JARRAD: We're going to make our short rib pastrami sandwich, the signature dish on Silver and Sons menu.

SETH: All right, pastrami sandwich.

Uh, you're speaking my language.

Should we head up onto the truck?

JARRAD: Actually, you know what?

We're doing so much out of this truck.

We had to build a side kitchen.

So let me bring you into our commissary.

I'll show you around.

SETH: Let's do it.

JARRAD: Awesome.

Come on in.

SETH: Oh, wow.

All right, so pastrami, looks like you're starting with a brine here?

JARRAD: Yeah, we're going to get everything made for the brine, and then we're going to pour it over our short rib over here.

SETH: Short ribs.

All right, well, what little I know about pastrami it's normally made with brisket, right?

JARRAD: Yeah, I think most people normally do it with brisket.

Short rib has a lot more intramuscular fat marbling in there.

So that gives the opportunity, I think, for just adding a lot more flavor.

A brine is basically just a tea.

All you're going to do is bring your liquid up to a boil and then let everything steep for a little bit.

So we have some kosher salt, we've got some brown sugar.

So, this is going to be our spice blend.

SETH: Nice.

JARRAD: Uh, just a whole bunch of extra flavor.

We've got crushed garlic.

Want to open it up so you get all of those extra oils into the actual brine itself.

SETH: And you saved a pink ingredient for last.

JARRAD: Yeah.

SETH: Now what is this?

JARRAD: So this is pink curing salt.

It actually has some sodium nitrates in there that's going to help protect the meat from growing any, like, bad bacteria throughout the brining process.

That's actually what's also going to help get that bright red color to the pastrami.

So we're going to let this come up to a boil.

So we're going to take this, we're going to pour it over this ice water, which is really just going to cool it down.

Mix all this together.

All right, so now we're going to pour this right on top of our short rib.

SETH: And then how long are these going to end up brining for?

JARRAD: So these ones I think are probably going to be about seven to nine days.

SETH: Wow, so this is a dish that requires a lot of time and a lot of patience.

JARRAD: Yeah, we're willing to put in that time.

Barbecue's low and slow, so we'll go low and slow before we even go into the smoker.

SETH: After the brine, Jarrad shows me how he makes his mustard barbecue sauce for the pastrami sandwiches, which features a host of ingredients including Dijon and whole grain mustards, wildflower honey, apple cider vinegar, and baharat, a Middle Eastern spice blend.

He then grabs some fully brined short ribs from the walk-in for us to throw on the smoker.

Smells pretty good in here.

JARRAD: This is my favorite room.

SETH: I feel like I could maybe live in this room.

JARRAD: I basically do.

We got our pastrami.

We're going to season it up, and we're going to put it right in our smokers right here.

So this is a fairly classic pastrami rub.

It's just coriander and peppercorns.

We make it a little bit unique by using multiple types of peppercorns.

So we've got black, pink, green, white, and Sichuan peppercorn.

So we're really going to make sure that it sticks and adheres to the short rib itself.

SETH: Yeah, no spot is going uncovered right there.

JARRAD: No, not at all.

And the most flavorful part that you're going to get is going to be that exterior bark.

And so when we slice this, we want to make sure that every bite has the right amount of that spice crust.

SETH: And of all the meats, is pastrami your favorite one to prepare here?

JARRAD: Yeah, it's really hard to pick.

Everything changes on a different day, but I probably eat more pastrami than I do anything else in this place.

All right, so these are ready to go.

Let's get them in the smoker.

SETH: All right.

That never gets old.

JARRAD: Yeah.

Perfect timing.

So you can see these briskets that we have going on here, coming around on the carousel.

These are the lamb shoulders.

So we do a pulled lamb shoulder instead of a pulled pork shoulder.

We do smoked whole chickens.

SETH: The monster ribs coming up here, but guessing beef ribs?

JARRAD: Yes, these are actually a local Roseda Farm baby back beef rib.

SETH: Wow.

So this is kind of like a rotisserie-style smoker.

JARRAD: Yeah.

So this is a rotisserie.

It means that there's not really going to be any hot spots.

Everything is going to cook really nice and even.

SETH: And so really since everything's going at the same temperature, it's just a matter of how long you're keeping each of the different meats in?

JARRAD: Yeah, exactly.

These pastramis and the chickens, they're all really good in that 225 to 250 range.

All right, these are going to be going for roughly four hours, but I have some on the smoker on the truck that are ready if we want to go check on them.

SETH: Oh, I certainly do.

JARRAD: All right, let's do it.

All right, so this is going to be our truck that we're parking at Lost Generation Brewing in Eckinton, Northeast DC.

Come on up, watch your step.

SETH: Oh, man.

We got another smoker here?

JARRAD: We have smokers hiding in every corner you can find.

We keep them on each one of the trucks so that we can actually do some cooking on the trucks.

This one we're getting ready for dinner service tonight.

We've got some brisket and some chicken and some lamb shoulder.

And then right here we've got that pastrami.

SETH: Wow.

Look at that bark.

And what's all that liquid?

JARRAD: So we actually put a little bit of chicken stock in here that we make with all the smoked chicken bones and that's going to give us that, like, classic Jewish deli truly melts-in-your-mouth, like, texture to it.

SETH: All right, I can't take anymore.

I got to try this sandwich.

JARRAD: All right, let's do it.

All right, so Seth, very simple.

Just a couple of items on the sandwich itself so we make sure all the challah bread is going to be served nice and warm.

And you can just see it just falls right apart for you.

SETH: It falling right apart.

Oh, my goodness.

And the color of the pastrami as well.

I guess that's from all the pink salt, all those nitrates?

JARRAD: Yep, absolutely.

SETH: Oh, and you're being nice and generous with your pastrami too.

JARRAD: Oh, yeah.

I don't do dainty portions.

I don't know what that means.

SETH: It's taking every ounce of self-restraint I have not to reach in and just start nibbling on this pastrami right now.

JARRAD: And we're going to put that mustard barbecue sauce all over it.

SETH: Oh, man.

So much mustard.

So much mustard.

All right, I am just ready to dig in here.

JARRAD: Well, hold on.

We got one more ingredient.

We're at Lost Gen Brewery we got to get a couple of their beers.

SETH: Oh, of course.

Beer and barbecue.

JARRAD: Got a dark lager for you and I got a hazy IPA for me.

Both of them are going to go great with this pastrami sandwich.

SETH: All right.

L'chaim.

JARRAD: L'chaim.

All right, how about that pastrami?

SETH: I've been waiting all day for this.

Here we go.

Low and slow.

Going right in.

(giggles) Get out of here with that.

Come on.

That pastrami is outrageous and there was so much of it, I didn't even get a chance to have a bite with some challah, so I'm going right back in for bite number two.

Wow.

I mean that was worth the wait.

The meat is so tender and fatty I guess from all that marbling, but the bark has such a great crust, softness of the challah, and the sauce itself.

Without being overpowering, it's still nice and acidic.

JARRAD: And that's why we did that cider vinegar in there.

So it's not just a mustard sauce.

It's mustard, there's some sweetness, there's some spice, there's some acidity to it.

So it really balances.

That pastrami is so rich, it's so good.

But you need that acidity to really cut through that.