transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] This episode is brought to you by Feeding America.

Speaker 2:
[00:04] We have a big food system in the US., and that means that we need good technology to make sure that food gets to the people in need.

Speaker 1:
[00:11] And that's why Feeding America works in real time using technology to connect food to people fast.

Speaker 2:
[00:17] So with supporters like you, they partner with local organizations to rescue food quickly, safely, and at a large scale so it can reach a home while it still can.

Speaker 1:
[00:25] Yeah, hunger doesn't wait, food rescue can't either.

Speaker 2:
[00:28] So give now to help rescue good food for neighbors at feedingamerica.org/rescuefood.

Speaker 3:
[00:37] I'm Jessica Badalana, staff editor at King Arthur Baking Company. And I'm David Tamarkin, King Arthur's editorial director. And this is Things Bakers Know, a new podcast from King Arthur where we explore every corner of the baking world. Every episode of Things Bakers Know dives deep into a different baked good. Plus, we'll always leave time to answer your home baking questions. Subscribe now so you won't miss an episode.

Speaker 1:
[01:05] I'm Molly.

Speaker 2:
[01:06] And I'm Matthew.

Speaker 1:
[01:06] And this is Spilled Milk, the show where we cook something delicious, eat it all, and you can't have any.

Speaker 2:
[01:11] And today, this is episode 747, so we're flying the friendly skies.

Speaker 1:
[01:17] Wait, did we fly on 737, too?

Speaker 2:
[01:19] No, I probably didn't. I mean, we probably didn't think of it then.

Speaker 1:
[01:22] Bummer.

Speaker 2:
[01:22] But this time, we're on the upper deck. We're, yeah, first class, we're fully reclining.

Speaker 1:
[01:29] I'm wearing a pencil skirt and high heels, and I've had a blowout.

Speaker 2:
[01:34] Yeah, unfortunately, the plane has also had a blowout.

Speaker 1:
[01:43] I know that people go to the hair salon to get a blowout, but I just think of diapers and babies.

Speaker 2:
[01:51] Of course, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[01:52] I don't know how people can go into a salon with a straight face and say, I had a blowout.

Speaker 2:
[01:56] I have a lot more diaper experience than salon experience personally. Okay, so we're talking about Pastrami.

Speaker 1:
[02:02] Right, we're talking about Pastrami.

Speaker 2:
[02:03] Because it's the best thing to bring on a plane is like a hot, fragrant Pastrami sandwich.

Speaker 1:
[02:09] Everybody loves the smell of smoked juice on an airplane.

Speaker 2:
[02:12] Juicy and dripping.

Speaker 1:
[02:14] Plus, I love sitting in an airplane with my hands kind of with a film of old food on them.

Speaker 2:
[02:20] I've got that right now.

Speaker 1:
[02:21] That's such a good feeling.

Speaker 2:
[02:22] And we're on a plane.

Speaker 1:
[02:24] We are. We are. So, you know, we first thought of taking this plane trip to Pastrami land when we were...

Speaker 2:
[02:32] We went on Google flights and said, where can we fly to for $38 at Pastrami land? We're like, is this like just an AI hallucination?

Speaker 1:
[02:41] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[02:42] Yes, it is. The answer is yes. We don't know where we're going. Someone help us.

Speaker 1:
[02:45] But it's great so far. It's really tasty.

Speaker 2:
[02:46] It is actually really good.

Speaker 1:
[02:47] Really tasty. And this episode, I think, was suggested by host Molly when we did the corned beef episode.

Speaker 2:
[02:54] Yeah, we did corned beef and we're like, what's pastrami? And now we sort of know.

Speaker 1:
[02:57] Now we sort of know. Yeah. What's on your pastrami memory lane?

Speaker 2:
[03:04] Honestly, not very much. I've always thought of pastrami as like, I think you could get, instead of corned beef, like those would be two choices. And I knew I liked corned beef, so I would always get, Beep beep! I would always say, beep beep! I'm backing up to get some of this corned beef and I'll have pastrami another time. I have had pastrami before today, just not very often, and so I have never disliked it, but I just never thought about it.

Speaker 1:
[03:32] Yeah, it's interesting. I think that, you know how people are always like, there are two kinds of people in the world, X and Y.

Speaker 2:
[03:37] Let's hear it.

Speaker 1:
[03:38] Okay, well, so I think there are pastrami people and there are corned beef people.

Speaker 2:
[03:42] That's right. Everybody likes one of those meats.

