Montreal-style Smoked Meat

Day and night, lines form outside of Schwartz’s, Montreal’s best Hebrew delicatessen and Canada’s oldest. They slice up the best smoked meat in North America. Following a 1928 recipe, the meat is cured for 10 days. Order your smoked beef sandwich medium-lean, heavy on the mustard, three pickles and with extra pommes frites.

Montreal-style smoked meat is a type of kosher-style deli meat product made by salting and curing beef brisket with spices. The brisket is allowed to absorb the flavors over a week, and is then hot smoked to cook through, and finally steamed to completion.

It is cured in seasoning with more cracked peppercorns and savory flavorings, such as coriander, garlic, and mustard seeds, and significantly less sugar than the New York pastrami. It is made with variable-fat brisket, whereas pastrami is more commonly made with the fat-marbled navel/plate cut.

Montreal-style smoked meat is typically served in the form of a light-rye bread sandwich slathered with yellow mustard. While some variation is brine-cured like corned beef, with spices applied later, many smoked meat establishments prefer dry-curing directly with salt and spices.