Serving size for brisket??

[GBPB]

Guys, I'm sure this question has been asked a million times. A budddy and I are smoking brisket for our church Valentine's banquet. We have always smoked chicken quarters in the past for this event so serving size was no problem(one quarter per person).

Is 1/2 lb. cooked weight about the average serving size for brisket? Someone suggested 1/2 lb. uncooked weight per person but I think we will come up short since we will lose about 40%. Any thoughts tips would be appreciated. I'm not used to cooking for the masses.

Thanks

[bigabyte]

What kind of trimming, slicing, etc are you doing after it is cooked? Are you just serving slices? Personally, I go for 1 pound per person pre-cooked, but I trim a lot before cooking, and after cooking I separate the flat and point, trimming off excess fat from each, and slice the flat and chop the point, and this gets me the right amount. If you serve more fat than this, then you can get away with less weight before cooking.

[landarc]

I would say that 1/3 to 1/2 lb serving of meat is what to shoot for. Most folks will eat 1/3 lb of protein if there are sides. You have to work backwards from there and I would say a 60% yield is moderate. I would err on the heavy side with 1lb per serving raw material.

[big brother smoke]

Yup 1lb. pre-cooked , if the brisky is the only meat.

[GBPB]

We were planning on slicing the flat and chopping the cap.

[LongTong]

Once you've figured out the protion size, use the below as a guidline on how much to cook...
A smoked brisket is going to give you about half the weight in meat of the original piece of meat, meaning if you bought a 12 pound brisket you will get about 6 pounds of meat when you are done. This is because of shrinkage during cooking and the fact that there is so much fat in a typical untrimmed brisket.