Pastrami

Sunday, 6 July 2025 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination:
Category/Kategorie: General, Bon appétit, New York City
Reading Time:  3 minutes

© Gerda Arendt/cc-by-sa-4.0

© Gerda Arendt/cc-by-sa-4.0

Pastrami is a type of cured meat originating from Romania usually made from beef brisket. The raw meat is brined, partially dried, seasoned with herbs and spices, then smoked and steamed. Like corned beef, pastrami was created as a way to preserve meat before the invention of refrigeration. One of the iconic meats of Eastern European cuisine as well as American Jewish cuisine and New York City cuisine, hot pastrami is typically served at delicatessen restaurants on sandwiches such as the pastrami on rye.

Beef plate is the traditional cut of meat for making pastrami, although it is now common in the United States to see it made from beef brisket, beef round, and turkey. New York pastrami is generally made from beef navel, which is the ventral part of the plate. It is cured in brine, coated with a mix of spices such as garlic, coriander, black pepper, paprika, cloves, allspice, and mustard seed, and then smoked. Finally, the meat is steamed until the connective tissues within the meat break down into gelatin.

Pastrami on Rye bread © flickr.com - jeffreyw/cc-by-2.0 Pastrami pizza © ChildofMidnight/cc-by-3.0 © flickr.com - Jeff/cc-by-sa-2.0 © flickr.com - Arnold Gatilao/cc-by-2.0 © Gerda Arendt/cc-by-sa-4.0 © flickr.com - T.Tseng/cc-by-2.0
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Pastrami on Rye bread © flickr.com - jeffreyw/cc-by-2.0
While pastrami is more commonly made with the fat-marbled navel or plate cut, Montreal smoked meat is made with brisket in which the amount of fat is more variable. This is because “navel is much harder to find in Canada because of its British beef cut tradition”. The use of brisket means that smoked meat is “not fattier throughout the cut, but it has a larger cap of fat, and it has a stringier texture, more fibrous. American-style pastrami is more marbled with fat and has a denser texture.”

Greek immigrants to Salt Lake City in the early 1960s introduced a cheeseburger topped with pastrami and a special sauce. The pastrami cheeseburger has since remained a staple of local burger chains in Utah.

Read more on foodandwine.com – Smoky Pastrami, Katz’s Delicatessen and Wikipedia Pastrami (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.



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