When trimmin' a brisket,
what are the differences between restaurant trims,
a backyard or a catering trim,
and a competition cook-off brisket trim?
What's up, Pitmasters?
in this video, we're going to show you exactly
what those differences are and how to trim for each of them.
Before we jump into the trimming,
let me quickly explain the three things I look for
in a brisket when I'm shopping.
First is size.
Generally, I find myself going for the 16 to 18 pound range.
I rarely go less than 14 pounds.
And if I find a solid 20 pound brisket,
I'll take that too.
Second is shape.
I look for brisket that's more or less
as even and flat as it can be.
This can be helpful for trimming quickly.
Lastly and perhaps most importantly, the grade.
These days for restaurants standards, cook-offs,
and that good, at home eats,
prime is the gold standard.
You wanna look for a brisket with good marbling,
Truthfully, at home, even a good Choice can be a good choice
for most occasions, but for a cook-off,
you don't wanna bring a knife to a gunfight.
So go at least with a prime
or else a Wagyu if you can afford it.
With all that said, let's get to trimmin' this brisket.
All right, check out this brisket.
Remember I was saying, it has this big old point here?
We generally look for a brisket that does not have that.
This one has it.
So we're just gonna whack it right off.
But what we do look for, as I was saying earlier,
I generally look for marbling.
We call these striations of fat
that run along with the grain.
You're gonna look for little speckles
of white fat right here on the edge of the flat here.
The fat is an intramuscular fat that we're looking for
that's called marbling,
and it runs from one end of the brisket to the other.
We're also looking for a nice, big flat.
This flat still looks fairly good sized.
So it's fat here, fat here.
This is generally where my competition
flags are gonna come in.
So as long as this thickness matches this thickness,
I'm gonna be pretty happy.
Go ahead and trim it up a little bit and get rid
of some of this stuff.
Even if it's just a backyard brisket,
I am definitely not gonna leave that on my brisket.
It's just going to be totally out
of whack inside the cooker.
So we're just going to cut this right off.
And as you guys have heard me say many times,
a good sharp knife makes the job a whole lot easier.
Generally, this is an eight-inch boning knife,
and generally, this knife right here,
is all I need to trim, from a backyard brisket
to a competition brisket, and everything in between.
This is just a really good, do-all, all-around knife.
So whether it's backyard or competition,
that big piece is coming off.
Otherwise it's going to lay all weird
inside the barbecue pit.
Remember, we want nice even cooking.
In order to have nice even cooking,
your brisket kind of has to be the same size
from one end to the other as much as is possible.
Let's go ahead and start trimming.
If I'm doing a backyard brisket,
all I'm going to do is take some
of this fat up here off the top.
I'm not going to get way, way down into the meat.
Just taking the big thick part that's sticking out a lot.
I'm just going to take this off right here.
The reason I take that off, as much as possible,
I want that rub that I'm going to put on the brisket
to flavor the meat.
Good trick here, stick your hand up under the brisket,
pick up the part where you want to trim from,
grab that fat and take it off
and just keep on doing what you're doing, like this.
Take off this fat here.
Generally for backyard, restaurant, catering-type scenarios,
you're going to do a very minimal trim
because you're trying to get maximum yield,
the most amount of meat that you possibly can get
to serve your client or your family and friends
in the backyard.
I am going to take off some of this fat right here,
kind of square it up a little bit.
Here's a hard fat line of fat that runs right along
that edge there that just really is no good.
We want to get rid of that.
I do like to round off my point here a little bit.
Even if it's just for the backyard,
I'm going to round it off a little.
So trust me, we're not going to throw none
of this meat away.
This is all good hamburger meat, right there.
This one sticks out.
It's a little bit more pointy,
so I'm just going to round it off a little bit.
Now you don't have to do this for a backyard brisket.
Remember to keep in mind that brisket,
every cow's different,
every brisket's a little bit different,
so there's no exact perfect way.
These are just basically guidelines
on how you should trim a brisket.
See, we kind of nicely rounded that off a little bit.
And particularly, if you have a stick burner,
offset cooker, where you have a little high volume
of air flowing from one end to the other,
you want that air to kind of come around.
So you want this to be somewhat aerodynamic
as they like to say.
