Pastrami & Swiss Pinwheels. Pastrami is a deli meat or cold cut made of beef. It can be from different cuts of beef: the navel end of the beef brisket, known as the plate cut, is the most common, but pastrami can also be made from the round and short rib of a cow. Pastrami (Romanian: pastramă) is a meat product of Romanian origin usually made from beef brisket, and sometimes from lamb, or turkey.
Great pastrami is not the easiest thing to find west of the Catskills, so a few years ago I embarked on a mission to find a way to turn the common corned beef into something similar.
Today, most pastrami is made from beef brisket or navel (a.k.a. plate), tough, stringy, fatty, cheap cuts.
The process turns it tender and succulent.
You can cook Pastrami & Swiss Pinwheels using 6 ingredients and 5 steps. Here is how you cook it.
Ingredients of Pastrami & Swiss Pinwheels
- It's 1 of large flour tortilla.
- Prepare 2 oz of cream cheese (softened).
- Prepare 4 slices of deli pastrami.
- Prepare 4 slices of deli swiss.
- Prepare 4 slices of deli dill pickles.
- It's 2 tbs of spicy brown mustard.
Pastrami is preserved in much the way that meat has been for thousands of years: in a salt mixture to prevent bacteria from growing. The great thing about pastrami is that it, like ham, it also tastes great smoked. Pastrami starts with corned beef (salted beef with spices) and is then smoked to add flavor and aid in preservation. Pastrami is a dish very clearly originating in Romania, also brought over by Jewish immigrants.
Pastrami & Swiss Pinwheels step by step
- Spread cream cheese on entire tortilla. Be sure to coat the bottom and top of the tortilla all the way to the edges. (Not so much the sides bc you’ll be cutting those off anyway).
- Distribute meat, cheese and pickles over cream cheese..
- Spread mustard over top of pastrami..
- From the bottom, roll the tortilla tight..
- Place a sheet of Saran Wrap down and wrap the roll tightly and place in the refrigerator for an hour to let the cream cheese harden. Remove and slice to your desired thickness and ENJOY!.
Both meats are brined, often for several days or up to a week. But afterwards corned beef is boiled or steamed, and pastrami is seasoned with a dry spice mix, smoked and then often steamed again before serving. Pastrami depends heavily on the spice blend applied to the cured corned beef. But the distinctive combination of flavors works wonders on goose or duck breast, on pork belly, on beef short ribs to name a few options. Pastrami is a technology for preserving meat that our ancestors used before refrigerators.