Speaker 1:
[03:44] Everybody likes one or the other, even vegetarians, ask them. No, my parents were corned beef people.

Speaker 2:
[03:50] Mine too, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[03:51] And so, you know, pastrami was this thing. I feel like I almost heard about it more in movies or shows where the setting was New York or whatever.

Speaker 2:
[04:00] And I know I've said this on the show before, but I'm not really just not much of a deli person. Deli has a lot of the kind of foods that I don't like, cold, creamy things, and I just never really think about I'm excited to go to the deli. I know that some people are super into deli, and I love that for them.

Speaker 1:
[04:18] I can't remember if I've actually eaten pastrami before Tito A.

Speaker 2:
[04:22] Interesting, okay.

Speaker 1:
[04:24] I'm not even sure I thought about it as being separate from corned beef until adulthood. And then I somehow along the way learned that it was smoked.

Speaker 2:
[04:32] Do you remember Colonel Clink?

Speaker 1:
[04:34] No.

Speaker 2:
[04:35] He was a guy from EGLE at the food message board that Molly and I both used to be on.

Speaker 1:
[04:39] Oh, this sounds familiar.

Speaker 2:
[04:40] And he was very into meat smoking, and he would make homemade pastrami that was really good.

Speaker 1:
[04:45] And he was based in Seattle?

Speaker 2:
[04:46] He was based in Seattle. And his boy lives in Minnesota, which I think is where you end up if you're into meat smoking.

Speaker 1:
[04:51] I think that's right. So-

Speaker 2:
[04:53] I mean, or the South.

Speaker 1:
[04:53] When I was, so I did the research for this episode. And last night, as I was, you know, working on it, Ash reminded me that our donor, our sperm donor, who was one of Ash's good friends in high school, that he used to bring pastrami sandwiches all the time for lunch in high school.

Speaker 2:
[05:13] Is that good for sperm production?

Speaker 1:
[05:15] I guess so. Because he is potent.

Speaker 2:
[05:18] Yeah, and made a great baby.

Speaker 1:
[05:20] Made such a great baby.

Speaker 2:
[05:22] I mean, I'm not saying all credit is due to the donor.

Speaker 1:
[05:25] That's right.

Speaker 2:
[05:26] They made a great baby together, without you.

Speaker 1:
[05:30] Yeah. No, it's true. It's true.

Speaker 2:
[05:33] I do know how babies are made, pretty much.

Speaker 1:
[05:36] Well, yeah, and that is how you know that it was impossible for me to actually be involved, other than I did plunge the syringe.

Speaker 2:
[05:43] There you go.

Speaker 1:
[05:44] There you go. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[05:45] So I take it back. I'm sorry I said it was done without you.

Speaker 1:
[05:49] Okay. So Matthew, would you like to know more about what Pastrami is?

Speaker 2:
[05:52] I would love to know more about what Pastrami is, and I'm particularly curious about the word Pastrami, which I'm hoping we're going to get to, because like, I don't know why it sounds like that.

Speaker 1:
[06:01] Do you know if Mr. Etymology is around this week?

Speaker 2:
[06:05] Let's put out an APB, which is all-

Speaker 1:
[06:08] Start with beep beep.

Speaker 2:
[06:09] Because beep beep is an all-Pastrami bulletin. We're paging Mr. Etymology.

Speaker 1:
[06:14] Okay, well, let's see if he hears it, and well, maybe he'll come over in a few minutes.

Speaker 2:
[06:18] This is not right now.

Speaker 1:
[06:20] Not right now, I know, not right now, okay? So just because I think the word Pastrami is gonna make more sense when I tell you what it is.

Speaker 2:
[06:27] Okay, please do.

Speaker 1:
[06:28] Okay, so it's a type of cured meat. Okay, good, good. In case you didn't catch that already, okay? Like the simplest way of explaining it is that it's beef brisket, but we're gonna get way more into this.

Speaker 2:
[06:37] But that's core beef also.

Speaker 1:
[06:38] That's right, we're gonna get way more into exactly what cut we're talking about here. So made from beef brisket that's been brined, then partially dried, seasoned with a whole bunch of dry seasonings like garlic, coriander, black pepper, paprika, cloves, allspice, and mustard seed.

Speaker 2:
[06:55] Okay, I think I used pretty much all of those when I made corn beef a few weeks ago.

Speaker 1:
[06:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then after it's seasoned, it's smoked and then finally it is steamed so that the connective tissues break down.

