Aaron Franklin describing how he trims a brisket at Brisket Camp 2015

by a competitor grocery store it's got all kinds of stuff on it whatever but what you're thinking about is what it's going to be like at the end like after you cook it so what's going to determine how you trim it is if your cooker has top heat if it has bottom Heat are you cooking at that site up where is it going to render what's going to render off is this seeing that you know kind of gives up right here is it going to flake off on a cutting board so for me I like to leave about a quarter inch ish maybe three-eighths of an inch of subcutaneous fat on the top get all this deckle fat off to my cooker is it supposed to copy so I'm going to render just the right amount one finished product to be the way it is and then this stuff all the stack of fat and kind of silver skin and stuff if I don't turn that off then I'm on the cutting board you know we worked so hard to get it a nice bark all the way through and every bite you want the same amount of meat you know to bark ratio so if you leave this stuff on it's just going to flake off and you're gonna have a ball patch so well you're not going to get anything out of it anyway but on one hand in a restaurant you know you want to maximize how much you can this thing is going to weigh on a scale so in you know versus if you're doing competitions then it doesn't really matter because you're just wasting money anyway so in that case just trim everything out you're really looking for you're looking for like you know like six good slices off the flats and burn in so you're going to lay that stuff out and you'll actually separate the muscles more in this FUD I use a pair of Tony knife you kind of start off with it like this and this is where the carcass would split right here so the first cut that I make is I kind of flip it over a little bit and you see where this seam terminates so between the point of the flat kind of coming in here you've got the fact that it's started right there but it also kind of there's a little bit of a seam right here if you look there and that's where the flat kind of terminates and the point kind of goes off there if I leave that on as soon as I hit it with a knife on the cutting board that whole sides just going to flake right off there's absolutely no reason for it it's also terrible for sausage so that's just pure waste this that's really good for sausage though so I kind of put it upside down and I kind of make an imaginary line kind of right here and the overall goal that I'm looking for is an aerodynamic brisket it's going to sit in the cooker it's going to have convection it's going to touch the airflow so you don't want sharp edges poke it off you don't want like some weird point it's just going to burn up so your thing is like is it going to burn up or can I say this can I make it good if it's not good don't cook it you're spending what 12 hours watching the fire why are you going to spend 12 hours on something that's just gonna be like done no you want to cut it off so I'm looking for stuff that aerodynamic no little buggers hanging up enough points no ridges sticking up or anything so the first cut that's kind of an imaginary line then I'm going to take it I'm going to hit this natural angle right here so it's kind of going this way so I'll just kind of make a cut right along here just lose it a little bit and I'm getting rid of that weird seam that kind of goes through there and I'm also exposing some nice meat that wasn't treated with anything Oh what's this cost probably four bucks fresh um but this also it's kind of nice because then you know how much yield you're going to go turn that around so they can say see where that seam terminates and that as depending on you know everybody it's a little bit different because well your house a little different now I know I'll have at least probably this much of usable flat that's going to work and then this is probably where you're going to where I'm going to cut it in half to start cutting this way after it's cooked so we've got that seam fat that terminates right there point flat well in and Erinn there's where they kind of come together if you really look the point or the flat comes that muscle comes way up here so what he's saying is that's going to be where this is going to just totally be you're going to get great why we're doing a competition your slices would come out of this area right here right but but there is point muscle that's owned up further so he'll show you in a minute but that's that's kind of or you'll show them when you do the cooked in a few minutes what we're going to do it yeah so all this so remove all the stuff I'm talking about the you know the endgame is the overall is like everything returned right now is only for what it's going to look like when it's cooked doesn't matter what it looks like now so we're just kind of trying to set ourselves up for a good cook um also that seemed they kind of like went along here if you look at this weird fat right there kind of looks like some might have some better marbling it doesn't this part is terrible it's going to get hard its fatty its grisly so we're certainly not going to leave that on because again it's just going to fall right off um but then before I take that off I want to kind of look at this and I'm looking at the thinness and this is where the fat tab kind of comes in because you're going to lose that but it's also good if you have that because you know it was actually trimmed at the right rib obviously talking about like airflow and stuff this thing's going to burn up it's a shame so I'm going to make an imaginary line to try to find I guess what I'm looking for is like so this thin part of the flat right here where you're looking for if it's too thin or if they cheat out past the sixth rib it's going to burn up it's just too thin nothing that sin can endure a twelve-hour cook and not