We want to round off this edge just a little bit,
not too much.
Get rid of this little fat line,
this little dry piece of meat here.
I'm trying to not over-trim because remember,
like I said, we want maximum yield.
We want to have the most amount of meat possible
to serve our family and our friends.
I'm going to still gonna take a little bit
of fat off, up here on top.
I don't worry too much about this fat on top
when I'm doing a backyard trim.
Okay, I'm going to rotate this around
and show you guys a little bit on the other side.
This side looks okay.
Got a little bit of a gouge right here,
so I'm just going to kind of square that off
just a little bit.
Get rid of that gouge.
Another tip, as I've said before, you want nice cold meat.
It's a lot easier to trim a cold brisket
than one that's been sitting out a while
and it gets all loose and slippery and stuff.
And that's pretty, pretty close to a backyard trim.
We're going to flip it over and look at the other side.
Does have a little excess fat here.
So I'm going to come across here and get rid
of some of that.
Less mass means less time cooking
inside the barbecue cooker.
Alright, now generally,
the accepted rule is quarter-inch.
I say an eighth to a quarter-inch of fat
on the bottom side of the brisket.
You don't want to get rid of all of it.
That fat layer does do a little bit to help retain
some of the moisture inside the meat.
This has a little flap sticking out right here.
We're going to pull that off right there.
Cut it off.
Okay, now this is a very basic backyard/catering
restaurant-style trim.
Some restaurants are a little more aggressive
because they make their in-house sauces.
So they will trim a little bit more from the brisket
and make it even smaller than what I've done here today.
For backyard and or catering and restaurant,
generally, you're going to want maximum yield.
So that's about as far as I would trim
for a catering brisket or for something here at the house.
Doesn't have to be totally perfect.
You don't have to square it up all super-nice and pretty.
What you want is a lot of meat to cook
so you can make people happy with.
And this right here would make a lot of people happy.
And these little corners here are gonna over cook anyway.
I would rather let this dry out a little bit,
cut that off and chop it up and throw it in a sandwich.
And that will, in my opinion,
help keep the rest of this meat moist from here on up.
If you trim it here,
then the edge is still going to get dry anyway.
I'd rather just go ahead and let this corner get dry,
and this little corner get dry, a little bit,
and this will help the rest of the brisket stay moist.
Again, that's just my thought process.
Your mileage may vary a little bit.
Alight, so that's basically a backyard/catering,
restaurant-style trim.
Now we're going to get into a competition trim,
which is much, much more aggressive.
Generally, I'm not going to have a choice
for competition brisket.
I'm going to have a Prime or a Wagyu, or a Koshi
or some other high-end type brisket.
As I said earlier, I don't want to take a knife
to a gunfight, so I'm going to buy the best brisket
that money can buy, to go into a top-notch competition.
For a competition brisket,
I prefer to use a 10-inch slicer
and as we get into it, you'll kind of understand why.
Now for all of you hardcore backyard,
don't get mad at all the meat I'm taking off of here.
It's not going to go to waste.
We're going to grind it up.
We're going to make some amazing hamburgers out of it.
Alright, so the first thing I'm going to do,
I'm going to turn this over to the backside.
Remember I said, I want my brisket to lay flat.
By the way, my barbecue-learned friends,
if you're interested in taking your competition brisket
up to another level, if you really want to cook
some really amazing competition brisket,
or even backyard brisket,
check out my online barbecue class at pitmasterclass.us,
where I teach you how to select, trim, cook,
and finish and plate, both backyard, briskets
and competition briskets, and all the other barbecue meats
that are the most popular barbecue meats in the world.
So I'm going to flatten this out a little bit more,
right here.
This big, long slicer just makes it so much easier
to make nice, even cuts.
Remember what I said about marbling?
This is a fairly decently marbled Choice brisket.
That looks pretty good right there on the Choice.
See how nice and flat that laid?
Alright, so we're going to flip it back over the other way.
Now I'm going to take this whole point off right here.
I'm going to follow the fat line right here
and I'm going to round it off even more.
And I cut that to the side.
I'm going to round this off a little bit more right here.
Okay, and we may trim a little more
from there in just a little bit.
Now you see right here, it's round like that.