Speaker 2:
[07:08] Okay, that's a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1:
[07:10] When I was typing this up, I couldn't help but think about the legend of trying to kill Rasputin.

Speaker 2:
[07:16] Yeah, uh-huh.

Speaker 1:
[07:17] How many different ways do we have to annihilate this cut of meat before it becomes Pastrami?

Speaker 2:
[07:22] We heard the story of Rasputin in school.

Speaker 1:
[07:25] Yes, me too, me too.

Speaker 2:
[07:25] Like maybe like eighth grade, and all the kids were like, this is the greatest.

Speaker 1:
[07:30] Yeah, no, I've never forgotten it. I think it's a big part of, I mean, I had an amazing history teacher in high school, but I think it's a huge part of why I am fascinated with Russia and Siberia. It's because of stuff like the legend of Rasputin's death.

Speaker 2:
[07:46] Yeah, no, I assume this, we got this in Mrs. Curtis's class, who was an old Russian lady who hated communism because she had been there and like knew everything about Russian history.

Speaker 1:
[08:00] That's so cool.

Speaker 2:
[08:01] And I think technically she was an English teacher.

Speaker 1:
[08:03] Interesting.

Speaker 2:
[08:04] Maybe English and history, I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[08:06] Well, I had an American guy named Dr. Gens, and he was a real like democratic socialist. So, you know, mostly he was an incredible storyteller. He just took great joy in like talking about the wild backwardness of Russian history.

Speaker 2:
[08:20] Okay. So, anyway, so Rasputin gets smoked, steamed, dried, cured, seasoned.

Speaker 1:
[08:28] In order it goes, brined, dried, seasoned, smoked and steamed.

Speaker 2:
[08:33] I think in real life Rasputin got brined at the end.

Speaker 1:
[08:37] I think so, too, because they dropped him in the water.

Speaker 2:
[08:39] Right.

Speaker 1:
[08:39] Yeah. I remember that.

Speaker 2:
[08:41] Man, what a great story.

Speaker 1:
[08:43] Anyway. All right. What I really love is, wait, like the cyanide-laced cookies.

Speaker 2:
[08:47] Oh my God.

Speaker 1:
[08:48] And then, like, then he drank a bunch of alcohol and still showed no effect. And then he was, like, shot three times. And then he was finally dumped in a river. Anyway, it's amazing. Okay. So Pastrami originated in Romania.

Speaker 2:
[09:05] Did not know this.

Speaker 1:
[09:05] I didn't either. And, of course, like corn beef, it was created as a way to preserve meat before refrigeration.

Speaker 2:
[09:11] Honestly, I got to say, if you made me tell you three facts about Romania, I think I would be in a lot of trouble.

Speaker 1:
[09:17] Yeah. I have neighbors who are from Romania. And so I feel like it's made me, I don't know, like, learn more things. Like, what's a city in Romania?

Speaker 2:
[09:26] Bratislava? I think that's wrong.

Speaker 1:
[09:29] I don't know. I was going to say Bucharest.

Speaker 2:
[09:30] Bucharest. I'm pretty sure Bratislava is incorrect.

Speaker 1:
[09:34] I don't know where Bratislava is.

Speaker 2:
[09:36] Ceausescu was a Romanian dictator, right?

Speaker 1:
[09:38] There you go. There you go.

Speaker 2:
[09:40] And the Romanian language is really interesting, I know, as far as it is a Romance language, but it is, like, more distantly related to French, Italian, Spanish.

Speaker 1:
[09:50] Oh, I didn't know that. That's so interesting. Well, our neighbor grows something called, like, Romanian mountain herb or Romanian mountain green, which she uses to make, like, a soup. I mean, I think it's sort of, I don't know, kind of the spinach or the chard of Romania. Anyway. All right.

Speaker 2:
[10:04] We're going to learn more about Romania and get back to you, I guess.

Speaker 1:
[10:07] Sure. Well, we're going to learn more about Pastrami.

Speaker 2:
[10:09] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[10:10] But so, you know, basically today, we think of this as, like, a classic of American Jewish cuisine and New York City cuisine. I mean, it's also an iconic part of Eastern European cuisine. But basically, let's get to how it came to be this, like, American Jewish thing.

Speaker 2:
[10:29] Yeah, because, like, corn beef, like, it was all kind of straightforward, in a sense.

