Every barbecue chef wants to cook the perfect piece of meat, but it becomes a bit complicated when it comes to the brisket. The brisket is a large piece of meat, and you will need to trim it if you want to achieve that perfect texture on your meat. Learning how to trim a brisket is an art, and with practice, you will learn how to get the proper trim on your brisket. Your entire cooking process will be affected by how well you trim the brisket, which is why it is an essential skill you must learn.
You don’t want a lot of fat on top of the brisket as that will ensure your meat doesn’t cook properly. You don’t want your meat to cook unevenly, which is why you need to get rid of all the excess fat from the brisket. That brings out the brisket’s natural shape and ensures you have a piece of meat that is ready to be cooked to perfection. How you trim the meat will affect how well it cooks and how you can slice it and serve it to your friends and family.
Don’t stress out if you don’t manage to trim your brisket correctly because, at the end of the day, it is a learning process. You probably won’t manage to achieve the perfect trim on your brisket the first time you do it, but you will manage to do a good enough job with practice. You need a lot of patience and practice when you are learning how to trim a brisket, but you will be rewarded with a slice of meat that tastes amazing at the end of the day.
Tools You Need to Trim Your Brisket
When trimming your brisket, there are a few tools that will help make your job easier. While you don’t need to worry if you don’t have these tools with you, the entire trimming process will get much simpler if you do work with them. Here are the tools you need to trim your brisket:
Fillet Knife
You can trim briskets with a chef’s knife, but for some people, they are not comfortable working with a larger knife. That is where a fillet knife is the best option and will help you get thin and nice cuts easily.
Nitrile Gloves
When you know that you’ll be working with and handling raw meat, you should wear nitrile gloves. Not only will they help you grip the meat, but they are also hygienic as you can throw them away once you’re done preparing your meat.
Wooden Cutting Board
You should know that briskets will take up a lot of space, as they are very big. Therefore, you need a surface large enough to keep your brisket on top of. A large wooden cutting board will be just what you need as you won’t need to keep adjusting your brisket when you are trimming it.
How to Trim a Brisket?
Now that you know which tools you need to work with when trimming a brisket, we will share how you can go about the process of trimming your brisket. Here is what you need to know:
1. Get to Work on the Brisket’s Underside
One of the best ways to prepare your brisket is to trim the underside of the brisket first. Your goal here would be to remove all the excess silver skin and the fat in the underside of the brisket. The less fat there is on your brisket, the better it will cook, so make sure you start by trimming the underside first.
2. Remove All the Fat
Your brisket will likely be covered with a lot of fat, and you need to get rid of that before you start cooking the brisket. You need to lift the meat and slice away the fat from the meat with accuracy so that you don’t take out chunks of meat along with it as well. You should cut away all the fat from the meat so that your brisket looks leaner and you can see enough meat on it and less white stuff.
3. Square the Brisket
When you’re trimming your brisket, make sure that you’re not going haywire and cutting away chunks of meat along with the fat. You need to have a nice uniform shape for your brisket so that it cooks evenly and you get to taste a delicious piece of meat. You should be careful to ensure that you don’t cut away large pieces of meat. The goal here is to have a nice and square brisket that you can throw on the grill and start cooking away.
4. Trim the Skin from the Brisket
Once you have shaped the brisket and it now looks like a nice square piece of meat, you should get to work and remove any excess skin and fat from the brisket. Remove any skin that looks shiny and fat that you may have missed initially. You need to ensure that corners are rounded, so remove any fat from there and get them in the right shape.
5. Your Brisket is Ready for the Grill
If you have followed the steps above properly, you should be looking at a nice looking piece of meat that is ready for the grill. Trimming a brisket requires a lot of patience, and you will make mistakes, but in the end, you need to have a clean-looking piece of meat.
Our Final Thoughts
Trimming a brisket is not for the faint of heart, and most people never get it right. However, it is not rocket science, and if you practice, you will get this part right. Remember, you must trim your brisket before you cook it, as that ensures you get the right smoke texture and that juicy flavor that will make your barbecue the talk of your friends and family.
