They still had a decent lightness, but made for skinny sandwiches. For these loaves, I might have added a bit more flour and kneaded each loaf a bit longer before the second rise, because the loaves as baked flattened out a bit. After a second rise of about three hours, the loaves were baked at 425 ☏ directly on a stone, spritzing some water into the oven at the beginning of the bake. For each of two halves of the sponge, we kneaded in about about 1/2 cup of flour to form the torpedo loaves. With those ingredients, I made a sponge the weight of a thick batter and left for an overnight rise. About 3 cups of freshly fed sourdough starter.In the evening, after cutting off a chunk of corned beef (to compare to commercial corned beef), we gave the beef a good rub (below) to rest overnight. Five days later (yes, flipping the beef daily as recommended), I removed the now-corned beef, drained it for a few minutes, then into a Ziploc and into the freezer.įast forward to Food Lab eve morning, we soaked the defrosted corned beef to desalinate it. From the Interwebs, I decided to largely follow Tori Avey’s recipe, although I made a homemade variant of “pickling spice.” The brine for the corned beef used was:Īfter heating the brine until all the sugar and salt dissolved, I cooled it back down, dropped the chunk o’ brisket in and put it in the fridge. Next was making a corned beef from scratch. A couple weeks later, I followed the exact same recipe with a small red cabbage. After about three weeks, the kraut was sufficiently sour but still a bit crunchy.
I used the perfect amounts of each, good luck getting those data out of me. Would a Reuben be better with a red cabbage kraut? How would a sweet pickled red cabbage fare on a Reuben? I started with the regular kraut: thinly sliced half a cabbage, layered into a ceramic crock with sea salt, celery seed, allspice, juniper berry, and caraway seed. To prepare the meats and to ferment as needed, this Food Lab had to start well before the actual day of Food Lab.įirst off, the sauerkraut. But in the spirit of Food Lab, why not try a pastrami Reuben to compare? Plus, a fully homemade Reuben brings together other fermentation activities that warrant regular practice as well. It goes without saying that the Reuben is one of the best sandwiches known to humankind, and, sure, we know that corned beef is the typical foundation of a Reuben. Upon learning than pastrami starts from corned beef (was I the last person to learn this?), Reuben Lab seemed obvious. Having on hand a 4 pound chunk of brisket, curing salt (aka “pink salt”), and a Big Green Egg, one’s mind drifts to pastrami.