Ruhlman Pastrami Recipe

I'm thinking about making the Ruhlman Pastrami recipe from "Charcuterie". The recipe calls for 42 grams of pink salt in the brine for 5 lb's of beef. Is this too much pink salt? Backing into the PPM on the DiggingDogFarm website calculator gives about 1250 PPM nitrite, which is slightly higher than the 200 PPM max from the USDA for brine's. Is this a good recipe, or does it need to be modified?

Thanks

It's another one of their horrible recipes for several reasons.
Actually, the nitrite is way lower than what's usually recommended for a 10% pump or pick-up, but they don't even mention pumping or pick-up, just a 3 day immersion, which is not long enough unless you have an extremely thin piece of meat.
When calculating the ppm in a brine like this you must add together the weight of all brine ingredients....the soluable ingredients anyway.


~Martin

That's bizarre as the recipe for corned beef calls for 25g of pink salt/5 days of immersion for 5lbs of meat. I wonder why there's such a huge difference?

Good question, it doesn't make sense.


~Martin

Gregg - I made the corned beef recipe last week and didn't even think about checking the quantity of pink salt. I cured 2 5lb brisket flats and it turned out great. I also wondered what the difference between the corned beef and pastrami recipes was since Ruhlman states that Pastrami is "corned beef underneath a smoky crust". His corned beef and pastrami recipes on his website are different than what is in "Charcutrie" as well.

Martin - The USDA has a document showing how to calculate nitrite PPM based on a recipe. They only use the weight of the meat and weight of sodium nitrite when calculating this, and ignore all the other brine ingredients. The bottom of page 15 in the link is where I got the info.

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FSISDirectives/7620-3.pdf

I have a brisket point (approx. 5lb) that I would like to make pastrami with. Do you have any suggestions on the amount of pink salt to use and length of time to brine if Ruhlman's values are incorrect? When I made the corned beef it was in the brine for 5.5 days and still had a real small area in the center that hadn't changed color yet.

Meathead also has a recipe and calls for 4 tsp of pink salt for 8 lb of beef, which is about 375 PPM.

Thanks

Andrew Meimann said:

Martin - The USDA has a document showing how to calculate nitrite PPM based on a recipe. They only use the weight of the meat and weight of sodium nitrite when calculating this, and ignore all the other brine ingredients. The bottom of page 15 in the link is where I got the info.
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FSISDirectives/7620-3.pdf

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That is not correct!
I'm very familiar with the handbook and the guidelines.
You're looking at the formula for dry compounds and mixes, not an immersion brine or pickle.

You need to look at page 22, Method One (Nitrite in Immersed Products.)
The total weight of the brine or pickle is used in the calculation (not just the cure and/or water weight.)
See the Procedure Table on page 23, Step 1 for an example.

Andrew Meimann said:

I have a brisket point (approx. 5lb) that I would like to make pastrami with. Do you have any suggestions on the amount of pink salt to use and length of time to brine if Ruhlman's values are incorrect? When I made the corned beef it was in the brine for 5.5 days and still had a real small area in the center that hadn't changed color yet.

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Yeah, their recommendation of 5 days brining time is ridiculous and 3 days even more so, there's no way that the salt and cure can distribute and equalize well in that short of a time.
You either have to inject the piece of meat with a portion of the brine or cure longer.

I use the equilibrium method of brining or pickling, it's basically Method Two in the handbook mentioned above.
Thin pieces of meat are immersed and thicker pieces are injected (pumped) and then immersed.

I explain the technique in this post: http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?17621-equilibrium-brining&p=349089&viewfull=1#post349089

I would use a 4:1 or 5:1 (meat:brine) ratio when curing corned beef or pastrami.

HTH

~Martin

Martin, both Andrew and I made the Ruhlman corned beef recipe last week with 5 days cure (I guess mine was closer to 6...) with no issues with cure penetration. Why would 25g/5 days/5lbs be ridiculous?

GreggP said:

Martin, both Andrew and I made the Ruhlman corned beef recipe last week with 5 days cure (I guess mine was closer to 6...) with no issues with cure penetration. Why would 25g/5 days/5lbs be ridiculous?

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Quoting Andrew.....

