Pastrami by Pressure Cooker



picture of pastrami

It turns out there's a home shortcut to preparing your own pastrami without needing meat-smoking gear, by starting with a supermarket vacuum-packed package of corned beef brisket, rinsing out the brine, cooking it for an hour in an ordinary pressure cooker, applying a spice rub, refrigerating it overnight to cure, and finishing it with another hour in an oven on low heat.



Yields:

Serves 6

Time Required:

Ingredients:

Preparation:

After removing corned beef brisket from package, rinse it off thoroughly under cold water for 1 min. (Remove all brining agents, or meat will be too salty.) Discard or repurpose for something else any included spice packet. Leave brisket's fat layer intact: It's key to making a tender, juicy and flavorful pastrami.

If using liquid smoke for a smokey taste, brush it on now (entirely optional).

Place a metal trivet in pressure cooker to elevate meat, then park brisket on it fat-side up, so that melting fat pervades meat during cooking. Add 1 cup water to produce required steam. Close up, and cook a full 60 mins. While it's cooking, combine all spice ingredients in a small bowl.

At end, let cooker rest 15 mins. before de-pressuring and opening. Transfer brisket to a plate, and let cool 10 mins. If there's sweated liquid on surface, dab it off using a paper towel. Then, rub spice mix onto meat on all sides, securely wrap it in aluminum foil, and refrigerate for at least 12 hrs. and up to 2 days, to let spices soak in, and cure meat. (This step is essential, and is really what transforms the meat.)

To get it ready to serve, set out to reach room temperature for an hour, still wrapped in foil. This helps keep the meat tender in the final cooking phase.

Pre-heat oven to 275°F. Open foil, and place pastrami fatty-side down atop now-reshaped aluminum foil made into a low, impromptu tray/basket with walls just high enough to contain drippings. Place this assemblage directly on middle oven rack, and place a baking sheet on a lower oven rack. (Pastrami assemblage itself should not be on a baking sheet. Cook 60 mins.

Remove pastrami from foil, place meat on a cutting board, and allow to cool 5-10 mins. Cut into thick slices, for serving.

It's good served on rye/pumpernickel bread, perhaps with Russian dressing or brown mustard, maybe with some pickles or coleslaw. Or, hey, maybe you want a Reuben sandwich (not exactly Jewish deli material, but who am I to judge?).



Cook's Notes:

I've had amazing success using this recipe, with any and all totally generic supermarket corned beef brisket pieces, of any and all description. Whatever's on sale in a refrigerator-section plastic bag is fine (not the canned stuff; fresh salted stuff). For example, one store near me carries "Blarney Stone Corned Beef Brisket", vacuum-packed in a bag. Either point cut or flat cut is fine. A friend of mine claims Shenson brand is best.


1 I've never used this stuff, but it's a water-soluble yellow-to-red flavouring aid that adds a smokey taste to meat or vegetable, and is apparently produced as a condensate from wood smoke. It's sold in bottles, and you'll probably find it near BBQ sauces and marinades.

Cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons are as defined in US Customary Units, not to be confused with differing British imperial, "legal", "coffee", Commonwealth of Nations, Canadian, Latin American, Japanese, Russian, or Dutch defintions — further proof that everyone needs the metric system.

2 Maybe I'm uncultured, but I use light brown sugar because it's what I have, and don't see why it'd matter.

3 When I was out of this and crushed some fresh garlic, it worked great, too.

4 Sage leaves are available in two prepared forms, rubbed or ground. "Rubbed" is made from whole dry large sage leaves only, excluding stems, that have been soaked, rinsed, dried, then rubbed against one another to form powder, and is milder flavoured. "Ground" is made by soaking, drying or dehydrating, then crushing both leaves and stems to powder state, producing a more-intense, herbaceous flavour profile with woody and bitter notes.

"Rubbed" is best used to add sweetness without bitterness, and is suitable for stuffings and Italian/Greek dishes, pairing with poultry, fish, game, and red meat. "Ground" is for meals that need the fullest, strongest sage flavour. If substituting ground where (as here) rubbed is called for, cut amount by half. If using chopped sage, triple the amount (e.g., change out tsp. amount for Tbsp. amount).



Collected and re-published at http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/recipes/pastrami-by-pressure-cooker.html by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> on Mar. 15, 2025. Individual recipes are free from copyright. Share and enjoy!

(If I have any copyright title in my own very minor contributions to this page — not my intention — they were created in 2025 by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. The image file (photograph) was taken on Mar. 16, 2025, also by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. I have thereby waived all copyright, compilation copyright, and related or neighbouring rights to this work. This work is published from: United States of America.)

Copious thanks to Jeffrey Eisner for this recipe, which he published at https://pressureluckcooking.com/instant-pot-pastrami/, intending the first hour of cooking to be in an Instant Pot, an early 2020s fad device that's just an old-fashioned pressure cooker with an added array of automation control and features. They are reputed to have 12 PSI ("low"), 15 PSI ("high") and sous vide pressure settings. A normal, regular pressure cooker for the USA market like my 1970s Presto does 15 PSI, though some newfangled ones reportedly add a "low" setting for about half that pressure. In any event, 15 PSI for an hour is just the ticket.