Speaker 1:
[10:35] Yeah, it was way more straightforward than this is. So Matthew, we're going to skip ahead a little bit in the agenda. So there was this big wave of Russian immigration from Romania and what is today, Moldova or Moldova and Ukraine. And this huge wave of Jewish immigration took place in, like, the late 1800s.

Speaker 2:
[10:55] This would be when my great-grandparents came to the US.

Speaker 1:
[10:59] Oh, that's so interesting.

Speaker 2:
[11:00] Great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, something like that.

Speaker 1:
[11:02] Something like that. Well, so yeah, this would have been the second half of the 19th century. They brought with them, of course, this smoked beef situation that they called by the Yiddish word, I guess, pastrami, like basically pastrami but with an E at the end. The spelling was probably then modified in the US to sort of mimic the spelling of salami.

Speaker 2:
[11:28] Okay, this is you telling me this, not Mr. Etymology. I was wondering this, like, why?

Speaker 1:
[11:33] No, Mr. Etymology is going to come in in a second.

Speaker 2:
[11:35] Okay, why does it sound so much like salami when it's not Italian?

Speaker 1:
[11:40] Okay, so hold on, wait a minute.

Speaker 2:
[11:43] Oh, it's me, come in. I received an APB.

Speaker 1:
[11:47] Oh, beep beep. Okay, so Matthew, can you tell us a little bit about the word pastrami to start with? Why was this being used in Romania?

Speaker 2:
[12:01] Okay, so the name pastrami likely comes from the Romanian verb, a pastra, meaning to preserve or keep. It was probably derived from the Turkish pastirma, a heavily seasoned, air-dried, cured meat, typically beef or water buffalo, found in Balkan and Mediterranean cuisines.

Speaker 1:
[12:17] There we go. So yeah, it was a word, like this pastirma was already a word for sort of a cured beef, but it also sounds a lot like this Romanian word for to preserve, I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[12:29] And then, so then presumably it became like pastrami in the US because we had salami and we're like, okay, it's a meat, it ends in a-me or something like that.

Speaker 1:
[12:40] Something like that.

Speaker 2:
[12:41] Okay, I like it.

Speaker 1:
[12:41] You know, I mean, again, there's probably a lot, we probably have some listeners who could add some more texture to this.

Speaker 2:
[12:49] Oh yeah.

Speaker 1:
[12:50] Wait, bye Mr. Anomology.

Speaker 2:
[12:52] I'm out, so long.

Speaker 1:
[12:55] No, it was goodbye, it was me, goodbye.

Speaker 2:
[12:58] It was me, goodbye.

Speaker 1:
[13:07] This episode is brought to you by Feeding America.

Speaker 2:
[13:11] We have a big food system in the US, and that means that we need good technology to make sure that food gets to the people in need.

Speaker 1:
[13:18] And that's why Feeding America works in real time using technology to connect food to people fast.

Speaker 2:
[13:24] So with supporters like you, they partner with local organizations to rescue food quickly, safely, and at a large scale so it can reach a home while it still can.

Speaker 1:
[13:32] Yeah, hunger doesn't wait, food rescue can't either.

Speaker 2:
[13:35] So give now to help rescue good food for neighbors at feedingamerica.org/rescuefood. This episode is brought to you by MasterClass.

Speaker 1:
[13:44] MasterClass makes world class learning accessible to everybody.

Speaker 2:
[13:49] And you may have noticed recently that we've become a math podcast. We have mathematician, we have mathematician listeners, we talk about unsolved problems, sometimes even math problems, mostly problems to be created. And on MasterClass, you can learn from fields medal winning mathematician Terence Tau about how to use math to improve your life. And if you're the kind of person who's like, I don't know if I like math, I didn't like math class, math is cool, you guys. Terence Tau professor will make it cool for you and only available on MasterClass.

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Speaker 2:
[14:38] Oh, they go to masterclass.com/spilledmilk15.

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[14:41] That's 15% off masterclass.com/spilledmilk15.

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[14:46] masterclass.com/spilledmilk15. Be a math person.

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Speaker 1:
[15:20] Jewish Romanians typically used goose to make their pastrami. They typically used goose breast, because they were more readily available, or that was what was available.

Speaker 2:
[15:31] Have you ever had duck prosciutto? Maybe. I think this is something I've gotten at Oyama Sausage in Vancouver, BC on Granville Island. That's what reminds me of, I'm surprised and yet not surprised, because cured duck and goose meat is incredibly good.

Speaker 1:
[15:49] Yeah. Well, when these Jewish Romanians came to the US, beef was a lot more readily available and a lot cheaper.

