Pellet Smoker Cooking: Made Hub's EZ-Pastrami

Apr 13 2016

Hub is a moderator on LTBBQ forum; he is a very good BBQ cook and does a lot of judging at BBQ contests. He wrote up this method to make pastrami using a pre-corned beef flat. It saves that step and you can make some great pastrami in less time.

The past week-end one of the LTBBQ members found corned beef flats on sale for $2.99 a pound. I went to Krogers Monday morning to get one if they were on sale. They were $3.99 but I got one since I was hungry for pastrami. It was 2 .33 pounds and I probably should have bought two.

I got it soaking in a pot of water in the afternoon. It was in the fridge about 24 hours and I changed the water twice. Tuesday afternoon I seasoned it well with the rub, double wrapped in plastic wrap and in the fridge overnight.

I had cleaned out my Traeger Tuesday and ran the auger out, empty, of pellets. This AM I had to refill the pellet bin and run until I got pellets dropping in the firepot. I then shut it down and replaced the heat shield, drip pan and grate.

It was 11:00 AM when I got the Traeger started and heated to 200 deg. and got the corned beef on. After two hours I inserted a temp probe and went to 210 deg. The meat was at 108 deg. IT. After an hour I went to 225 deg. this was giving me about 250 deg. grill level for the rest of the cook. It was 3:30 when it hit 150 deg. IT so I double wrapped in foil, fat cap up, and back on for another hour to get to 170 deg. IT and passes a toothpick test. That was a total of 5 ½ hours.

It went in my microwave to set for about 45 minutes then took it out and let cool some and then in the fridge. I will slice it up tomorrow.

I just finished slicing the pastrami and it tasted great! I kick myself now for not doing two of them, I ended up getting about 1 ½ pounds from the 2.3 pounds. I froze up some for our son in law and we will probably eat the rest over the week-end.

Click Here for printable pastrami recipe

The corned beef