Brisket – How to trim a brisket for a backyard BBQ

hey guys it’s Matt with meat Churchcoming to you from my outdoor kitchenhere in Waxahachie Texas today I thoughtwe’d talk about just a brisket trim soyou know this is the king of Texasbarbecue and I get a lot of questionsabout how should I trim a brisket youknow I’ve watched a lot of videos andseen a lot of different things out therebut you got to keep in mind who’steaching you to trim a competition guyis going to trim one way a restaurantpitmaster is going to trim a lot moreaggressively to keep the brisket reallynice and uniform and the cook and theycan take those extra trimmings and turnit into sausage burgers things like thatand then a backyard guy probably needsto trim the least because you want tomaximize how much you can eat and itdoesn’t have to be as perfect lookingfor the other reasons I mentioned sotoday is going to be about a reallystraightforward way to trim this to cookin your backyard[Music]okay so first thing I’m gonna dobriskets comprised of two muscles theflat and the point with all this fat inbetween so first I want to remove thishard fat anything hard on the brisket isnot gonna render in the cook processit’s gonna kind of shave this out seealmost all fat give it one more littlepass here and I kind of got my handunderneath the brisket guiding it sotoday’s trim is going to be of what Icall a full Packer trim so to cook thisthing hole on the meat side here theother thing I want to do is I’m going totake a little bit this excess fat offthis isn’t a huge deal this you knowsofter type stuff will render out on thecook so I wouldn’t be worried about ityou don’t need to trim all the silverskin off to get down to just meat likethis for cooking at home so you can kindof choose about how much of that youwant to take off a little bit more hereone more little pass I’m gonna call thatgood okay then show you on this side Idon’t like this rough meat and so whatI’m gonna do is just make a slice to cutoff basically trim and straighten up theedge I would consider it you know kindof cutting it like a thick piece ofbacon and if you want to come aroundhere I’ll give you a little better angleof this it’s all I want to do is justkind of remove this rough stuff and justjust even it up here so I’m quarter-inchyou know half inch in places the realsharp knife just want to try to eventhis up as much as possiblethere we go I’ll call that good okay thelast thing I’m gonna do on the meat sideis down here on this corner this is kindof up to you this is really thin so thisflat if you look on this side is youknow inch and a half thick but over hereit’s a little half inch so it’s notgonna cook evenly this will blow up inthe cook process and kind of create apool of juice here you could loseseasoning I’m gonna go ahead and justtake a little bit of this off just cuzit’s so thin you’ll see some guys willactually like really even this thing outespecially in the restaurant businessbut again remember every bit you cut offis something you’re not gonna eat soit’s up to you you could have left thaton there if you want again if you get agrinder you could grind that up dosomething with itnow we’re gonna flip it over we’re gonnago to the fat side all right so we’regonna go over here on the fat side nowand you can see this one came with alittle bit of a bald spot right in thefat that’s unfortunate I like for thefat to be nice and even across there butyou know kind of is what it is so whatI’m gonna do is there’s a big connectivefat in between the point and the flatthere’s a lot of ways you can do thissome people just shave it out it’s up toyou but what works for me is I like tostart my knife down here on the fat andjust kind of move this point off so yousee how this briskets not flat Iactually want to try to make it as flatas possible so I’m just gonna basicallystart my knife here and you can reallykind of feel thisjust kind of bring that whole big fatpart out you’re gonna lose a little bitof meat in this method but it’s not toobad to be honest with you so there issome meat there but it’s not that muchand I prefer my brisket to be nice andflat now you can really see that fatthat’s left and you can choose to takeanother pass or so you could flattenthis down some more if you want that’spretty optional so it’s a lot more flatyou know at this point so now that I’vetaken off you can see it’s a lot moreflat the more flat the brisket is thebetter it’s gonna cook or more evenlyit’s gonna cook in your in your desiredcooker so last thing I’m gonna do isdown this side you can see the fat is alittle bit thick I need to shave some ofthat out so you know you want to leaveabout a quarter-inch I’m fine with thatbut this is a little bit thick righthere so taking my knife I’m basicallygonna hold my hand underneath to keep itfirm and then just shave it out go slowwith this you know it’s better to trimnot enough fat because you can alwayscome back and trim more see I went in alittle deep there and I expose the meatI don’t want to do that personally Iwant that fat fats flavor in moderationso anyway so gonna come through here andjust kind of even this out this actuallylooks pretty good right here that’s nottoo thick I’m just want to take just alittle bit out and a little tip it’seasiest to trim the brisket when it’ssuper cold coming out of the out of therefrigerator so your fat isn’t shippedyou can tell this one’s been sitting outa little bit so it’s a little bitdifficult to to trim sharp knife helpsthat[Music]so I can feel in here that’s all niceand soft I’m good with all of that butup here still a little bit hard so I cantell that’s a little excessive I’m gonnashave just a little bit more there likeI said in the beginning this hard fatwon’t render real real well in the cookprocess so I want to go ahead and takeit out you see people and they cook abrisket and they’re done and they andthey shake it it’s kind of jiggly that’sthe that’s the fat up here so so againthis is what I call a backyard trim thisis not a restaurant trim this is youknow something to do in your backyardthat’s kind of minimally trimmed if Iwas in a restaurant I would have beenmore aggressive and made this thing likesuper uniform and competition we reallywould have trimmed it down but I want toleave as much as possible for me and myfamily to eat that’s about all I’ve gotto do to it so if you guys stay tunedwe’ve got more videos coming up we’vegot cook videos we’ve got brisketburning videos and all sorts of stuff soif you like what you see you guyssubscribe and stay tuned