Speaker 2:
[15:58] Parallel to the corn beef story.

Speaker 1:
[16:00] Yes. Yes. So it wasn't just any cut of beef they used. Earlier, I said that the Pastrami is made from brisket, but basically it's, okay, I've got here a diagram of American or US beef cuts.

Speaker 2:
[16:13] Okay. So you got your sirloin, your bottom round, your top round, your short loin. I could keep going.

Speaker 1:
[16:20] No, you can stop now. If you're looking at like the front half of the cow, right? Okay. Like kind of the front shoulder, the lower part of the shoulder, we could call the brisket. Well, just behind the brisket, sort of more the like chest or belly is called the plate.

Speaker 2:
[16:37] Okay. And that's where I happen to know that's where short ribs come from, just because it says beef plate short ribs on the package when I buy short ribs.

Speaker 1:
[16:44] There you go. There you go. So beef plate is usually used for short ribs, also for hanger steak and skirt steak.

Speaker 2:
[16:51] Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. These are some of my favorite cuts.

Speaker 1:
[16:54] Okay. Well, it's because they're pretty fatty, so they're really flavorful. They tend to be tougher though, and they tend to be a little cheaper than other ones, right?

Speaker 2:
[17:03] Yeah. I wish skirt steak was cheaper. It's not anymore, but no.

Speaker 1:
[17:06] It's not anymore? Oh, okay. Well, so the part of the beef plate cut that is most ventral, so that is closest to the ground, basically, that part is called the beef navel.

Speaker 2:
[17:20] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[17:20] Okay? It's akin to pork belly.

Speaker 2:
[17:23] Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1:
[17:25] So it's really like the bottom most, the most ventral part of the beef plate.

Speaker 2:
[17:31] Okay, that's interesting. I always assumed brisket was akin to pork belly, but it sounds like brisket was a little north of there.

Speaker 1:
[17:37] Yeah. I wonder if brisket is just slightly less fatty, because the beef navel is quite fatty, and it is what is most commonly used for pastrami.

Speaker 2:
[17:47] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[17:48] So that was, you know, specifically when these Jewish Romanians were looking for a substitute for goose breast, the beef navel was really cheap and really available.

Speaker 2:
[17:58] That makes sense.

Speaker 1:
[17:59] So they used that.

Speaker 2:
[18:01] Compared to goose breast, I imagine so.

Speaker 1:
[18:03] Yes. All this to say, the terms we're using here are like in US butchery. In the UK, the beef plate is considered part of the brisket. So they're not separated out. So that is why I think you can also say that Pastrami is made from brisket.

Speaker 2:
[18:20] I realize these are not like you don't slice open the cow and they're a bunch of-

Speaker 1:
[18:24] They're clear markers of where one thing is.

Speaker 2:
[18:28] This is Romania over here. This is Bulgaria. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[18:32] Here's Moldova. Today, it's common to see Pastrami made from what is called brisket, also made from round and sometimes even turkey.

Speaker 2:
[18:41] I believe we had brisket today.

Speaker 1:
[18:43] Okay. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[18:44] I can't say for sure. It could have been the belly navel area, but I think it was brisket.

Speaker 1:
[18:50] I venture to guess that most New York City delis would take pride today in making theirs from beef navel.

Speaker 2:
[18:57] Yeah. Sure. Why not?

Speaker 1:
[18:58] That's pretty typical in New York City. It's hard to talk about Pastrami without also talking about Pastrami on rye, which is what we ate today.

Speaker 2:
[19:06] Which is what we ate today.

Speaker 1:
[19:07] Yeah. So wait, Matthew, will you tell us about your journey?

Speaker 2:
[19:10] Okay. I've been on quite a journey. I got in my 747, which I park in the garage, and I flew down to Dingfelder's Delicatessen.

Speaker 1:
[19:19] Wait, is it the same 747 we're on right now?

Speaker 2:
[19:22] Yes. Just checking. Yeah. You didn't realize you were on my private jumbo jet?

Speaker 1:
[19:28] Okay. No, I thought this one was Pastrami Air.

Speaker 2:
[19:31] Well, I mean, in order to pay for upkeep...

Speaker 1:
[19:33] Or is it Air Pastrami?

Speaker 2:
[19:36] No, that's when you don't have any Pastrami, but you pretend you do, and you chew very enthusiastically.

Speaker 1:
[19:43] While playing air guitar. Yeah, there we go.

