So, last week when I sent my new ProQ on her maiden voyage, I started with beef ribs. Well, my Q has 2 racks, so i wanted to try something on the other rack also. I’d been reading about pastrami over on the AZBarbeque Forums. The gist of it is this – take a corned beef, soak the salt out of it, roll in coriander and black pepper – and smoke.
So first, I soaked a small corned been over night in the fridge. It was submerged, and I did throw in the little spice packet that comes with it. I changed the water out twice. In the morning, I hit it pretty good with coriander and black pepper, and put it on the lower rack.
It was in there about 6 hours. I pulled it out when the internal temperature reached around 160. No particular reason other than my ribs were done, and I didn’t want to keep feeding er charcoal. Well, lesson learned. The pastrami looked good, tasted great, but wasn’t very tender. Some of the guys on different message boards said to steam it. They also said that I should have foiled it and taken the internal temp higher. Next time, that’s exactly what I will do. Oh – and more coriander and pepper next time. It could have used some more “bark”.
