Digging deep in my freezer on the bottom I found a brisket I did not remember having. It is 3 years old. Looks good. Would you spend the time smoking it or should I toss?
I've eaten some pretty old meats from the freezer. never had a problem - as long as they stayed frozen and they were cryovaced. It certainly won't be as good, but I'm not sure why it would be unsafe.
How cold is your freezer? FDA says it will keep indefinitely at 0 degrees if it isn't exposed to air.
Use it, 100% it will be ok as long as it never thawed out. My father in law was a meat cutter for 50+ years, my wife was a meat cutter for almost 20. They convinced me to not throw out some frozen pork butts and turkeys i had that were 2-3 years frozen. Came out absolutely perfect.
Just cooked up a 4 year old SRF brisket I had in the bottom of the freezer My freezer runs -15 or so. But the brisket tasted great. I believe several gave it the best brisket ever, but none of them had tasted SRF before
As far as food safety, I would cook it. If I had an automated "set and forget" type smoker I would cook it. If you cook on an offset/stick burner, I'd wait until I was cooking something else so that you would minimize any wasted time. Ie to thaw, season, trim.......
I just found some 2019 brisket in my deep freezer a 1 1/2 weeks ago. I put some smoke on it and finished in a hotel pan over a Sam Adams beer and made some mighty fine chili with it. Shared with Family and nobody fell ill.