Today we’re gonna go shopping for a brisket we’re gonna decide what’s a good brisket what’s a bad brisket we’re gonna learn how to trim it and we’re gonna finally make a very secret rub. This is a brisket it comes off the cow this is the point this parts the flat right here so there’s gonna be the leaner half it’s gonna be the fattier half the way it’s situated on a cow is right through here the lean part goes over the ribcage the fattier part goes up towards the collarbone and that’s the fattier part typically the problem that most people have is that it’s kind of a tough unsavory cut of meat so it really does need to be cooked low and slow what we’re really looking for you can see the marbling right there that’s a good sign that means it’s gonna cook down well it’s gonna have a lot of flavor and you’re also looking for a thick flat right there that gives you the idea that maybe this leaner part is gonna cook it almost the same rate as the larger part all right so we’re gonna open up this here brisket put on a glove so I don’t have any cross-contamination got my clean hand in my right hand so I can hold the knife and I get any blood anywhere that I don’t want it to go the knife that I’m using is a narrow curved boning knife and this is just a real basic one you can get it at any restaurant supply store my dad bought me this one for Christmas years ago I’ve been using it forever and now we’ve got 40 of them so anyway kind of open this thing up you always want to be a little careful not to splatter blood anywhere I like to use the clean hand use the knife a lot just kind of pull stuff out of the way don’t any splatters and then this is what they call a packer cut brisket this is what you’ll get at the grocery store still this is the flat this is the point lean part fatty part and here in Texas we split these up when we’re cutting them if you don’t trim any fat off of it it’s likely gonna end up too fatty after you cook it or if you trim too much off and then you try to cook it it’s going to run out of fat it’s gonna be dry so you want to have just about the right amount of fat for me it’s about a quarter-inch it could vary it could be different for everybody it just depends on your cooker and it depends a lot on how hot you’re cooking it so I kind of start right here be very very careful really looking to get about a quarter-inch and then this is pretty good and briskets are a lot easier to trim up if they’re cold if you let them warm up too much if you let it sit on the counter then the fat will get real hard to cut through and you’ll increase your risk for for injury so again dirty hands so I’ve got that right there I’ve got about a quarter inch to a half-inch turn it around this part right here this is the deckle that goes underneath right in here so I’m going to kind of cut this down like that and there’s a wee bit of a membrane right there it’s not necessarily gonna render out and then this whole thing this is the deckle I’m going to cut that out of smidge and if you pull it with your hands you can just lightly follow it with a knife and then just trim that little gaff we go old hunk of that in Kansas City this is where the burnt ends would come from but we’re not in Kansas City we’re in Texas and I’m gonna cut that off because it’s gonna burn and I only know that from experience you could leave it on there and get some great meat but it’s it’s most likely gonna burn a little bit so at this point you’re really looking for a shape this parts really really super thin right there so I’m actually gonna trim it just a little bit right there you can see how marbled that is and it’s a much coarser grain as opposed to this down here being the leaner part it’s a much tighter so it’s kind of ribeye vs.
Sirloin a little bit this is where the heats going to be coming from on the cooker so you definitely want to leave plenty of fat there to to kind of protect it look at pretty good so between the two muscles right here to flatten the point right there there’s a huge layer fat that goes through there and if you flip it over it’ll manifest itself right here and we definitely don’t want that cuz there’s no way that’s gonna turn out good it’s a huge chunk of fat it’s not gonna render it’s not a kind of fat that’s gonna add any flavor not a kind of fat that’s gonna render out properly not even a kind of fat that you could really use to make sausage so we’re gonna get rid of it and trim it off that we don’t want to carve any more into this brisket than that it’s kind of aerodynamic it’s enough where the smoke will kind of go over it the heat will go over it sort of that’s good enough we’re gonna leave that the other thing is there’s a lot of silver skin on the bottom of this but I was only doing one or two briskets I definitely would trim this if I was doing a competition I would also very very much trim this and you pretty much trim until you just take a trim and you could spend a lot of time or a little time doing this me I don’t like to spend much time doing this it kind of as much as the silver skin office you want to if you get tired of trim and it’s not the end of the world if you want to really go spend a lot of time on this it’s okay it’ll work out fine either way a lot of briskets if you’ll look right here it’s got a huge gash in there that came from the processing plant where this thing came from and that’s something that isn’t necessarily a good thing but when we rub it later we’re gonna have to be real careful not to get rub in there because if we do then we’re gonna have a pocket of rub once once this thing’s cooked and that’s not necessarily a good thing either so this thing’s trimmed up we got about a quarter inch of fat all the way across it’s looking good that’s trimmed out it’s shaped real nicely I think we ready to put some rub on it about to share some secrets it’s pretty complicated stuff a lot of you have really complex rubs a lot of people put chili powder cumin paprika all kinds of stuff the way we roll here in Central Texas it’s half salt and half pepper kind of swirl it up a bit if you had a shaker it’d be pretty neat and there you go so normally start off you want to keep this thing moving the granules of the salt are a lot heavier than the pepper so the salts gonna settle to the bottom so you want to kind of keep it going I always start on the on the flat side kind of get it in my hand like that sprinkle it and I normally go around the edge and this just cuz I do a lot of these things it’s kind of just the habit that I’ve developed but doesn’t really matter as long as you get it on there a lot of people put a whole lot of rub on a brisket in my opinion that it’s it’s better to go a little little conservative on how much rub you really want the flavor in the meat to shine through your you know this is barbecue you can put a lot of rub on something cook in the oven and get whatever flavor you want but it’s salt and pepper it’s super simple I feel pretty strongly about that flip it over a lot of people also really go in there and massage the piece of meat and really I think the biggest mistake people make across the board is just putting too much rub on on this stuff I don’t want to be cakey and I don’t want to be overpowering when it’s finished so that right there in my opinion is a perfectly rub brisket so there’s kind of two camps on whether or not you should let me come up to room temperature or you should put it on cold a lot of people to put the stuff on cold because they think it gives them kind of a fake smoke ring but I think you only really need a fake smoke ring if you’re not getting a real smoke ring so being that this is beef I’m gonna let it warm up to room temperature for about an hour before I put it on the hot cooker two reasons for that beef is about the only meat that you could let warm up to room temperature you’d never want to do that with poultry or pork or anything else beef is really the only one that you could do it with I do it for steaks I do it for brisket I think it will yield a much more even cook so we’ve got this thing rubbed down we’ve got it warmed up to room temperature cookers hot I’m gonna put it on .
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