Carving Beef Brisket

Carving beef brisket is really easy. It may seem daunting because once you complete your beef brisket recipe, you have one big piece of blackened meat with no apparent road map on how to cut it up!

So, how to cut brisket? You just follow the direction of the muscle. Also, when carving brisket, you cut the meat against the grain.(meaning, the finished cut of meat should not appear to have long strands of meat all running the same direction)

To carve: you start at the triangular front called "the point" (many bbq restaurant customers will specify the point, or lean, or fat, or cutters choice). Slice on a bias, working your way back.

About midway, you are going to see a membrane and fat separating a meaty/fatty top portion. This is called "the deckle." You have two choices: you can continue on cutting the way you are. I do not recommend this.

Instead, when carving beef brisket, I run my knife through the fat and remove the deckle. Now, you can clean and trim both of these chunks up to your liking and start carving again.

Please, don't cut more than you need or it will dry out.

Now, brisket grasshopper, you MUST serve this meat with dill pickle chips and sliced onions. Sounds weird, I know, but once you try it this way, your life will change forever.

On a sandwich- hamburger bun or hoagie roll, it goes something like this: 6 oz. brisket pickles onions and sauce. For me, I like to get all white trash on it and put mayonnaise on the bun.
OK, a party's over. Now, what?

If you have some brisket left, I would chill it, then slice it. Trim it if you must but fat is good for you.

Now wrap it in saran and freeze - or better yet, vacuum seal it for your next bbq party or drunken office party where you come home half-in-the-bag and absolutely has to have some bbq beef brisket.

Oh- 1 tip- Restaurants always talk about "yield." This is how much actual servable meat you get after you cook it and it shrinks. Typically a 10-11# brisket yields about 6-7# of meat. So, it is about a 50% shrinkage. If you care, you can see that this effectively raises your cost per pound from $1.86 at the time of this writing, to about $3.60 per pound. FYI.

Oh- 1 more tip- this meat is so damn good, and, in many cases reminds me of Mexican barbacoa.

So, in addition to serving it the traditional way,I like to make FRESH refried beans, guacamole, and rice.

Next, I squeeze a bunch of limes and make real margaritas.

Rolled in flour tortillas, eating the brisket this way is nirvana.

Namaste.