Pastramă facts for kids
Pastramă is a super tasty type of meat, a bit like a special deli snack! It's usually made from lamb, but you can also find it made from pork and mutton. People first created pastramă as a clever way to keep meat fresh before we had refrigerators.
Contents
How is Pastramă Made?
Making pastramă involves a few cool steps. First, the raw meat is soaked in a salty water mix, called a brine. This helps to preserve it. Then, the meat is partly dried. After that, it's covered in different herbs and spices to give it a great flavor. Finally, it's smoked and steamed until it's ready to eat.
Where Did Pastramă Come From?
Pastramă started as a special food in a region called Wallachia in Romania. Back then, it was mostly made from young ram meat.
The word pastramă comes from the Romanian word a păstra, which means "to keep" or "to preserve." This makes sense because pastramă was a way to preserve meat! Some people also think the word might come from the Latin word pastor, which means "shepherd." If that's true, then pastramă could mean "shepherd's meat," like lamb or mutton.
Pastramă's Journey Through History
Some historians believe that pastramă was brought by the Romans to a city called Caesarea Mazaca in a place called Anatolia. There, it was known as pastron. This old recipe might be the start of another similar meat called pastirma.
Later, around 455 AD, a group of people called the Gepids settled in a region called Transylvania. When another group, the Lombards, came through in 567 AD, they might have discovered pastramă. Some people think this could be how a meat called bresaola came to be.
Pastramă in America
Pastramă came to the United States when many Romanian Jewish people moved there from Romania in the late 1800s. At first, people in English spelled it "pastrama," just like the Romanian word. But later, the spelling changed to "pastrami." This new spelling probably made it sound a bit like salami, which is another popular Italian meat.
