Venison Pastrami

Been wanting to make this for a while.

Took 5lbs of deer roast, sliced it into 1 inch thick plates.

Used a marinade of cold water, instacure #1, noniodized salt, substituted corn syrup for powdered dextrose, ground garlic.

Let it sit in top shelf of fridge for 5 days, overhauling it after 2 days.

Took it out, dredged in mix of course black pepper and coriander.

Put in my smoker at 130 degrees, both vents open to dry an hour. Used wet hickory sawdust for smoke.

Closed vents and Raised temp to 225, cooked until internal temp of 175-180

It taste Great, nice red color inside. Next time I'll make thicker pieces.
Even the wife likes it.
Just had some with eggs for breakfast.

Okay. Now you are barking up MY tree.
So, why did you slice it to 1"? Even an odd shaped roast cut in half lengthwise would work. I've even done a turkey breast pastrami in the smoker, packed with fresh cracked pepper the wife wont let me forget how good it was. And she's from Long Giland. THERES some praise for the effort.
Serve it in the morning with real potato pancakes. Everybody is happy happy happy.

I've never made it before, but have been wanting to for years. I started trimming up several small roasts I had packaged, they were small, about an inch thick after trimming. I trimmed up a few larger ones and cut them to match, not even thinking about it. Next time I'll use bigger pieces.

I used Rytek Kutas' recipe from his book; he said to pump brine the pieces to 15% of green weight. I decided the pieces were small enough they didn't need pumping.

If you don't have his book I highly recommend it

My wife is from Hobbs...

MMMMmmmm PASTRAMY.....

What's the name of the book? I want to check it out. You can never have enough cookbooks.
Or scraps of paper hanging around. The ones with recipes awaiting further tweaking to get it just right. After about a million additions or subtractions to the amounts, they end up in the master cookbook.

"If you don't have his book I highly recommend it"
I'll ask again. What book? Seems he has a whole bunch of them out there. I would love to read the one you are referencing. Don't want to buy the wrong ones.

Ames said:

"If you don't have his book I highly recommend it"
I'll ask again. What book? Seems he has a whole bunch of them out there. I would love to read the one you are referencing. Don't want to buy the wrong ones.

Click to expand...

Im sorry, i just saw your post. Here's my well worn, dog eared copy,

Thank you!
I thought that MIGHT be the one, but could not pull up a table of contents online to be sure.
Honey, we need to order another cook book.

Try abebooks.com. i've been getting tons of used books there, great prices too.

Thanks for the link. I just ordered a copy, used and in very good condition, for 40% less than Mothership Amazon. And I feel a little better not feeding that monster if I don't have to.

I built my smoker using Rytek's plans...an upright freezer with shelves removed. I cut out a hole in the roof and lower part of door and installed rectangular a/c vents for draft control.
Installed a wooden board on each side with notches to hold dow rods to hang sausage.
I use a double burner electric hot plate for heat, a derelict stock pot to hold hickory sawdust for smoke. I drilled a hole below where the sausage hangs for thermometer.
I've smoked 2 whole hams and 4 hocks at once, and over 50 lbs of sausage. It takes about 8-10 hrs to smoke the sausage.

I've got less then $50.00 invested in the smoker... most of it is hot plate.

Most Sausage should be cooked at 160 odd degrees to internal temperature of 155f. Above that causes Smokehouse Shrink, from drying out the sausage.

Ames said:

And I feel a little better not feeding that monster if I don't have to.

Click to expand...

I feel the same way.