Trimming my first brisket, tried to do the fundamentals. Remove any brown meat, hard fat and silver skin.
Trimmed the fat cap down to 1/4 of an inch..
20 minutes later, my 17 lbs brisket was down to just 11 lbs.
Did I take off too much or is this normal and expected that trimming will remove roughly 33% of the brisket by weight?
by ofindependentmeans
5 Comments
Nah, man. It’s meat and it heat, not brain surgery. Looks great. Now you have 11lbs of tasty brisket and 6lbs for tasty hamburgers.
I’ve had brisket that the trimmings filled a plastic grocery bag to capacity. Was nuts. The important thing is you trimmed off the big thumb thick hard fat that will never render down or you’ll get a bite of literally just fat that on its own isn’t pleasant and everybody will be timing fat on their plate. You went a tiny but deep on that strait strip on top but otherwise looks good. If you really had to remove that much day you had to and it’ll be good you did. There’s still a thick fat band between cuts because you’ve got a full packer thank help. Its usually not this dramatic but it does happen
I grinded mine up in the food processor with some goodies: garlic, onion, etc and made OTT chili.
That’s normal
Trimming that much is normal. I used to be way less liberal when trimming when I threw away what I trimmed off. Now I save it in a bag and use it for pho. At some point I’ll get a grinder and use it for burgers.