On Sat, 17 Apr 2004 18:42:08 -0700, "Louis Cohen"
> wrote:

>"Into the Fire" on FoodTV the other night did a piece on the Carnegie Deli.
>They showed the plant where Carnegie processes raw beef into their corned
>beef and pastrami. When a shipment came in, the guy from Carnegie asked
>whether the shipment was corned beef or navels.
>
>I assume that when he said corned beef, he meant brisket. But what's beef
>navel? That is, where's Bossie's pupick?

I was gonna ask this too. I watched the show twice yesterday.
They said the corned beef was made with brisket, but the pastrami
was from the naval.

Same questions remain - WTF is naval? I've never seen it in any
stores. It looks like a great BBQ cut - similar to brisket but
it's fat is better distributed.

>A brief web search suggests that navel is the traditional cut for pastrami,
>and that navel is sometimes called plate, which I have heard of but I don't
>know what part of the cow it comes from.

I think plate is the meat attached to short ribs. It could be
slabs of boneless short ribs. But these were pretty thick - nice
rectangular cubes of meat. Much more even than a brisket,
probably 8-9lbs each from what I saw. Must be a well-guarded cut
of meat. *******s.

>I'm not certain of all the details, but it looks as if Carnegie injects all
>the beef to be cured with a brine, and lets it cure 3-7 days. Then they
>apply their rub to the pastrami and smoke it for just 3 hours.

Yeah, I took note of that as well. 3 hours until it got to be
165F inside. They didn't say at what temp it was smoked, though.
And the curing for 3-7 days? That's quite a spread.

>When the meat gets to the restaurant, the corned beef is boiled and the
>pastrami is steamed (very important that the pastrami never touch {liquid}
>water, he said).

All the smoke flavor would simmer/boil out.

I wonder how much Carnegie Deli paid for that promo.

-sw