Poor Brisket Choices

[c45br]

I went to the local restaurant supply yesterday to get a brisket to smoke for a housewarming party tomorrow. I grabbed the last packer in the floor cooler. It was 14.5 lbs. @ $3.49 per. It was pretty fatty and pretty thin on the flat end, but the right size. I headed to the service desk and the guy brought me into the walk-in to look at the others. He had two small angus briskets at a dollar more per lb., and opened another box of packers. They were worse than the one in my cart, which I ended up buying. The guy (owner, I know him) was griping about the stuff that they were sending him, and griping about if he orders prime no one local will pay the price he needs to get for it (it's a rather depressed, impoverished town). 

Preparing it this morning was quite a task. I bet I removed about 5 lbs. of fat and actually ended up separating the point from the flat because of a 1 1/2" layer between them. It'll smoke just fine. I'm not worried about that, but I'm quite disappointed paying $15 for a bag of fat that was thrown into the trash.

Thoughts on separating the point and flat because of necessity?

I also rolled a Bacon Explosion stuffed with sweet sausage, crumbled bacon, sauteed onion and peppers, and drizzled inside with Dinosaur BBQ sauce.

 

[tigerregis]

Render that fat. You can fry with it or baste thin cuts. Tallow was the original fish n chip frying fat.

 

[padronman]

Save the fat and add it to your grind to make sausage [emoji]128522[/emoji]

 

[c45br]

Catfish bait is always another option, but at $3.49 lb. that's some pricey bait.

 

[c45br]

Well, there is none left, so I guess I did alright. Actually it was more than alright. It was downright delicious, tender and juicy to the point of dissolving in your mouth.

Separating the flat and point cut the smoke down to about 13 hours. It was a 9:00 PM start. 160° and wrapped at 6:00 am. It hit 205° at 10:00 AM. Out of the SmokePro, wrapped in a blanket and into a cooler for a four hour rest. Unwrapped at 2:30. When I picked up the flat to move it to the cutting board it flopped so both ends touched and I knew right then...