Pastrami was all fresh ground from a hand cranked ceramic coffee bean mill. I got it cheat from Amazon.It worked out wonderfully. I was able to adjust the setting to coarsely grind both the Coriander and Pepper. I didn't have mustard seeds but I did have a little mustard powder so I used a little of that instead. Once again I used el-cheapo mustard and a rub binder. It's already one of the rub ingredients so ehh (not that you can taste it when it's smoked).
Once the cured meat was rubbed with the Pastrami seasoning I placed them in the smoker. I will smoke it until internal temp (IT) reaches 174 then wrap it in foil steam it some more till IT is 195.
In case some of you guys/gals did not know, ~195f IT is pretty much the off the bone tender or fall apart on the first bite tender temp.
Here they are resting nicely together in the MES smoking away.
Will be back to update later.
YzGyz