Barbecue

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ChefSteps is a team of chefs, writers, and food lovers who develop recipes, techniques, and guides to help people cook better at home.

ChefSteps

22-quart Cambro

Digital scale

Whisk

Digital instant-read thermometer

Spice grinder

1/2 Sheet pan(s)

Parchment paper

Smoker

Joule® Turbo Sous Vide

14-inch by 20-inch Heavy-duty vacuum-seal bag(s)

2-gallon Ziplock-style freezer bag(s)

Vacuum sealer

Water

Brown sugar

Kosher salt

Prague powder #1

Coriander seeds

Yellow mustard seeds

Black peppercorns

Pink peppercorns

Fennel seeds

Cinnamon stick(s)

Chile flakes

Cloves

Fresh bay leaves

Beef short ribs

Juniper berries

Garlic powder

Choosing the right cut of beef
We like using short rib plates for this recipe, but <a href="https://snakeriverfarms.com/products/drr-usda-choice-prime-brisket?variant=48973238075707">brisket</a> works great as well.

Choosing the order of pastrami-cooking operations
A big plus of this sous vide pastrami recipe is that it provides flexibility on the order of cooking operations, and you can choose which method works best for you. Should you sous vide then smoke or smoke then sous vide? Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, which we’ve laid out below. The good news: You’re going to end up with delicious deli-style pastrami either way.

Brine, rub, smoke, sous vide
Advantages: A better coating of spice rub on the beef, as spices adhere better to raw meat. The best method for make-ahead and big batches. With this order of operations, you can cook pastrami sous vide, ice it down, and refrigerate for 3 weeks, or freeze for longer. The meat has been cured, smoked, and then pasteurized with the sous vide cook. You’ve got pastrami at the ready. Just reheat it sous vide at [f 142] for 4 hours, or in a smoker or low oven, and then slice and serve. This is the general order of operations at Katz’s, where they brine, smoke, boil, then steam for service (no sous vide, of course).

Disadvantages: If you smoke the short ribs before cooking sous vide, the water in the sous vide bath will turn brown during this cooking process, so you’ll have to thoroughly clean your circulator and container afterward. The smoke flavor will be more subtle. The crust on the pastrami will be softer and less bark-like.

How to do it: Follow the recipe instructions below.
 
Brine, sous vide, rub, smoke
Advantages: Best if serving pastrami immediately. It produces a more pronounced smoke flavor and a drier, more bark-like crust.

Disadvantages: Less robust spice rub coating; spices don’t adhere as readily to meat after it’s been cooked sous vide. Not ideal for large, make-ahead batches; you can’t as easily chill, store, and then reheat with this process.

How to do it: After brining the beef, cook it sous vide at [f 147] for 48 hours (our favorite) or [f 162] for 24 hours. Season generously with spice rub, and then smoke at [f 200] for 1 hour.

Before we begin

Place water in a large container such as a Cambro. Add 580 g brown sugar, 300 g salt, Prague powder, 13 g coriander seeds, mustard seeds, 10 g black peppercorns, pink peppercorns, cinnamon, 1 g chile flakes, cloves, and bay leaves, and whisk until brown sugar and salt are fully dissolved. 
 
Chill brine to below [f 40].

Prepare brine

To quickly chill the brine, dissolve the ingredients in half of the water and then mix with ice. Combine 4.5 kg water and seasonings in a large pot. Place 4.5 kg ice in a large container, such as a Cambro, and set aside. 
 
Set pot over medium heat and cook, whisking frequently, until sugar and salt are fully dissolved. Remove from heat and transfer contents of pot to container with ice. Stir until well combined and ice is dissolved.

Rapid-chill the brine

Working with one plate of short ribs at a time, place ribs on cutting board, meat side up. Using a sharp knife, trim away and discard silver skin. If short ribs have a significant fat cap, trim to between 1/4- and 1/2-inch-thick; discard excess fat. 
 
Flip short ribs over, bone side up. Make incisions running down the length of each rib bone, scoring membrane and sinew down to the bone. Trim away sinew and fat to expose rib bones while keeping plate in one piece. Use smooth, long knife strokes, hold knife flush against rib bones, while holding and peeling back sinew with non-dominant hand. 
 
Repeat with remaining short rib plate.

Trim short ribs

Transfer short rib plates to prepared brine, making sure they are completely submerged. If the container you’re using won’t fit in your refrigerator, you can divide short rib plates and brine between two 2-gallon ziplock-style freezer bags. For insurance, double-bag them just in case the bones poke holes in the bags, so you don’t end up with brine all over your fridge.
 
Transfer to refrigerator and brine beef for 7 days, turning rib plates over each day to ensure even brining.

Brine short ribs

In a spice grinder, coarsely grind juniper berries. Add remaining 72 g black peppercorns, and grind until coarsely ground. Finally, add remaining 55 g coriander seeds and 7.5 g chile flakes, and grind until coarsely ground. 
 
Transfer spice mixture to a small bowl along with remaining 75 g brown sugar, 75 g salt, and garlic powder. Mix until well combined. If you’re smoking the pastrami the same day, set spice rub aside. Otherwise, transfer spice rub to an airtight container and store in a cool dry place until ready to use.

Make spice rub

When grinding spices for a rub or spice blend, it can be tempting to dump all the spices into your grinder at once and buzz them up in one shot. But spices have different textures, and some take longer to process, while others can be ground into a fine powder in a few seconds. For best results, grind spices in stages, starting with tough and resinous ones, and ending with delicate, dry spices.

