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Customer asked me to trim a brisket flat and I almost said no before I saw the marbling
Had a guy come in last Tuesday asking me to take down a whole packer brisket into just the flat, which I usually push back on because people don't know what they're getting into. He said his wife wanted the point for burnt ends and the flat for a Jewish deli style boil, so I started separating the two muscles and the marbling on that flat was some of the best I'd seen come through in a while. I trimmed maybe 2.5 pounds of hard fat off the point and the flat came out at a clean 7 pounds with a perfect 1/4 inch cap. It made me think about how many briskets I've rushed through the same cuts without really looking at each one. Do you all adjust your trim based on how the marbling reads or do you stick to the same specs every time?
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terry_mitchell28d ago
Trimmed one last week where the flat looked like a piece of marble countertop and the point was basically a fat sponge, so yeah, specs went right out the window. I used to run the same 1/4 inch cap on every brisket like it was written on a stone tablet, but that just means you're guessing instead of reading the meat. Some flats are so lean you leave every bit of fat you can, and some points have so much hard fat you're basically carving a candle. Sounds like that guy actually knew what he wanted, which is rare enough that I would've taken the job too, just to see how it turned out. Marbling tells you what the cow ate and how it lived, so ignoring that to hit a number is like ignoring the weather report and wondering why you got rained on.
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