WEBVTT - What exactly is pastrami?

0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:03.560
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works dot com

0:00:03.600 --> 0:00:08.280
<v Speaker 1>where smart Happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain with today's question,

0:00:08.760 --> 0:00:14.160
<v Speaker 1>what exactly is pastrami? Pastrami is a time machine in

0:00:14.200 --> 0:00:18.159
<v Speaker 1>a way, so is cheese. For that matter. Pastrami is

0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:22.480
<v Speaker 1>a technology for preserving meat that our ancestors used before

0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:27.640
<v Speaker 1>refrigerators were invented. Cheese falls into that same category. Cheese

0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:31.880
<v Speaker 1>is a non refrigerated technology for storing milk. It turns

0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:35.240
<v Speaker 1>out that pastrami and cheese both happened to taste good,

0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:39.680
<v Speaker 1>so they're still very popular, even though the preservation technologies

0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:44.159
<v Speaker 1>that they represent are no longer needed. Prior to refrigeration,

0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:47.360
<v Speaker 1>killing a large animal like a cow or a pig

0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:50.600
<v Speaker 1>presented a problem. Either you had to have a huge

0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:53.320
<v Speaker 1>party so that you could eat the whole thing at once,

0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:55.840
<v Speaker 1>or you had to find a way to preserve it.

0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:58.840
<v Speaker 1>About the only way to preserve meat prior to the

0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:02.920
<v Speaker 1>twentieth century is by salting. If you add enough salt

0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:05.800
<v Speaker 1>to meat, you kill all the bacteria in the meat

0:01:06.080 --> 0:01:08.440
<v Speaker 1>and you can preserve it for a very long time.

0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:12.280
<v Speaker 1>There are two ways to get salt into meat. You

0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:15.080
<v Speaker 1>can coat the outside of the meat with dry salt

0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:18.800
<v Speaker 1>and let that salt diffuse into the meat over several weeks.

0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:22.880
<v Speaker 1>That's called dry curing. Or you can make a salty

0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:26.240
<v Speaker 1>brine and let the meat soak in it for several weeks.

0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:30.039
<v Speaker 1>There's still some possibility of spoilage. The thing you have

0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:33.520
<v Speaker 1>to worry about is bacterial problems during the time it

0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:36.880
<v Speaker 1>takes the salt to soak in. The easiest solution to

0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:39.520
<v Speaker 1>that problem is to do your salting in the winter,

0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:43.080
<v Speaker 1>so you can take advantage of nature's refrigerator for a

0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:46.760
<v Speaker 1>few weeks. So to make bastrami, you start by making

0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:51.200
<v Speaker 1>corned beef. Corned beef is a beef brisket soaked in

0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:54.840
<v Speaker 1>brine with a little sugar and spices added. According to

0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:58.200
<v Speaker 1>the Joy of Cooking, corned beef has nothing to do

0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:02.000
<v Speaker 1>with corn, but got its name when a granular salt

0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:04.880
<v Speaker 1>the size of a kernel of wheat corn to a

0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:09.400
<v Speaker 1>Britain was used to process it. By smoking corn beef,

0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:13.440
<v Speaker 1>you turn it into pastrami. The smoking adds flavor to

0:02:13.480 --> 0:02:17.120
<v Speaker 1>the meat. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for

0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:20.160
<v Speaker 1>this podcast? If so, please send me an email at

0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:23.360
<v Speaker 1>podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on

0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:25.720
<v Speaker 1>this and thousands of other topics. Go to how stuff

0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:28.520
<v Speaker 1>works dot com and be sure to check out the

0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:31.000
<v Speaker 1>brain stuff blog on the how stuff works dot com

0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:31.600
<v Speaker 1>home page