# Deer pastrami



## mj1angier (Jan 26, 2022)

Made deer pastrami this week using this recipe. Got to put my new slicer to work















Came out good, just a bite too salty but nice and peppery with a good twang


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## SmokinEdge (Jan 26, 2022)

mj1angier said:


> Made deer pastrami this week using this recipe. Got to put my new slicer to work
> 
> View attachment 523516
> 
> ...


That looks good. Nice job.

Marianski is heavy handed on his brines. That brine you used was about 8.5% salt. If you would have injected the 10% brine to meat weight and then bagged the meat with no additional brine and cured for 5-7 days in the refrigerator, it would have come out less salty, but you would have wasted a lot of brine.

Here is what I would do next time:
Measure out 10% of the meat weight in water.
Weight 1.5% of meat weight in salt, dissolve in water.
Weigh .75% of meat weight in sugar, dissolve.
Weigh .25% of meat weight in cure #1, dissolve.

Now inject all of this brine into the meat as evenly as possible and get as much of the brine injected as humanly possible.

Put together your aromatics and crush them or lightly grind them. Rub that mixture on the meat all over. Place in a plastic bag into the refrigerator for 5-7 days. Remove rinse, dry, apply final rub and smoke. I guarantee it won’t be over salty.


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## DougE (Jan 26, 2022)

SmokinEdge said:


> Here is what I would do next time:
> Measure out 10% of the meat weight in water.
> Weight 1.5% of meat weight in salt, dissolve in water.
> Weigh .75% of meat weight in sugar, dissolve.
> Weigh .25% of meat weight in cure #1, dissolve.


Not really related to this thread, but that answered something I had wondered about injecting cure. You use 10% of the meat weight in water, but calculate cure, salt, and sugar by the weight of the meat. I'm kind of dense sometimes, so it's nice to see it spelled out, simply.


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## mj1angier (Jan 26, 2022)

I went with the dry mix on it. I will do it again and just adjust the salt


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## SmokinEdge (Jan 26, 2022)

DougE said:


> Not really related to this thread, but that answered something I had wondered about injecting cure. You use 10% of the meat weight in water, but calculate cure, salt, and sugar by the weight of the meat. I'm kind of dense sometimes, so it's nice to see it spelled out, simply.


Correct.
Same difference if we made up a 60* SAL brine (15% salt) added 7.5% sugar and added 1560ppm cure #1, then draw from that brine 10% in our meat weight and injected it all over, we would net 1.5% salt, .75% sugar and 156ppm nitrite in the meat. That’s wasteful unless we are doing 100# of meat at a time, then it would make sense, but for small pieces, it’s easier to use the template I posted and adjust the salt and sugar % to your liking.


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## bauchjw (Jan 26, 2022)

Looks good to me!


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## SmokinEdge (Jan 26, 2022)

mj1angier said:


> I went with the dry mix on it. I will do it again and just adjust the salt


Oh, ok. Then you used 3.5% salt in the rub. Cut that next time to 1.5 - 2.0% and will will be much happier. Like I said earlier, Marianski is heavy handed with salt in his recipes.


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## TNJAKE (Jan 26, 2022)

Looks tasty as heck. When I did mine a couple weeks ago I used 2% salt and came out about right for me


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