Just when I thought I was out...

...they pull me back in.

"They" being briskets, of course. Been about 5 days since I finished doing a 10 brisket cook, and if you'd asked me 3 days ago if I felt like que'n, I'd have told you no way. Yet here we are.

Anyway, we are renting a lake house for my brother's bachelor party and while they do have a gas grill, I thought it'd be nice to have a meal ready to go, to leave me time for fishin' and drinkin' and that sort of thing.

I plan to do this one on my Primo XL oval, won't have time to feed sticks between now and then and I can set it and forget it while I do other things, like paying the bills. I picked up a bottle of rub from my favorite barbecue joint in KC...Q39, and will use it this time instead of SPOG.

I figured I'd take some pics of what I do, maybe it'll help someone blankly staring at their first untrimmed packer wondering how they're going to attack it. While there are many ways to trim brisket, this is the way I like to do it when time permits. I feel it gives good rub and flavor penetration on all sides of the meat since I don't really have to trim anything unrendered off when it's done cooking. I've found little to no difference in the juiciness of the meat compared to a less aggressive trim, all else being equal. I'm certainly not an expert and I don't have the greatest knife skills, but I have trimmed a fair amount of brisket over the past few years and feel fairly proficient at it.

You could certainly leave more on the exterior of the point and remove less between the point and the flat. My main goal when trimming to be left with a uniformly flat piece of meat. I've found that it cooks more evenly, and in the stick burner with a lot of moving air, it seems like it'd be more aerodynamic based on my anecdotal and unscientific experience.

Here's the untrimmed brisket so we know what we're starting with. I found this nice looking 15.2 lb USDA prime packer at Costco, had a nice thick flat and not an absurd amount of fat.

I start trimming the brisket with the fat cap down. I trim the bits of fat that are easily removable on the flat, but I don't go too aggressive or try removing any of the "silver skin" so that I don't risk putting a crater or divot in the flat.

Then, I remove the big clump of fat nestled on the edge where the flat and point meet. I think this is often referred to as the "acorn". I call it "not edible" so it's gotta go.

Next I flip the brisket over fat side up, and start carving out the area of thick fat between the flat and the point. This will be opposite and above that "acorn" area. I try to get it down to 1/4 to 1/2" in trim at this point, taking care to not accidentally remove any of the flat or the point. I find that the boning knife makes removing these two sections easiest, and I'll use the 8" chef knife for longer broader fat removal like the flat and horn of the point.

At this point, the remaining seam of fat separating the flat and the point is pretty visible and it's pretty easy to run a knife down the middle to pull the flat away from the point. I'll flip the brisket back to fat side down, then I usually cut down following the seam a little bit, clean up the fat I exposed, the cut a little more. I'll usually stop when I've exposed about 1/4 to 1/3 of the point end of the flat. Once you can flip the flat back over on itself some, it makes it easy to clean up the hard fat from the top of the flat and bottom of the point.

Once I've cleaned up the meat between the point and the flat, I'll finish removing much of the fat from the flat-facing side of the point. Then I flip it fat side up and try to get a 1/4" trim on the flat, and remove any thick hard fat from the horn of the point. Any hangy bits or brown/rough meat on the edges gets trimmed off the edges.

Usually I'll wind up with something like this. I trimmed 4lb 6oz off this brisket, leaving me with just under 11lb of meat for the smoker. However, since I've already trimmed off a lot of the fat weight that'd be "lost" during cooking, I've found my yields are usually at least 70% of trimmed weight.

pjtexas1 said:

I thought I was an aggressive trimmer... Apparently I am not.

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Lol...and I thought I was exercising restraint. :shocked:


JK...this is about as aggressive as I'll go short of separating the point from the flat and doing a competition style trim.

Some before/after action. I like how much better the point lays now, as opposed to the edge of the point basically pointing straight up prior to removing some fat between the point and flat.

stangman327 said:

Wow nice trim job! At this trim level would it be better to just separate to get more surface area for more bark?

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I prefer to leave attached, there's still plenty of bark, but I feel like I've gotten better results doing so. I rarely separate so I'm not pulling from a large sample size either. The next time i do a competition i will trim like this, which exception to possibly trimming the flat down to the size of the box depending on the size and shape of the brisket I use.

Got the brisket on before work. Filled the Primo with Rockwood lump charcoal and a mix of cherry and hickory wood chips. I prefer wood chips over chunks in the kamado, I get a more consistently applied and longer duration of light smoke. Sometimes the direction of the burn in the charcoal bowl is inconsistent and I might go an hour or two before a chunk of wood gets lit. I also do it in two layers...add a little charcoal to the bottom of the bowl, sprinkle on some chips, add another layer of charcoal, and then some more chips. Using the Flameboss to put the cooker on cruise control until tonight. Since I don't have to be done by any certain time, I'm just running it at 250* today.