just dry out and get overcooked because you're trying to make this part good and it's a lot thicker so if the brisket was to get a little bit thicker right there I might make a cut like that and I might just lose that this stuff's great for sausage might lose that and try to salvage a better cut later because when I cut it that way it's not as dry so but this is really really thin right here and we're going to scoop that that fat out of there right there anyway so I'm going to get rid of that that's why I didn't turn that because it's going anyway and I want kind of a natural angle you don't want to make something a weird shape you would still look like so anyway I'm just going to make a cut like that and you can see how the thickness difference is and that right there so it's not getting any better this is just a thin flat that's all there is to it but it is good for oh was that probably three bucks worth of me yeah yep yep so at this point I've kind of got this line this one I'm going for I've kind of got this one so this will come in handy when we go to wrap it later or if you don't wrap you know whatever your choice is but that's kind of that's all you're going to get your pretty cuts that's where your and cuts going to come from so you really want to make that super pretty the next thing is if you look at on this way you got all the seam fat that kind of terminates right here and this is what you're going to try to render in your cook so this is kind of what's going to determine your cooking temperature because you want to render that without drying out this blah blah blah blah so my first cut is going to be to get this out and scoop this up when I'm right-handed I'm going to cut it like this so I kind of start right where this where you can see the point kind of emerging right there kind of go down a little bit if you get kind of low you can't see what I'm seeing but I'm looking at the muscle down here and I'm kind of looking at the fat because you don't want to just hack at it and it has a big bald patch all patches are very very secure I don't want to go and just start taking some off and if this is also kind of hard to see but you can tell when you're starting to get close to the meat because it's kind of feathery it's kind of pillowy and stuff and then you hit a little bit of an area right there where it just kind of starts to peel away that's where you want to let your knife kind of hang out just a metal area that's probably 50 cents yeah all the engineers were buying all this I mean they're going this just right up their alley it's very architectural yeah um so anyway this little thing right here kind of the goal for cutting this out this is not going to be edible no matter how well you cook this thing it's just it's bad it's not not good fat I think actually looks pretty nice but it's not the good things um but you want to give the point this Ridge where it kind of sit is would normally stick up a little bit enough structural integrity where it doesn't flop over because you're going to put rub in there's going to pack lots of pepper in here if you carve out in there you're just going to have a weird grub pocket and that's going to look really disgusting later because it's got all this black bark everywhere and then a little part that's never seen smoke it's just kind of hot gross it so anyway so you want to cut this out and I'm looking for a good smooth angle right here to give this enough strength to sit up on its own so you don't have like any weird pockets and again you can kind of go in there and as you kind of pull away I mean it's the same thing if you're a butcher these things you can find the seam in there and just kind of hang about oops what's that 78582 anyway so that kind of leaves this and then at this point I'm just going to kind of start trimming off some of this fat right here and you really just take off a little bit at a time you don't really want to like scalp it with a bunch of cuts you just kind of want to ease into it pick it up and then just scoot along nice and smooth so I kind of got that first cut that kind of was Tony how much that's real and we're going to trim more over that but I'm going to start right up here this I'm just kind of one long cut right there and then if once you start getting closer to me you could feel it like this is pretty hard it's still kind of pillowy it's very nice fat but it's still pretty hard so once you get closer it will start to be more like that you can feel an actual you know muscle underneath it cold cold cold but not frozen yeah as soon as these things warm up this fat will start to smear you want to pull it out of the fridge out of the cooler whatever trim it up and let it go down that being said I prefer them a little warmer when I rub them you know one of the things we talk about the benefits of some of this fat the most unsaturated fat you'll find on beef carcasses in this area so that's why it's softer fat it's a little bit more on pork fat and in this area yeah right there so that's probably cold helps because it's gonna be hard family like you have like in the future yeah for sure and that's the difference between this steamed fed right here this really hard fat that's on the other side and this fat this is the stuff that's going to render and taste good if you're like ah that is good this is the good stuff like it gets buttery you cook it hot enough gets real nice this stuff doesn't just you know so truly to point to it so anywho you heat cut and make a nice pile so you can look at your know yeah at the end and maybe cry a little bit if you're going through a lot oh so I kind of go down and look at the edge and part of the reason part of the reason why I made that first cut is so I can actually see that so you can see oh it's about 1/2 an inch 3/8 of an Asian want to trim a little bit more off so that's kind of where when I kneel down and I kind of look at it I can just make one