Pastirma[1], pastırma, pastourma, bastirma or basturma is a highly seasoned, air-dried cured beef of Anatolian origin, which is now part of the cuisines of the former Ottoman countries.
The Turkish horsemen of Central Asia used to preserve meat by placing slabs of it in pockets on the sides of their saddles[2], where it would be pressed by their legs as they rode. This pressed meat was the forerunner of today’s pastirma, a term which literally means ‘being pressed’ in Turkish, and is the origin of the Italian pastrami. Pastirma is a kind of cured beef, the most famous being that made[3 in the town of Kayseri in central Turkey.
The 17th century Turkish writer Evliya Çelebi praised the spiced beef pastirma of Kayseri in his Book of Travels, and Kayseri pastirma is still regarded as the finest of all. Good quality pastirma is a delicacy with a wonderful flavour, which may be served in slices as a cold hors d’oeuvre or cooked with eggs, tomatoes and so on. Although pastirma may also be made with mutton or goat’s meat, beef is preferred. Cattle, mainly from the eastern province of Kars, are brought to Kayseri, where they are slaughtered and the meat made into pastirma at factories northwest of the city. The different cuts of meat produce different types of pastirma, 19 varieties from a medium-sized animal and 26 from a large. Extra fine qualities are those made from the fillet and contre-fillet, fine qualities are made from cuts like the shank, leg, tranche and shoulder, and second quality from the leg, brisket, flank, neck and similar cuts. The many tons of pastirma produced in Kayseri is almost all sold for domestic consumption all over Turkey.
BEST: Kuşgönü (bonfile),sırt | fillet, contre-fillet
FIRST CLASS: Bohça, kemer, şekerpare, but, omuz, kürek | shank, leg, tranche and shoulder
SECOND CLASS: Bacak, kavram, kelle | leg, brisket, flank, neck and similar cuts
[1] The word comes from the Turkish: bastırma et 'pressed meat', pastırma [pastɯɾˈma] in modern Turkish. Some authors claim that this is related to the earlier Byzantine Greek word "paston,"[3][4] which is claimed to be a kind of dried and cured meat,[5] but standard Greek dictionaries do not assert this connection, and gloss paston simply as "salted (meat)".
The word has been borrowed by other languages of the region: Albanian: pastërma, Arabic: بسطرمة (basterma), Armenian: բաստուրմա (basturma), Azerbaijani: basdırma, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian: pastrma, Bulgarian: пастърма (pastărma), Greek: παστουρμάς (pastourmás), Hebrew: פסטרמה (pastrama) and Romanian: pastramă. The name pastrami comes from Romanian pastramă, which in turn comes from Greek παστραμάς/παστουρμάς, itself borrowed from Turkish pastırma. The American cured meat product pastrami[*] has its origins in pastirma via Yiddish: פאסטראמא pastrama.
[*] Pastrami was introduced to the United States in a wave of Jewish immigration from Bessarabia and Romania in the second half of the 19th century. The modified “pastrami” spelling was probably introduced in imitation of the American English salami. Romanian Jews emigrated to New York as early as 1872. Among Jewish Romanians, goose breasts were commonly made into pastrami because they were inexpensive. Beef navels were cheaper than goose meat in America, so the Romanian Jews in America adapted their recipe and began to make the cheaper-alternative beef pastrami.
New York’s Sussman Volk is generally credited with producing the first pastrami sandwich in the US in 1887. Volk, a kosher butcher and New York immigrant from Lithuania, claimed he got the recipe from a Romanian friend in exchange for storing the friend’s luggage while the friend returned to Romania. According to his descendant, Patricia Volk, Volk prepared pastrami according to the recipe and served it on sandwiches out of his butcher shop. The sandwich was so popular that Volk converted the butcher shop into a restaurant to sell pastrami sandwiches.
[2]"They (the Huns) cover their heads with round caps, and their shaggy legs with the skins of kids; their shoes are not made on any lasts, but are so unshapely as to hinder them from walking with a free gait. And for this reason they are not well suited to infantry battles, but are nearly always on horseback, their horses being ill-shaped, but hardy; and sometimes they even sit upon them like women if they want to do anything more conveniently. There is not a person in the whole nation who cannot remain on his horse day and night. On horseback they buy and[Pg 579] sell, they take their meat and drink, and there they recline on the narrow neck of their steed, and yield to sleep so deep as to indulge in every variety of dream."
THE ROMAN HISTORY OF AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS DURING THE REIGNS OF THE EMPERORS CONSTANTIUS, JULIAN, JOVIANUS,VALENTINIAN, AND VALENS.
[3] Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink traces its origins even further back to the Byzantine Greek word ‘paston’. Paston was a famous Rûm dish that has its roots in the city of Kayseri. In fact, it’s still sometimes referred to as “Rumeli pastirmasi” till this day in Turkey.
The meat undergoes a series of processes lasting about a month. The freshly slaughtered meat rests at room temperature for 4-8 hours before being divided into joints suitable for pastirma making. These are slashed and salted on one side, stacked, and left for around 24 hours. They are then salted on the other side, stacked and left for a further 24 hours. Then the joints are rinsed in plenty of water to remove the excess salt, and dried in the open air for a period varying between three and ten days, depending on the weather. After some further processing, the meat is hung up to dry again, this time in the shade and spaced out so that the joints do not a touch one another. After 3-6 days, they are covered with a paste of ground spices known as çemen, and left to cure for 10-24 hours in hot weather, and 1-2 days in cold weather. Then the excess çemen is removed, leaving a thin layer, and the joints dried again. Finally the pastirma is ready for the table. The çemen paste covering the slabs of pastirma is both an important factor in the flavour, and protects the meat from drying and spoiling by contact with the air, which would cause the fat in the pastirma to oxidise and give a bitter flavour. ÿemen is composed of crushed classical fenugreek seeds, garlic and chilli pepper mixed to a paste with a little water. Çemen paste is also sold separately as a savoury paste for spreading on bread.
According to Irina Petrossian, author of “Armenian Food - Fact, Fiction and Folklore”, bacterial growth (in basterma) is prevented because the meat is dry-cured with salt, and, because fenugreek is a key ingredient in the paste, it acts as a natural insect repellent.
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