Winter and the rainy season have undoubtedly arrived in Northern Portugal. We have been spending most days indoors with video games, board games, and movies to keep us entertained. We have been playing the heck out of a new video game, maybe we’ll cover that topic in a future blog. When rain is pouring down and the pellet stove is burning brightly, my cravings for comfort food kick into high gear. This year we revisited one of our favorite holiday traditions that we had skipped for a few years.

Back in our 911 days, we worked a ton of overtime and usually worked on major holidays. I would arrange a work potluck for Thanksgiving and Christmas and Andrew and I would celebrate on our days off, unfettered by a date on the calendar. Part of this lifestyle gave us permission to make new traditions of our very own. We lived in Oregon and our immediate family lives in Minnesota and Alaska so we got used to spending holidays with friends or with just us and the furry kids.

At some point we started ordering fancy food as a Christmas gift to ourselves. Maybe the idea grew out of shipping Harry and David fruit of the month as gifts to family. We tried a lot of different companies. One year we ordered fancy cheese and champagne from Zabar’s in New York. It was expensive, but delicious. Eventually the one tradition that stuck year after year was ordering Reuben sandwich kits from Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

We would make sure to schedule the massive box to arrive just before Christmas and we would enjoy enormous deli sandwiches for at least a week. The kits include everything you need to make a top notch Reuben and even some extras like brownies and chips. Our very favorite was the corned beef and pastrami combination. Since moving abroad, we have talked time and again about how much we miss our old deli sandwiches.

We finally decided to do something about it. Our brainstorming session came a bit late for the actual holiday, but we considered this an experiment and if it worked out we would be more than ready for Christmas 2026. We could easily find rye bread, delicious Swiss cheese, and we already have a favorite butcher in Guimarães. The challenges were turning brisket into corned beef and sourcing horseradish for Russian dressing (I haven’t seen it in a store anywhere).

We opted to use curing salt for the brining process. Although curing salt is poisonous in high doses, it kills bacteria and keeps your meet from turning gray. Andrew succeeded in ordering both a jar of processed horseradish and the curing salt online. We only used 5 teaspoons of curing salt in the brine, so we have enough for a lifetime.

Once we had our 5+ pounds of beef brisket, we began the brine. It was a simple solution of pickling spices, salt, curing salt, and water. I ran out of premade pickling spices, but since I have an extensive herb and spice collection I had all the ingredients on hand to make my own blend. We left the meat in brine for 5 days, turning it over every day. Post brine, the meat was boiled with more pickling spices for 3.5 hours.

Andrew whipped up homemade Russian dressing, and we decided on coleslaw vs. sauerkraut this time around. The corned beef was tender and delicious and the sandwiches came together like a dream. They were exactly what we had been craving. We tried them cold and grilled. I used some of the corned beef in a pasta dish and we still had plenty leftover to freeze for yummy future meals.

All in all, our Reuben experiment was a resounding success. Next Christmas if you find yourself in Northern Portugal and have a hankering for a deli sandwich, hit us up! I’d love to hear about your special holiday traditions and how they came about.