Quick Pastrami (A Corned Beef Hack)

You can certainly cure and make your own pastrami pretty easily if you have the curing salt and a smoker. If you have neither of those things you can fake your way to a tasty pastrami in as little as 3 hours.

Corned beef from your favorite grocery store and spices! Pastrami is covered in a mix of spices where the primary ingredient is lots of black pepper. Coriander powder is usually in there too. So make up your own mix. I used the spices shown above with a little salt and brown sugar. I used these approximate amounts.

You also need a smoke flavor of some sort. I used a combo of liquid smoke and smoked paprika.

3 Tb coarse ground Black Pepper

2 Tb coarse Coriander Powder

1 Tb Garlic Powder

1 Tb Smoked Paprika

2 Tb salt

1 Tb Brown Sugar

2 tsp Onion Powder

Open up your corned beef and rinse off the stank juice in there with it.

Dry the corned beef with paper towels and then drizzle some liquid smoke on and spread it around.

Sprinkle with your spice blend until it's completely covered on all sides.

Take your pseudo-pastrami and wrap it tightly in aluminum foil. You want it to cook in it's own juices.

Throw that beef on a pan and stick it into a 275 oven for anywhere from 2 to 4 hours. Mine was done at about 3.Cook until it can easily be pierced with a fork, but not until it falls into a big shredded mess. Unless you want a shredded mess sandwich or to make hash with it.

Look at that. Fatty, spicy, juicy. Sweet baby Jeeeeee-Zeus! Go forth and make this cheater's pastrami!