Grind spices in stages

Once short ribs have been brined for 7 days, remove from brine and transfer to parchment-lined 1/2 sheet pan; discard brine. Pat short ribs dry with paper towels. 
 
Season short ribs generously on all sides with prepared spice rub, pressing mixture into meat for better adhesion. 
 
NOTE: You should season short ribs with roughly 5% of their weight in spice rub. So, for a 2 kg short rib plate, season with 100 g of the spice rub.

Season short ribs

Set up smoker and heat to [f 147]. 
 
Transfer seasoned short ribs to smoker and cook, keeping smoker at [f 149] and a relative humidity around 65%, for at least 5 hours and up to 7 hours.

Smoke short ribs

Around 30 minutes before short ribs finish smoking, set up a sous vide water bath and heat to desired temperature according to our doneness guide. 
 
[f 162]: Lean and tender
[f 147]: Juicy and succulent (our favorite)

Heat sous vide bath

Divide smoked short ribs between two 14-inch by 20-inch vacuum-seal bags or two 2-gallon ziplock-style bags. Double-bag if using ziplock-style bags. 
 
Seal bags using water displacement method or vacuum sealer.

Bag short ribs

When you are cooking heavy food or cooking at temperatures above [f 158], the seams of ziplock-style bags can fail and expose food to water from the sous vide bath. When cooking a recipe like this, opt for heavy-duty vacuum-seal bags designed for sous vide cooking if possible; if you must use ziplock-style bags, double-bag to reduce the chance of bag failure.

No vacuum-seal bags? Double-bag it.

Lower bags into sous vide bath until short ribs are fully submerged, and clip to the side of the water bath container. 

Cook, following our timing guide for pastrami doneness.
 
[f 162]—24 hours. Lean and tender
[f 147] —48 hours. Juicy and succulent (our favorite)

Once cooked, pastrami can be held in sous vide bath for 3 hours (27 or 51 hours total) without any loss in quality.

NOTE: If you smoked short ribs before cooking sous vide, the water in the sous vide bath will turn brown during this cooking process. That’s because the smoke compounds in the meat will permeate the packaging and leak into the water. Don’t worry—your packaging isn’t ripped.

Cook short ribs sous vide

For long cooks, it’s important to cover your sous vide bath container to reduce evaporation. Use a lid, a cut-up yoga mat, or some high-quality plastic wrap, then let Joule do its thing while you prepare for a pastrami feast.

Cover for long cooks

Remove short ribs from bag and transfer to cutting board. Gently pat dry. Using your hands, gently pull bones away from rib plate. They should pull away easily; discard bones. Using a sharp knife, slice pastrami against the grain into 1/8- to 1/4-inch-thick slices.

Remove bones and slice pastrami

For sandwiches, pile sliced pastrami on rye bread that’s been slathered in spicy mustard. Serve warm.

Serve

Pastrami can be cooked sous vide through Step 9, rapid-chilled in an ice bath (keep the meat in the sealed bags), and refrigerated for up to 3 weeks. Reheat in a [f 142] sous vide bath for 4 hours before proceeding with the recipe.

Make-ahead and storage

We’ve got sous vide versions of all your ’cue favorites—<a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/recipes/smokerless-smoked-brisket">brisket</a>, <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/recipes/smokerless-smoked-pork-shoulder">butt</a>, <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/recipes/smokerless-smoked-ribs-incredible-barbecue-no-smoker-required">ribs</a>, <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/recipes/bbq-beef-short-ribs">short ribs</a>—and they’re just as good, if not better and easier to make than the real deal. We took all our experience with turning <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/guides-tools/decoding-tough-and-tender-cuts">tough hunks of meat</a> into tender and juicy ’cue and translated it to the task of creating our version of the star of the Jewish delicatessen: sous vide pastrami. 
 
“Pastrami” comes from the Turkish “pastirma,” or “pressed,” which refers to jerky-like cured meat product. <a href="https://tastecooking.com/pastrami-everything/">The preparation </a> was brought by Romanian immigrants to the United States, and it was perfected in iconic Jewish delicatessens in New York like Katz’s. Instead of using premium cuts of meat, delis used inexpensive brisket, specifically the navel cut, and they’d dry cure the beef, smoke it, then steam it until tender for service. 
 
As people realized how delicious the preparation could be, “pastrami” products became available at supermarket deli counters and on the cold cuts shelf. But that “pastrami” is almost always sad and dry. Often made from beef shoulder cuts and designed to be sliced thin and eaten cold, it never really had a chance of measuring up to the great pastrami you can get at Jewish delis across the country. 
 
Our version blows any supermarket pastrami offering out of the water, and a big part of that is we use one of the beefiest cuts of meat–short rib!—and we serve it up hot. 
 
EDITORS’ NOTE: We’ve retested and updated this recipe to include an option for a shorter sous vide cook at a higher temperature that produces a leaner, more firm pastrami for folks who prefer that texture. We still favor a 48-hour low-temp cook—our preferred temp is now [f 147]. We also provide two options for the order of pastrami-cooking operations, and we have outlined the pros and cons for each in the “Before we begin” section. In the updated video, Grant goes with the sous vide then smoke option, but we kept the original recipe instructions for the smoke then sous vide method. Both produce excellent results, and it comes down to a matter of preference.

Sous Vide Pastrami