PASTRAMI SANDWICH | The History of a New York Icon🥪

Did you know that to make pastrami you start by making corned beef? And by smoking that corned beef, you turn it into pastrami. Voila! G'day Gastronomites and welcome to History of a Dish. I'm your host, Torbz Lindgren, and today we're taking a look at the history of a dish that left George Costanza from Seinfeld totally speechless. I find the pastrami to be the most central of all the salted cured meats. Yep, the pastrami sandwich. Pastrami is a smoked and cured deli meat made from the beef navel plate. It's seasoned with a flavourful spice mixture that typically includes garlic, coriander, black pepper, paprika, cloves, allspice and mustard seed. Like bacon, pastrami comes from the belly of the animal. In fact, some have said that pastrami is to beef what bacon is to pork. Pretty much irresistible. So, what's the story behind the classic pastrami sandwich? Well, a New Yorker by the name of Sussman Volk is generally credited with producing the first pastrami sandwich in the United States in 1887. Volk, a kosher butcher and New York immigrant from Lithuania, claimed he got the recipe from a Romanian friend in exchange for storing the friend's luggage while the friend returned to Romania. According to his descendant, Patricia Volk, he prepared pastrami in line with the recipe and served it on sandwiches out of his butcher shop. The sandwich was so popular that Volk converted the butcher shop into a restaurant to sell pastrami sandwiches. Nowadays, Cat's Deli is the oldest surviving New York deli and ultimately famous for its stuffed pastrami sandwiches. And the rest, as they say, is culinary history. If you enjoyed this episode and actually did learn something, then continue watching either of these two videos. You can also visit the playlist section or browse the entire History of a Dish video library. Thank you for watching, have a fantabulous day and eat hard.