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What's For Dinner?

Clay Showalter

Southern member northern landowner
6,758
145
Guilford County
In about 10 hours it will be going down
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"J"

Git Off My Lawn
Supporting Member
58,664
288
North Carolina
First attempt at brisket was a complete success! Started it on the pellet grill last night at 8:30pm and pulled to rest at 12:30 this afternoon. Let it rest in a cooler for a couple hours and she was perfect, especially for my first try. Made burnt ends, super dooper baked beans with bacon on the grill, deviled eggs, Terry made potato salad and Jenna made cheesy potatoes. Dessert will be raspberry cheesecake bars with fruit in an attempt to find something similar to John’s he brings to events. That’s TBD but the dinner turned out great!!

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Sgt Fury

Sgt. Spellchecker
First attempt at brisket was a complete success! Started it on the pellet grill last night at 8:30pm and pulled to rest at 12:30 this afternoon. Let it rest in a cooler for a couple hours and she was perfect, especially for my first try. Made burnt ends, super dooper baked beans with bacon on the grill, deviled eggs, Terry made potato salad and Jenna made cheesy potatoes. Dessert will be raspberry cheesecake bars with fruit in an attempt to find something similar to John’s he brings to events. That’s TBD but the dinner turned out great!!

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Looks way better than my first attempt. Mine was too thick and I didn’t trim any fat…turned out greasy….was thinking about trying another one this week. I am surprised at how easy it is to do pork loins so that’ll be my go to.
 
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Looks way better than my first attempt. Mine was too thick and I didn’t trim any fat…turned out greasy….was thinking about trying another one this week. I am surprised at how easy it is to do pork loins so that’ll be my go to.
I watched a few videos on YT, especially Meat Church, on how to trim them and I think I did good. Probably would trim even more fat off if I did one again. Definitely a lot of work to cook one.

Toughest part for me was worrying about running out of pellets over night and setting alarms to go out and double check. At 200 degrees it didn’t use much tho and likely one hopper full would have made it the whole night. Now I’m dragging ass.
 
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Sgt Fury

Sgt. Spellchecker
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Did a very small brisket today….took 7 hours and the meat was only about 2 pounds. The only other brisket I could find was all over 15 pounds. I went to five different places and everyone only had huge brisket…I found this at ShopRite so I got it. I would like to find a place where I can get a 4-5 pound brisket.
This one turned out better than the my first one (not greasy) but still was so tender that I had a hard time cutting it without having the meat come apart like pulled pork. Everything else I’ve tried on the smoker seems pretty easy and turned out great but for some reason, brisket is giving me a hard time. Also having a tough time finding a good recipe to follow online…most seem to be for seasoned grillers…and I’m a novice when it comes to smokers.
 

Jamie

Senior Member
5,942
177
Ohio
On those big whole packer briskets you can separate the point from the flat and cut them both into two pieces. Cook one half of the flat and one half of the point together, or just half of the flat. You can cook half or all of the point separately to make burnt ends.
 

Sgt Fury

Sgt. Spellchecker
On those big whole packer briskets you can separate the point from the flat and cut them both into two pieces. Cook one half of the flat and one half of the point together, or just half of the flat. You can cook half or all of the point separately to make burnt ends.
I’ve got questions:
1) what’s a flat?
2) what’s a point?
3) on the big briskets that weigh 15-20 pounds, it looks like 50% of it is fat.…if I buy a big one, would it be a waste of money to throw away most of the fat?…seems like I’m paying for fat that I’m just going to throw away.
 

finelyshedded

You know what!!!
Supporting Member
32,541
274
SW Ohio
I’ve got questions:
1) what’s a flat?
2) what’s a point?
3) on the big briskets that weigh 15-20 pounds, it looks like 50% of it is fat.…if I buy a big one, would it be a waste of money to throw away most of the fat?…seems like I’m paying for fat that I’m just going to throw away.
The big 14-20 pound briskets are often called whole packers. The flat is the wide leaner “flat” end and the point is the thicker end from which burnt ends are cut from.
I highly recommend you watch Matt Pittman do a brisket smoke on his Meatchurch show.

 
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Sgt Fury

Sgt. Spellchecker
The big 14-20 pound briskets are often called whole packers. The flat is the wide leaner “flat” end and the point is the thicker end from which burnt ends are cut from.
I highly recommend you watch Matt Pittman do a brisket smoke on his Meatchurch show.

Wow! Just watched a video on YouTube from the guy at meatchurch…he trimmed a lot off…I guess it’s unavoidable. It’s a shame they don’t trim more fat off of the brisket before selling it because you’re paying for fat that you’re just going to throw out anyway.
Learned a lot that I didn’t know (flat and point). Some of the cuts I saw in one of the butcher shops looked more like a pyramid than a flat cut of meat….you’d have a lot of waste on a cut like that.
I guess I’ll give it another try with a bigger piece but I’m only cooking for my wife and myself so I don’t want to get one that’s too big. Thanks for the info.👍
 

Jamie

Senior Member
5,942
177
Ohio
You can use trimmings from a brisket to grind with your venison or make suet cakes for your woodpeckers. You do not have to "waste" it, but that is the easiest thing to do. I feed some of the trimmings to my dogs, too.

Even if you buy a brisket flat, you will trim a pile of fat off of it. I don't think brisket is overrated. A properly cooked brisket is seriously good eating. It is more work, though. No shortcuts to good brisket. Takes practice. I usually cook a flat and immediately vacuum seal and freeze half of it(only two of us here, too.). Reheats well and is just as good as the day you took it off the smoker if you are careful not to cook it more while warming it up.
 
I took the fat and all trimmings and put in a pan to cook during the day on Sunday. I would then drain the liquid off through a coffee filter into a mason jar so I can use when cooking veggies and other pan fried items. Meat Church brisket on a pellet grill video showed doing this and I thought it was a good idea. The cooked trimmings I have been feeding to the dogs this past week now as treats. Definitely not thrown away in our house.

As for learning how to trim up a brisket I think you found a good video to watch through Meat Church. One of his called Burnt Ends shows how to trim the brisket and remove most of the fat between the Flat and the Point and season to cook both at the same time. That is basically how I did ours and the burnt ends and they turned out perfect. There are plenty of other videos on YouTube on how to do it. For me I think I will try to trim off most surface fat, even off of the flat. Probably will separate the flat from the point as well, remove most of that thick fat between and cook both separately with the intention of making the point into 100% burnt ends.

As far as the value of what you pay vs. how much meat you actually get off of one I can agree a lot doesn't seem to end up in our bellies after such a large package of meat and fat. I would still do one again but I would definitely shop around and find them on sale before buying again. A while back when I was going to buy one (ended up with our first pork butt instead) and they wanted almost $100 for a brisket at the meat market that weighed about 14 lbs. I about shit when I heard the price. Ended up finding them at our Meijer store and paid $66 for the one I cooked, a 14 lb. one that had a lot of fat but it was the only one they had. The week before they had several in the $55 range which I would consider as perfect.