Speaker 2:
[19:46] Sounds like that. No, no, no. In order to afford fuel and stuff for my private jumbo jet, I have to do Pastrami junkets. So, yes, I flew some high rollers down to Dingfelder's Delicatessen at 14th and Pine in Capitol Hill, Seattle. It is one of Seattle's best Jewish delis, and they make their own Pastrami and their own marble rye.

Speaker 1:
[20:11] Both of which were delicious.

Speaker 2:
[20:13] And there's a few things about this place that I like. So first of all, they make their own marble rye. They also had a choice of club bread, which- What's that? We talked about this in the corned beef episode, that that's what I like to get at Katz's Delicatessen. It's like kind of a big fluffy, like a big sturdy white roll.

Speaker 1:
[20:30] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[20:30] Would it be called a Kaiser roll? They also have Kaiser roll.

Speaker 1:
[20:33] Oh, so they're different.

Speaker 2:
[20:34] Yeah, Kaiser roll has like a very particular shape, like pattern on top. They also have seeded rye, which I'm not a huge fan of because I don't love the caraway seed flavor, but I love the marble rye.

Speaker 1:
[20:46] Okay. Okay. Oh, I didn't catch that, that the marbled rye didn't have caraway in it. I did not notice that.

Speaker 2:
[20:53] The other thing I like about Dingfelder's is that on the menu it says, the meat is juicy for lean, add $2 for extra lean, add $4. I got the regular juicy.

Speaker 1:
[21:04] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[21:05] They also make their own corned beef, and you can order their sandwich Seattle style, which means it's a little cheaper and they put half the meat in it.

Speaker 1:
[21:13] Did you get that?

Speaker 2:
[21:14] No, this is the regular, which I knew one sandwich would be enough for us to share.

Speaker 1:
[21:18] I have to say, it was not like a crazy amount of meat.

Speaker 2:
[21:20] No, it wasn't like a Carnegie deli level of outrageousness.

Speaker 1:
[21:24] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[21:25] It was great.

Speaker 1:
[21:25] So yeah, Pastrami, oh, and we should say, of course, it was served hot.

Speaker 2:
[21:29] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[21:30] So yeah, Pastrami is typically served hot, typically on rye. It is so typical, in fact, that there's even a Wikipedia page for Pastrami on rye.

Speaker 2:
[21:38] Oh, and what does it say?

Speaker 1:
[21:40] Okay. Well, so this was popularized in Jewish delis in New York City.

Speaker 2:
[21:45] Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 1:
[21:46] Yeah. It is described as New York's signature sandwich. So whenever somebody wants to open a New York deli like anywhere else in the world, they're like, and our signature Pastrami sandwich.

Speaker 2:
[21:59] No, you're right. I don't know if that's necessarily, well, okay, first of all.

Speaker 1:
[22:03] Pastrami on rye, rather.

Speaker 2:
[22:05] In order to say whether Pastrami on rye is New York's signature sandwich, you have to get into whether a hot dog is a sandwich. So let's not do that.

Speaker 1:
[22:11] Let's not do that.

Speaker 2:
[22:12] Wait, can I tell you something?

Speaker 1:
[22:14] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[22:15] This morning, I went to Safeway to get hot dog buns, and I didn't buy this brand because it was more expensive. But they had a brand that I had not seen before, and I sent this photo to my family and said, is this AI generated? It's Grandma Sycamore's Homemade Bread, Eight Coney Buns.

Speaker 1:
[22:35] What makes you say is that AI generated?

Speaker 2:
[22:38] Because the ridiculous name and the design is kind of like, I just got on Canva for the first time. I mean, I should have bought it. Like when I came home with the regular store brand, Hot Dog Buns, Watzel was very disappointed that I didn't bring home Grandma Sycamore. What did you say that reminded me of this? I don't know. I guess I said is a hot dog a sandwich?

Speaker 1:
[23:00] Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2:
[23:01] Yeah, so anyway, Grandma Sycamore is gonna be one of our new recurring characters.

Speaker 1:
[23:06] Does she come on like whenever we talk about hot dogs or?

Speaker 2:
[23:09] Yeah, but she doesn't say much because she's a tree.

Speaker 1:
[23:11] Oh, okay. All right, well Pastrami on Rye as a concept was created in 1888 by a Lithuanian immigrant named Susman Volk.

Speaker 2:
[23:21] Oh, okay.

Speaker 1:
[23:22] Yeah, and so apparently he started out as a butcher on the Lower East Side and he befriended a Romanian guy who he allowed to store meat in his large icebox. This is how Wikipedia phrased this.

