Well, much of the brisket was eaten. No one is sick as of yet, and it’s been 16 hours so I feel like everything is gonna be ok. After watching a few more videos on trimming, yeah, I did a poor job. The end result were portions that were red and super fatty and other areas things were actually pretty good. I see now people almost slice the top completely off to get that hard fat out. I basically scooped out until I got nervous, leaving way to much fat. That was the area that ended up being a hot (but not hot enough) mess. So the flat came out better than I served and the point ended up largely in the garbage. But I love to smoke again and I am convinced I can get this right. Any advice on trimming is greatly appreciated and sorely needed!
Hi there and welcome!
Brisket is maybe the toughest peace of meat to tackle due to all of the things you have to get right. So it being your first attempt don't get too down on yourself.
I always recommend for people to nail doing Pork Butt's before they try a brisket.
They are way cheaper ($0.99/lb about twice a month between Albersons, Tom Thumb, and Kroger stores) and you can cook them the exact way you plan to cook you brisket for practice.
Follow about 90% of Aaron Franklin's trimming approach, posted below. At 4:39 in the video he cut's out the fat deckle which I would bet was your problem area with the fat.
I personally don't worry about trimming down any other fat unless it is obviously over 1/2 an inch thick, it's not worth the time to try and get down to 1/2 or 1/4 inch and most briskets are already there except maybe in 1 or 2 spots at the end of the point.
I also don't worry about any silver skin or fat on the underside of the flat, that stuff renders out.
Everything else he talks about is spot on, ESPECIALLY trimming away that thin portion of the flat muscle. Just throw that good thin trimmed away meat in smoker and manage it separately so it doesn't go to waste.
Key fact of briskets and pork butts. They are only done when they are tender, and they are only tender when you can stab all over with a kabob skewer and it goes in like butter. NEVER by time or temp alone! :)
Now with a Pork Butt you don't have to do anything but season it, no trimming at all, trust me.
HOWEVER, you do get practice in placing the temp probe. Using the Internal Temp (IT) of the meat to tell you when to do the tenderness checks to see if the pork butt is tender and thefore done.
You get to play around with wrapping to beat the stall or don't wrap at all. You get to understand roughly how long the cook will take at certain smoker temps. You get to see how you can manage such a long smoke/cook, etc. etc. etc.
So I highly suggest you practice on pork butts until you nail them but be sure to use all the brisket practices you can. Then when you do your next brisket you just have to trim properly and then fall into the same practices/habits/tricks you used on your pork butts. Much simpler and easier than tackling a brisket head on and hoping for victory! :)
I hope this info helps and here is the Aaron Franklin brisket trimming video that I think will help you with your next brisket trim job (again I only do about 90% of what he suggest as I mention above):
