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📍 New York

Pastrami on rye

· Lunch

A tall sandwich of cured, smoked beef pastrami, hand-cut, served on rye bread with mustard.

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Pastrami on rye: A tall sandwich of cured, smoked beef pastrami, hand-cut, served on rye bread with mustard.
Photo: Erika39 · CC BY 3.0 · via Wikimedia CommonsPhoto resized, converted to WebP and cropped for display.
⏱ 40 min🍽 2 servings📊 Easy🏷 Commonly associated
Preparation
10 min
Cooking
30 min
Waiting and resting
0 min

History

Beef pastrami, an inheritance of Eastern European Jewish cooking (related to Romanian pastrama), became an emblem of New York's delicatessens. Katz's Delicatessen, on the Lower East Side since 1888, is its temple. The meat is cured, seasoned with spices, smoked, and steamed before being sliced.

Ingredients

Adjust quantities

Only numeric quantities at the start of an ingredient are adjusted. Descriptive quantities, seasoning to taste and timings remain unchanged; check them when changing servings.

Preparation

  1. 1

    Warm the pastrami with steam for a few minutes so it is juicy and warm.

  2. 2

    Spread mustard on the slices of rye bread.

  3. 3

    Pile a generous portion of pastrami on the bread.

  4. 4

    Close the sandwich and cut it in half.

  5. 5

    Serve with pickles on the side.

Cooking tips

  • Warm pastrami with gentle steam so it does not dry out before assembling.

Technique and preparation

What to check during preparation

This preparation uses sliced pastrami rather than raw meat to cure or smoke at home. Follow the supplier's warming instructions; different products may need different methods. When steaming slices, keep them above the water and cover the equipment. Toast rye only if you prefer a firmer base. Distribute mustard and warm meat without compressing the filling, then serve pickles separately.

References to consult

References provide information about the dish, its context or a technique. Quantities in this version may differ from those in the source.

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