I don't want a round brisket, I want it nice square brisket,
so that when I cut my slice it lays nice
and even in the tray.
I'm going to take my knife and I'm going
to straighten out both sides.
Now the grain runs this way.
Ideally, if you had a 20-pounder
and the flat was really big and looked juicy,
you can cut with the grain.
In this case, it's a little bit smaller brisket.
So I'm not going to cut it exactly with the grain.
I'm going to just block it off.
And this is why I like to slice it
because I make a nice long, straight cut.
Just like that.
Just be smooth.
Don't get in too big of a hurry.
I rounded off the corner just a little bit right here.
Now I'm going to straighten this side out.
Now generally, in competition, we want a nine-inch brisket.
Some cooks like to cut it at eight or eight and a half.
Me personally, I like a nine,
'cause I want to fill that tray up from end to end.
So I've got this side nice and straight,
and now I'm going to straighten this side out a little bit.
And I'm just going to do it just like that folks,
just like that.
And if you notice,
I'm not sure if the camera picked it all up,
but it's nice and round here,
got a little round edge right here.
You can run it off a little bit more.
You can use your knife or you can use scissors.
Some guys like to use scissors.
So now we've got it nice and blocked off.
This stuff sticks out a little bit here,
so we're going to trim this up a little bit more,
straighten it out.
I like to press down on it just a little bit, not a bunch.
I'm going to round this corner off a little bit more here.
And I'm going to round off this corner.
And don't worry about being perfect up here on the two ends.
You're not going to put that in the tray,
it's not going to go into the competition box.
But you do want to get a little bit round, just like that.
I will always look at it again and again,
and I'll rotate it and I might take little slivers,
just like this.
Take your time.
Don't be in too big of a hurry when you're trimming,
'cause then you might screw it up.
You might trim off too much.
Trust me.
Ask me how I know,
I've done it.
And so you just take a little bit of your time
and just kind of keep studying it, keep looking at it.
And I've got it all squared up now.
I'm not real, real happy with this corner right here,
so I'm going to trim a little bit more,
round it off, just try to straighten it out.
Just a little bit better.
There we go.
So you can be nice and thin slivers.
I like to trim the fat off a little bit
down here on the bottom, round it off, just a hair.
Doesn't really mean anything.
That's just like a habit I have.
Let me do the same thing to this side here.
Alright, now I don't need all this point over here,
so I'm going to trim off just a little bit more.
It's not going in the box.
There's plenty of marbling.
Plenty of fat over here on the point.
So I'm not real worried about this getting dried out.
Alright, now you want maximum sharpness
to be able to get this skin off, right up here on the top.
If I have enough meat on there,
I'm going to take my knife, and I'm just going
to try to flatten out the top as well.
Just like that.
Now I'm going to come back the other way.
And what this does, it exposes all the meat
that you possibly can to your rub.
And this was one of the reasons I liked this big,
long slicer.
I can get right up under the silver skin here
and get nice flat surface here.
Again, you don't have to be perfection.
You just have to be close.
At least pretty dang close.
And this is really close right here.
And then get some, I am going to have to lift it up,
just a hair, to get this silver skin right here.
Real sharp knife and cold meat works really well, folks.
Okay.
I think I got just about as much as I need to get.
There we have a nice, pretty, pretty flat brisket.
It looks like a pretty nice little rectangle.
You want the edges nice and square.
You see, as it's warming up, it start to kind of get
out of shape a little bit.
You want to keep straightening it out
'till you got it just right.
You want to round off the edges
'cause when you cook it, and you're going to slice it,
you don't want the edges to crumble on you.
Alright friends.
There's our competition brisket trim.
Took quite a bit of meat out.
Look how nice and straight that looks.
It looks like a nice little rectangle.
Nice and flat on top.
Nice and flat on the bottom.
And we still have some nice point meat here.
We're going to go ahead and inject it
and season it with a little bit of OG
and a little bit of wow.
We're going to put it in our smoker tomorrow morning.
And once again, if you're interested
in learning how to up your barbecue game,
whether it's brisket, pork butts, or rib,
check out my online barbecue class at pitmasterclass.us,
and I'll show you three different ways
to inject your brisket there.
Keep the smoke light, make it work.
Boom!