Montreal smoked meat

Montreal-style smoked meat

Montreal-style smoked meat from Schwartz's in Montreal
Course	Main course
Place of origin	Canada
Region or state	Montreal, Quebec
Created by	Disputed - various Jewish delis in the city
Main ingredients	Smoked meat, mustard, and rye bread

Montreal-style smoked meat, Montreal smoked meat or simply smoked meat in Montreal (French: smoked meat; sometimes viande fumée), 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 flavours over a week, and is then hot smoked to cook through, and finally steamed to completion.

Although the preparation method may be similar to New York pastrami, Montreal smoked meat is cured in seasoning with more cracked peppercorns and savory flavourings, such as coriander, garlic, and mustard seeds, and significantly less sugar. The recipe for Montreal steak seasoning is based on the seasoning mixture for Montreal smoked meat.

Montreal smoked meat is made with variable-fat brisket, whereas pastrami is more commonly made with the fat-marbled navel/plate cut. Montreal smoked meat is typically served in the form of a light-rye bread sandwich accompanied with yellow mustard. While some Montreal smoked meat is brine-cured like corned beef, with spices applied later, many smoked meat establishments prefer dry-curing directly with salt and spices.

The origins of Montreal smoked meat are uncertain and likely unresolvable. Many have laid claims to the creation or introduction of smoked meat into Montreal. Regardless, all of these stories indicate the creators are of the Jewish Diaspora from Romania or Eastern Europe:

Warm Montreal smoked meat is always sliced by hand to maintain its form, since doing so with a meat slicer would cause the tender meat to disintegrate. Whole briskets are kept steaming and sliced up on demand when ordered in the restaurant to maintain its temperature. Unspecialized restaurants outside Montreal typically do not have the volume of smoked meat customers to justify this practice, and usually only have cold presliced meat on hand, reheated when a customer orders one sandwich. The meat should be around 3 mm thick, cut slightly on a bias, and across the grain of the brisket.