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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: where smart Happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain with today's question,

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Speaker 1: what exactly is pastrami? Pastrami is a time machine in

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Speaker 1: a way, so is cheese. For that matter. Pastrami is

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Speaker 1: a technology for preserving meat that our ancestors used before

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Speaker 1: refrigerators were invented. Cheese falls into that same category. Cheese

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Speaker 1: is a non refrigerated technology for storing milk. It turns

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Speaker 1: out that pastrami and cheese both happened to taste good,

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Speaker 1: so they're still very popular, even though the preservation technologies

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Speaker 1: that they represent are no longer needed. Prior to refrigeration,

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Speaker 1: killing a large animal like a cow or a pig

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Speaker 1: presented a problem. Either you had to have a huge

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Speaker 1: party so that you could eat the whole thing at once,

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Speaker 1: or you had to find a way to preserve it.

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Speaker 1: About the only way to preserve meat prior to the

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Speaker 1: twentieth century is by salting. If you add enough salt

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Speaker 1: to meat, you kill all the bacteria in the meat

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Speaker 1: and you can preserve it for a very long time.

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Speaker 1: There are two ways to get salt into meat. You

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Speaker 1: can coat the outside of the meat with dry salt

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Speaker 1: and let that salt diffuse into the meat over several weeks.

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Speaker 1: That's called dry curing. Or you can make a salty

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Speaker 1: brine and let the meat soak in it for several weeks.

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Speaker 1: There's still some possibility of spoilage. The thing you have

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Speaker 1: to worry about is bacterial problems during the time it

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Speaker 1: takes the salt to soak in. The easiest solution to

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Speaker 1: that problem is to do your salting in the winter,

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Speaker 1: so you can take advantage of nature's refrigerator for a

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Speaker 1: few weeks. So to make bastrami, you start by making

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Speaker 1: corned beef. Corned beef is a beef brisket soaked in

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Speaker 1: brine with a little sugar and spices added. According to

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Speaker 1: the Joy of Cooking, corned beef has nothing to do

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Speaker 1: with corn, but got its name when a granular salt

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Speaker 1: the size of a kernel of wheat corn to a

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Speaker 1: Britain was used to process it. By smoking corn beef,

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Speaker 1: you turn it into pastrami. The smoking adds flavor to

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Speaker 1: the meat. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for

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Speaker 1: this podcast? If so, please send me an email at

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Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on

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Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Go to how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com and be sure to check out the

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Speaker 1: brain stuff blog on the how stuff works dot com

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