Brined and smoked

Pastrami

Pastrami is a brined and smoked product made from beef. This page collects the facts this site can source: its cure type, where its protected names are registered, and the curing and safety parameters a named authority actually publishes. It does not print an ageing time no source publishes.

At a glance

Cure type: Brined and smoked
Meat: Beef
Origin: No single origin asserted
Protected designations: none in the EU register under this name
US standard of identity: none
Named by FSIS: no

Cure type and meat from the class definition; protected status from 2026-09-04 eAmbrosia, the EU geographical indications register. Full detail on the register and standards page.

How it is cured

Pastrami belongs to the brined and smoked family. The steps in that process, and the parameters published sources attach to each of them, are set out under immersion brining. This site describes the process and its parameters; it does not publish a procedure to follow.

Curing salts

In US regulation the permitted curing agents are sodium or potassium nitrite, which fixes colour and controls Clostridium botulinum, and sodium or potassium nitrate, permitted only as a source of nitrite and not allowed in bacon (9 CFR 424.21(c)). Products of this family are short-cured or cooked, so nitrite is the agent that applies and there is little role for a nitrate reservoir. The premixed salts sold as "cure #1" (nitrite only) and "cure #2" (nitrite plus nitrate) are trade names for these agents, not regulatory categories. This site does not publish dosing; the ingoing limits are on the ingredient and safety pages.

The permitted agents and their ingoing limits are on the nitrite and nitrate chart entries, and the safety role of each is on the safety page.

Ageing

No source this site cites publishes a typical ageing time or chamber temperature for this class. For a protected name the minimum ageing is fixed in the filed product specification, which the EU register does not expose through its API; it is reached through the register entry linked on each protected-name page. The time-and-temperature figures above, where present, are process-control parameters an authority does publish, not a house ageing style.

Protected designations

No name matching Pastrami sits in the EU register under the two meat classes. In the United States most cured-meat words carry no compositional guarantee unless a section of 9 CFR part 319 defines them, which is why the standard of identity, where there is one, is the fact worth checking.

What this page does not tell you

This site publishes parameters and their sources. It does not tell anyone that a preparation is safe, because "safe" is a conclusion about a specific product rather than a property of a class. Curing controls real hazards with curing salts and with controlled temperature and humidity; the hazards, and the parameter that controls each one, are on the safety page. Nothing here is a recipe.

The full record for this class - the EU register entries, any US standard of identity, and the FoodData Central composition rows - is on the Pastrami register and standards page.

Protected status: eAmbrosia, the EU geographical indications register, retrieved 2026-09-04. Curing agents: 9 CFR 424.21(c), table of permitted curing agents (eCFR). Process parameters: FSIS compliance guidelines, cited above. Spine generated by scripts/build-products.mjs on 2026-09-09.