Speaker 2:
[23:36] How did this conversation go?

Speaker 1:
[23:38] Can I store my meat in your large icebox?

Speaker 2:
[23:43] I'm gonna go over here now and we're not friends anymore.

Speaker 1:
[23:48] Okay, anyway, so in exchange, the friend gave Volk a recipe for Pastrami. What kind of madness is this?

Speaker 2:
[23:59] This really is a good apocryphal food origin story.

Speaker 1:
[24:02] This is ridiculous.

Speaker 2:
[24:03] Okay, can I store some suspicious meat in your freezer, but I'll give you a Pastrami recipe.

Speaker 1:
[24:09] Volk started to sell it to the customers of his butcher shop and it was so successful that he basically converted the thing into a deli.

Speaker 2:
[24:17] Okay. Wait, I'm sorry. I have a question.

Speaker 1:
[24:19] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[24:19] Did he start selling the meat that he was supposed to be keeping, like looking after for his friend?

Speaker 1:
[24:25] The story didn't go that far, but let's say yes.

Speaker 2:
[24:27] It sounds like it, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[24:29] So anyway, he had a deli on-

Speaker 2:
[24:30] This stuff is great. Yeah, of course it's great. It's stolen.

Speaker 1:
[24:34] Everything tastes better when it's hot.

Speaker 2:
[24:37] That's why it's called Hot Pastrami, originally referred to Stolen Pastrami.

Speaker 1:
[24:41] There we go. Oh, okay. So anyway, Sussman Volk, his deli was on Delancey Street, and yeah, opened it in 1988. So there you go, Pastrami on rye. This still doesn't explain where the rye came from.

Speaker 2:
[24:55] I mean, like we haven't done a rye bread episode, I don't think. I think we probably should.

Speaker 1:
[25:00] Okay, let's do it. Let's do it. And then maybe we'll better understand how it came to be paired with delis.

Speaker 2:
[25:06] By the way, I got our sandwich today with no mustard, cause I'm a child.

Speaker 1:
[25:10] I noticed that. So Pastrami on rye is typically served with spicy brown mustard, except when Matthew orders it for you. It is typically served with kosher dill pickles, sometimes with coleslaw.

Speaker 2:
[25:22] Yeah, we got both of those.

Speaker 1:
[25:23] Those are good. And yeah, it's of course a favorite at delis. Katz's is especially famous for their Pastrami on rye.

Speaker 2:
[25:30] I cannot think about anything other than like Volk's Romanian friend coming back, like, ready to pick up my meat. Well, about that.

Speaker 1:
[25:41] Okay. But Pastrami on rye, not the only thing we can do with Pastrami, Matthew.

Speaker 2:
[25:46] Oh, okay.

Speaker 1:
[25:46] I don't know if you knew that.

Speaker 2:
[25:47] A hash. You can make a hash.

Speaker 1:
[25:49] I suppose you could. Yeah, you could just eat it.

Speaker 2:
[25:51] You could just eat it, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[25:52] But also, so these Greek immigrants to Salt Lake City in the early 1960s, they opened this place called Crown Burger or Crown Burgers. They introduced the idea of a cheeseburger topped with pastrami and special sauce.

Speaker 2:
[26:09] It sounds a little over the top.

Speaker 1:
[26:11] It does sound a little over the top. Special sauce being sort of like fry sauce, so like mayo plus ketchup. Yeah, so Crown Burger is like, if you search Google for Utah pastrami burger, the first thing that comes up is Crown Burgers.

Speaker 2:
[26:24] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[26:25] That's interesting.

Speaker 2:
[26:26] I've never heard of this. It sounds good. You put here that many say that it's the signature sandwich of Utah. I feel like we've been making a lot of signature sandwich claims.

Speaker 1:
[26:35] Yeah, we have. We have. So feel free to add us Utah if we're wrong.

Speaker 2:
[26:40] Do you know whether this sandwich originated when someone was like storing their pastrami at a McDonald's?

Speaker 1:
[26:46] Above the griddle.

Speaker 2:
[26:47] Above the griddle and it fell onto the griddle while some burgers were cooking?

Speaker 1:
[26:51] I think that's what happened. Yep. Yep.

Speaker 2:
[26:53] Cool.

Speaker 1:
[26:54] It was the day before the bar of chocolate fell into the cookie dough. So from then on, you could have a chocolate chip cookie as dessert after your pastrami burger.

