2008/04/15
One of my favorite sandwiches is the Reuben. Not only is it the single greatest culinary legacy of the Jewish diaspora, it's also a refuge on the menu of every pickled-fish shilling deli for those of us happily estranged from the disgusting culinary facet of our otherwise proud heritage. So, it being one of my favorite sandwiches, and me having a fetish for making everything myself, of course I had to make one.
I pulled out my copy of Charcuterie, and familiarized myself with their method for making corned beef. The most surprising thing was how many somewhat-exotic spices were in it. I hadn't ever really stopped and just tasted corned beef for the spice, but I figured, oh well, I'm sure the flavor will pan out in the end. And it did! Just about every one of the spices was detectable in the final product, and the overall flavor was like a more complex version of the storebought corned beef I'd had. The method involves curing the meat in a spiced brine with nitrites (to produce that eerie red color, as much as any preservative effect it has), then slow-cooking it in a spiced bath.
And I could have stopped there. But then what kind of eccentric cook would I be? So of course I had to make my own rye bread. And my own thousand island dressing (I prefer thousand island versions to Russian dressing versions). And my own sauerkraut. And my own swiss cheese (no, just kidding, I didn't want to make my own swiss cheese, at least not yet).
But you know, I never really dug the sauerkraut. It's a nice flavor, but the texture is rather unpleasant on a reuben. Typically, when I get a reuben out somewhere, I'll get it with the sauerkraut, then I'll scrape pretty much all the sauerkraut off. That way, some of the tangy flavor stays, but the sauerkraut is gone. And well, even I wasn't gonna go to the trouble of making sauerkraut just to scrape it off. So I skipped that, but made the thousand island extra tangy to compensate. And I got some Jarlsberg cheese.
Oh, and about thousand island. It's mayonnaise + ketchup. Yeah. My version also contained chili sauce, cracked pepper, lemon juice, pickle, green olive, green pepper, and onion (all of which are also in many versions).
The final sandwich was great. I pressed the sandwich using my Jewish ghetto sandwich press method. The flavors were much more clear and complex than other versions I've had, and the spices in the beef and in the rye bread came through beautifully. The thousand island was tangy and creamy, and the whole thing was really delicious. Was it worth making myself? The corned beef and thousand island were worth it. The bread? Not so much.
Posted by Barzelay on 2008/04/15 @ 12:05 | Comments (8) | Baking, Deli
Comments
Jesus that looks amazing. Did you cleave off big hunks of the corned beef using a knife (ny-style) or do you have a meat-slicer?
Posted by: mbg at April 16, 2008 11:23 AM
Good looking corned beef but I have to disagree about the sauerkraut...I find that it adds the necessary acidity to cut through the fat of the rest of the ingredients.
Posted by: Mike at April 16, 2008 11:56 AM
mgb, I thinly sliced the corned beef with a sharp knife. I'd love to have one of those deli slicers, but they're pricey and take up a lot of space.
Mike, I agree, that's why I usually get the sauerkraut on the sandwich and then scrape it off. The bread soaks up a lot of the liquid from the sauerkraut, and I get that acidic bite without the texture of sauerkraut. In this case, I made the thousand island more acidic than usual to compensate.
Posted by: Barzelay at April 16, 2008 2:20 PM
I love the texture of sauerkraut in a Reuben. I can see how it might be objectionable if it's not shredded well, but finely shredded sauerkraut should present no texture issues. I like how it tends to get mixed with the dressing and the cheese and form a little tangy-acidic barrier between the bread and the fatty meat, like the tapenade in a muffaletta. Now that I'm thinking of it, the sauerkraut in a Reuben is just the cabbagey counterpart to the pickle on a ham sandwich or a hamburger.
Posted by: Megan at April 17, 2008 12:19 AM
1. The Reuben is from Omaha and one of the best sandwiches ever.
2. When are you moving out here?
Posted by: Colin at May 8, 2008 1:28 AM
1) I question your account of the sandwich's provenance, but I agree that it is an amazing sandwich.
2) May 25. Very soon.
Posted by: Barzelay at May 8, 2008 1:38 AM
it seems to me what you have is very simlar to pastrami (complete with rye bread) rather than 'corned beef', at least from a European perspective. Corned beef is brisket poached in brine, and I'm not aware of any spices. The term 'corned' came from the shape of the little sacks of salt, resemling flour sacks, or corn.
Posted by: Waaza at July 20, 2008 4:54 PM
I guess everyone has his own definition of what is required of a common dish, in order for it to be authentic. Interesting, Waaza. Wikipedia does seem to indicate that the term "corned beef" is used a bit differently in different locales.
Similarly, I've always heard a different explanation for the "corned" part. I thought that "corns" referred to the very large (by modern standards) granules of salt that were used to cure various meats. The term came to refer to anything salt-cured, whether by giant rock salt granules, or a brine.
It is my understanding that pastrami is like corned beef, but it is smoked after the brine, instead of poached. I cannot really say whether the corned beef poaching liquid usually contains seasoning, but I can say that the recipes I've seen contain most of the same spices (allspice, coriander, etc.), and the version I made using those spices came out tasting just like the corned beef I'm familiar with from American, Jewish delicatessens.
Posted by: Barzelay at July 20, 2008 5:32 PM