[JRinPA]

Fall is just around the corner, at least right after summer. Time to clean out the freezer some. Or rather, convert the remaining contents. We have been out of pastrami for a while and a couple weeks ago we ran out of deer burger. By "burger" I mean straight ground venison, which we use for spaghetti or anything else most people will use ground beef for. The bigger deer this year went toward bologna and italian sausage, so we didn't have our usual stock of deer burger. Plus I used a lot for summer sausage/ring bologna/pepperoni sticks. And my biggest does went to my brother's freezer for burger and bulk sausage.

I had seven hindquarters stashed away yet, yearling does or fawns. I kept two fawn quarters for steaks this summer and we thawed the other five.

From those five quarters we kept the choicest steaks to eat fresh for a few days, eye rounds and smaller sirloin tips. I took the next best "big" cuts for pastrami and set them to curing in the fridge. That was bigger sirloin tips, and some of the rear/lower muscles that I call the "round" and the "flat". The rest went for burger, and the scraps were coarsely ground for the dogs. Scrap is the trimmings, simply measured 2 cups per ziplock bag and right in the freezer. Each thawed bag gives the two dogs a half cup supplemental feed for two days. The leg bones were also given to the dogs or frozen to give them later.

Regarding round and flat...I don't even know if there are proper names...if the sirloin tip is the quad group, then the round and the flat make up most of the hamstring. I basically see the back leg as the rump above the joint, then the sirloin tip in front, eye round, the round, and the flat wrapped together, then the shank. There are some smaller groups in there, but not worthy of a name and they go for burger. The top of the round can be okay for steak on a fawn, but otherwise it's generally too tough, and the flat, the piece that tapers down like an axe head, is virtually always too tough and sometimes not that tasty. I've been cutting ten to twenty deer a year for a while now, and those are the names I've settled on.

So this pastrami, consisting mostly of bigger sirloin tips, rounds, and flats went in a fridge to cure two weeks back. Two days ago I used my new smoker for the first time, a masterbuilt electric, with cut up pear branches as chips and smoked it. Tonight we sliced it and vacuum sealed 10 packs for the freezer, while reserving a pile for the fridge.

Previous to this, I used a convection oven to bring the meat to 155F and then added liquid smoke at some point...I think during the rest period after cooking. The results with the smoker were bit different. In the smoker the bigger pieces took close 5 hours. I thought they were done and opened the door, but they were only about 140f. It took 2 more hours to get to 150f after that. If I do that again, I will pull the chip tray and finish them without additional smoke. They are REALLY smoky tasting. The smaller pieces were the second batch, and they only took maybe 2+ hours and taste more like previous batches made with liquid smoke. It would have been quicker and easier to truss the smaller pieces together to make them similar size to the larger pieces, and do it all in one batch. I think it would have worked out fine, and in 3 less hours overall.

I do plan to get a separate tray or tube for smoke generation. It seems a little iffy to have the cook heat and the smoke generator using the same heat source. I want to be able to cold smoke, so will probably buy or make a pellet/dust maze. But I can see this MES working as is just fine for about 180+.
Curing
Soaking
Batch 1 (big pieces 5 hours smoked, about like dried beef)
Hobart 410 set at about .050" per slice, with first and last slice at .100"
Batch 2 (fawns, look at that color, more like what I'm use to making)
Vacuum sealed, 1-2lb each.