Speaker 2:
[27:04] And this all happened in one burger place in Utah.

Speaker 1:
[27:07] Yeah, for sure. Anyway, Matthew, that's what I've got.

Speaker 2:
[27:11] That was great.

Speaker 1:
[27:11] Thank you. Thanks. I had fun.

Speaker 2:
[27:14] Yeah, no, I enjoyed that. And the fact that we ate a really good sandwich at the beginning of the episode really helped.

Speaker 1:
[27:19] Me too. It helped. Well, I helped.

Speaker 2:
[27:21] Yes, you helped too. So I don't have anything to add about pastrami. I'm gonna get that sandwich again. If I were getting it for myself, I probably would get it Seattle style, but it's perfect to share with a friend.

Speaker 1:
[27:33] It's also, I mean, I went and looked at the menu.

Speaker 3:
[27:35] It's so expensive.

Speaker 2:
[27:36] Oh, it was $26, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[27:38] Yeah, yeah. I mean, I have to wonder what it was before, like our current inflationary-

Speaker 2:
[27:45] I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[27:46] Era, but wow.

Speaker 2:
[27:48] Yeah, I mean, it wasn't like $6.

Speaker 1:
[27:50] No, it was not. Okay, Matthew, hey, I've been snacking.

Speaker 2:
[27:54] Oh, okay, tell me about what you've been snacking on our beloved segment, Whatcha Snackin.

Speaker 1:
[28:12] Have we talked about Huang Fei Hong spicy peanuts?

Speaker 2:
[28:16] No, I don't think we have, and I'm so glad you're bringing this up because I love them too.

Speaker 1:
[28:20] So I learned about these from my kid who learned about them from his step-sister, Honey. So these came to me through the kids.

Speaker 2:
[28:30] Yeah, this seems like a real cool kid snack.

Speaker 1:
[28:35] So we've bought ours at H Mart, which of course is a Korean store, but you can get them at many different Asian grocery stores. They are basically peanuts that have been treated with soy sauce and various little things, and also mixed with Sichuan peppercorns and dried red chilies. So they come in this little foil bag. I think it's probably meant to be a large single serving. Yeah, so you've not only got really delicious peanut halves that are seasoned nicely, but then these straight up Sichuan peppercorns in there.

Speaker 2:
[29:09] I love, yeah, it's so great. It's hot, it's numbing, it's salty.

Speaker 1:
[29:14] I would say it is salty, numby, nummy.

Speaker 2:
[29:18] It's a numby treat.

Speaker 1:
[29:19] It's a salty, tingly, numbing feeling for me more than it is spicy.

Speaker 2:
[29:23] Yeah, it's not super spicy. It's so good.

Speaker 1:
[29:26] But one of the tastiest things I think you can possibly eat while you're cooking dinner or something. Perfect, perfect with a beer.

Speaker 2:
[29:34] Yes, okay.

Speaker 1:
[29:34] So good. So anyway, look for them. Great pick. It's going to be in a little white kind of foil pack, and it just says spicy peanuts on the front. And there are lots of imitators out there, but the classic is Huang Fei Hong.

Speaker 2:
[29:49] Yeah. If you haven't had these before, you're in for a real treat.

Speaker 1:
[29:52] We can even link to a place where you can buy them on the old notes section.

Speaker 2:
[29:58] All right. Our producer is Abby Cercatella.

Speaker 1:
[30:01] And you can rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2:
[30:04] And you can talk to other listeners at reddit.com/r/everythingspilledmilk. What's your signature sandwich?

Speaker 1:
[30:12] Yeah. What is your signature sandwich? What state are you or city?

Speaker 2:
[30:17] And until next time, thank you for listening to Spilled Milk. We have a podcast that we'd like to store in your ears. It's this one.

Speaker 1:
[30:25] Oh, it fits. It fits in my ears. It does. It fits nicely. I'm Molly Wizenberg.

Speaker 2:
[30:30] And I'm Matthew Amster-Burton. Can you hear me?

Speaker 1:
[30:38] I can hear myself, I can't really hear you in my headphones.

Speaker 2:
[30:41] Okay, well.

Speaker 1:
[30:42] We have a little bit more.

Speaker 2:
[30:44] I'm gonna talk, and I'm gonna turn things up, and then you tell me when to stop. Keep on talking, I'm talking.

Speaker 1:
[30:49] Oh, that's good, that's good right there. Yeah, that's nice. Okay, all right, I can do this.

Speaker 2:
[30:54] All right.