Recipe: Wild Game Pastrami

SERVES 1-8 (½-POUND MEAT PER PERSON) | PREP TIME: 2 DAYS | COOK TIME: 1 HOUR

Deli sandwiches piled high with smoked and well-seasoned meat are one of America’s oldest traditions. Typically, chefs use hard-to-cook cuts, like beef brisket or pork shoulder, and roast them until the connective tissue breaks down, and are sliced thin. So, learn how to cook this recipe: wild game pastrami, and be better off for it.

In New York or Chicago, Jewish delis reign supreme. In Kansas City, the BBQ sandwich tradition makes something similar, but sometimes it’s beef, sometimes it’s pork. Also, in recent years, people have started to take the oldest traditions of curing and smoking from Europe more similar to what is seen in German Speck, merged with pastrami and using duck. Any way you approach it; there’s a longstanding human tradition across cultures to cure and then smoke meat for flavor and preservation. It’s the kind of food you could call universal, time-tested, and all-approved. (The opposite of a social media hype recipe.)

The cut matters somewhat when you consider slicing. You don’t want a huge connective tissue strip or bone going through the middle of the cut. If so, you’ll have a hard time making a nice, thin slice. Bird breasts with fatty skin excel in this recipe. Personally, I’m cleaning out an excess of farmed muscovy and wild duck breasts I have laying around. They’re the larger ones that are not exactly great for a quick sear process. So, I’m going to make some charcuterie or lunch meat out of them all.

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The wet brine simplifies things. You just need to get the ratio of salt to water correct and then you can play around quite a bit with the flavor. For a duck-breast-sized piece of meat, you also only need 24 hours of time in the brine before its ready. But you can go as long as a couple days if your plans change. (A dry brine requires you to ratio the salt to the meat and gets a bit more complicated, so we’ll just skip that.)

I like duck with some Asian flavors, so any sort of green peppercorn is a welcomed addition to the final rub. I like the Szechuan varieties because they also have a numbing effect combined with a great floral note. It pairs amazingly with chilies, so I also toss in some hatch chili powder for heat, plus the fresh ground black pepper and ground coriander seed as is traditional for pastrami.

Use ¼ of your gallon of water to dissolve the salts, sugar, and any spices you use in the brine. Then, cool down the brine with the remaining ¾ gallon. Once chilled, drop in the meat and refrigerate. Keep in mind, you can use frozen meat for this and just let it thaw in the brine.

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Pull it out the next day. Give it a rinse for a minute or two under running water. (Don’t worry. The flavor is deeply integrated into the inside of the meat. If you skip this, it’ll be overly salty.) Next, let it tack up while chilled. Then, coat it in a rub and smoke until they hit 135-140 degrees Fahrenheit.

Since they’re cured with a pink salt, they’re more stable, and you can keep them on the rare side of medium. They’re going to keep coasting and cooking after you remove them, so don’t let them cook to 150 degrees or they’ll start to get tough.

Overall, I love this duck sliced really thin. Serve it as charcuterie with some jam, crusty bread, and some French cheeses. It could go just as well on some really great rye, mustard, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese. I’m making enough of this at once to freeze and eat the rest of the week, so you know I’ll be doing both.

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INGREDIENTS

• 1-4 large duck breasts
• Or 3-4 lb. wild game roast

Brine:

• 1 gallon water
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup kosher salt
• 5 tsp InstaCure no. 1

• 1 tbsp coarsely ground black pepper
• 1 tbsp juniper berries
• 1 tbsp coarsely ground green Szechuan peppercorns
• 1 tbsp finely ground coriander seeds
• 1 tbsp hatch chili powder (hot!)
• ½ tbsp onion powder
• ½ tbsp garlic powder

DETAILED STEPS

1. Dissolve brine ingredients into ¼ gallon of water.
2. Once all salt and sugar are dissolved, pour into food-safe container and add the rest of the water.
3. Put into fridge to chill.
4. Once cold, add meat and let sit for 24-48 hours in refrigerator or cooler (bigger pieces need more time). If opting for a large roast that’s over 3 inches thick, shoot for a week and rinse for twice as long.
5. Start smoker and aim for 225-250 degrees Fahrenheit.
6. Pull meat out, rinse for 2 minutes under running water, and let dry on a rack in the fridge. Even better if it’s cold outside and the breeze can help it tack up.
7. Roll and cover completely in rub.
8. Put on smoker fat side up with a water pan on another rack for humidity.
9. Pull once meat hits 140-150 in the thickest part of the cut and let rest 20 minutes or completely chill.
10. Slice thin and eat with some good toasted bread and maybe some brown mustard.

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MORE FIELD NOTES