Andrew Meimann said:

When I made the corned beef it was in the brine for 5.5 days and still had a real small area in the center that hadn't changed color yet.

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As I said above, it's not long enough for proper curing, imagine if it was a thicker piece of meat.
There's also an ingredient gradient when curing so briefly, rather than a more equal penetration and distribution of the salt, cure, etc.
In other words, it'll be much more salty near the outside then it is in the center.
There's also the potential issue in the case of cold smoking pastrami in that the amount of nitrite may not be enough to reliably protect against botulinum toxin development. Some meat scientists recommend a minimum of 100ppm ingoing nitrite as a reliable safeguard.

Having said that, to each his own, many folks use Ruhlman and Polcyn's recipes, I'm just not one of them.

I prefer the equilibrium brining method for consistent results every time.


~Martin

Martin -

Thanks for the input. I appreciate the help in understanding all of this. Just so I am clear on how to do the calculation.

If I have 4000g of water, 20g of cure #1, 100g of salt, 20g of sugar, 10g of spices, and 2000g of beef:

Pickle weight = 4150g
Meat weight = 2000g
Sodium Nitrite weight = 1.25g

This equates to a 203.25 PPM of Sodium Nitrite, which is slightly higher than the 200PPM allowed (I made up the weights of the ingredients for this example). If I need double the amount of brine to cover the meat in my brine container I would just double all of the ingredients. Is this all correct?

If I have 2000g of meat, and want to use your meat:brine ratio of 4:1 than I would need 500g of water. I would then calculate the amount of cure #1, salt, sugar, etc for the 500g of water (to keep sodium nitrite under 200PPM), then multiply by however much I need to cover my meat in the brine?

This is all assuming a injecting a portion of the brine into the meat, then immersing the meat in the brine for 7 days or so?

Thanks

Andrew Meimann said:

Martin,

Thanks for the input. I appreciate the help in understanding all of this. Just so I am clear on how to do the calculation.

If I have 4000g of water, 20g of cure #1, 100g of salt, 20g of sugar, 10g of spices, and 2000g of beef:

Pickle weight = 4150g
Meat weight = 2000g
Sodium Nitrite weight = 1.25g

This equates to a 203.25 PPM of Sodium Nitrite, which is slightly higher than the 200PPM allowed (I made up the weights of the ingredients for this example). If I need double the amount of brine to cover the meat in my brine container I would just double all of the ingredients. Is this all correct?

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No, the formula for standard pumped brine is on on page 19.
The calculation is the same for immersion, but % pick-up is used instead of % pump.

ppm nitrite = g. nitrite X % pump X 1,000,000 ÷ g. pickle/brine
g. nitrite = g. cure #1 X 6.25%

In your example; g. pickle/brine = g. water + g. cure #1 + g. salt + g. sugar + g. spices

20 g. cure #1 X 6.25% = 1.25 g. nitrite

1.25 x 10% pump x 1,000,000 = 125,000

125,000 ÷ 4150 g. pickle/brine= 30.120 ppm nitrite

Remember, it's assumed that just 10% of the pickle/brine enters the meat, in this case by pumping and brining.
So if the beef in your example is either pumped or immersed at 10%, the amount of ingoing nitrite is only ~30 ppm.
A very low amount of nitrite, as I pointed out upthread.

Andrew Meimann said:

If I have 2000g of meat, and want to use your meat:brine ratio of 4:1 than I would need 500g of water. I would then calculate the amount of cure #1, salt, sugar, etc for the 500g of water (to keep sodium nitrite under 200PPM), then multiply by however much I need to cover my meat in the brine?

This is all assuming a injecting a portion of the brine into the meat, then immersing the meat in the brine for 7 days or so?

Click to expand...

No.

You need to add together the weight of the meat and the weight of the water.

That equals 2500 g.

You can then use the calculator on my site to determine the cure, salt and sugar amounts required for a desired level of each.

We'll use 200ppm nitrite, the recommended maximum in this case.

2% salt and 1% sugar.



Inject half the brine and place in a plastic bag with the remaining brine, remove all the air, brine for about 7 days turning at least a couple times a day.

I hope that makes sense.

~Martin