Montreal smoked meat

As tradition built it

Montreal smoked meat

10 days curing, then 8 to 9 hours smoking and about 3 hours steaming.

Ingredients

The method as the tradition gives it, ingredients named but not yet weighed. Quantities follow as we verify them, lead dishes first.

• whole beef brisket
• proprietary spice blend: cracked black pepper, coriander, mustard seed and garlic

Method

1. Dry-rub the whole beef brisket with a proprietary spice blend built around cracked black pepper, coriander, mustard seed and garlic and cure for ten days, refrigerated, the salt and spice working into the meat throughout.
2. Smoke overnight, roughly eight to nine hours, at Schwartz's own stated practice.
3. Steam for around three hours the following day until fully tender.
4. Hand-slice to order rather than machine-cut, since the meat is too fragile and unevenly fatted by this point to survive a slicing machine intact.

Notes

This differs from New York pastrami in real, if only partly documented, ways: the cut is brisket rather than pastrami's traditional fattier navel, the cure leans more heavily on pepper and coriander, and the hand-slicing itself is a deliberate practice rather than an aesthetic choice.

What a modern chef changes

Big Green Egg smoke, sous vide steam, the cure and slicing left untouched

Method

1. Hold the ten-day dry cure exactly as tradition sets it; this stage already is correct technique and does not need shortening.
2. Replace the overnight open-smoker stage with a Big Green Egg run low and steady across the same roughly eight to nine hours, for tighter, more repeatable temperature control than an open commercial smoker gives a home cook.
3. Finish the steaming stage sous vide instead, holding the brisket at a single, precise, low temperature for the same three hours rather than a variable steam heat.
4. Rest briefly before hand-slicing exactly as the tradition insists, since no elevation here should touch the one step that is already doing the job correctly.