nice cut right there and then I can just kind of you know start to connect the dots a little bit and then we'll get to this part here to say so get kinda low not a big deal we'll sit up there's also a weird Ridge right here too um sometimes you'll hit me and then you'll realize oh wait it's just kind of like just weird like it's kind of like lifting meat kind of stuff yeah in there yeah so you could actually maybe go past that to the moped and then the reason why I like use a curved knife is if there's a high point right there you can just get your hand underneath there kind of pooch it up a little bit that's I'm out of the way I just gotta keep going like that and then so I've got this pretty good feeling real nice about this after making one cut that goes this way I wish I could see this Aaron is you start doing a self-help how many different versions of Trenton anyway so this back part on our cookers we put the points towards the fire so I definitely want to leave as much right there as possible to kind of shield it a little bit don't want a bunch of bald patches but a lot of times you can't help it they just come that way and that's why it's kind of cool if you're only cooking a couple you can go to restaurant Depot or whenever go in the grocery store you can really you can pick and choose and sort through this stuff pretty well when you get a bunch of cases you kind of you get what you get like okay this is a good example right here that's something that would totally burn up like this stuff right here it's just going to dry out there's there's no reason for it so that's kind of ways it's also going to be huge bulb edge but notice how I'm kind of making it real curvy you know it's not like a sharp point to stick it out like it's not going to catch air and one thing well while air is talking about this thing about how we change our thought process on some of these and I think that's why we try to tell people today that's probably where we are today in the 21st century on briskets is this we're not in the process of cooking hacker style briskets with rub and take all that fat off and slicing them we're going to do some slicing couldn't risk experimenting but what you've seen is the evolution now to the pre-training to wear it in theory when you get ready to have this finished product you're you're getting 100% yield you won't get a 10% but your but your food and closer to it your ain't do that oh you're still going to lose a half pound for ever listed on the board just crumbles and yep and just think even game whatever though and I think that's what I've seen the change in my lifetime of people doing briskets whereas before you would have just one sit low to my put them on fat side up all the fat and then you were to sit there and strike fat off and then stuff and then sold it really lean base so you know I pretty much got the shape I would like to take more of this part out but I don't think it's a good idea for this one yeah so I think well if I take more of that out that I'm going to cut into the I really want that so it's just kind of yeah give or take you know like what are you willing to get rid of - sounds what yes yeah it is hard fat and it's not going to be real good but it's also going to help protect this and if I keep going further back and I'm going to have more flat to serve and I don't really ride flat as Meadows the point no no well maybe on the board I mean if if I'm cutting this and I'm going this way I get a slice I absolutely would not serve that so that's one of the trash but it depends on how the slice is kind of you know just behind place out you know go down each a little bit different it's kind of like you know watching the sushi guy you know cut you know sushi you know you find a little grain or something a little tight or edge kind of work it pictures good um anyway so this little part that I was talking about about that scene that kind of weird fad right there it's kind of still there I didn't quite get into it so just going to whittle a little bit off until I get rid of it not too much yeah if she's not gonna turn out good it's going to get hard it's going to dry out and then it's also just going to flake off it's just a weird little band that goes right there that gets a little uncomfortable for all of us anyway so there's a point right here and what I'm looking to do again is just make it kind of more aerodynamic kind of rounded off a little bit if you want to even go a little further if I had a million hours to spend on this I would just kind of feather out the bottoms of these things can just make it more round you know but then again when you rub it and when you put it on the on the cooker you can kind of shape it up a little bit kind of because wherever you said it I mean if you put it like that on a cooker it's going to look like that when it's done hey um so if you kind of shape it up a little bit you can kind of round those in its especially in the sharp edges a little bit that comes in working for ribs but this is not a real class there you go Oh anyway so now we go back to this side where the fatted calf would be I kind of pull it like that because this thing's going to contract and contort a little bit as the muscle tightens when you cook it this is useless you could use that we I take these and use them for beans I got a little thing buying the counter when I'm cutting at lunch and I'll just take about four or five of them and throw them in a pot and using the next day for beans but we're not cooking beans oh not today well it's coming off okay we're ARCIC beans but don't blow it anyway program s with a big cooker it's too much a selection so I want a pretty nice edge on that this fat is kind of weird it's kind of staying right there the way the grain works if you flip this upside down this grain is kind of coming in about like that this is so thin that it's going to burn up so you could actually just flake that right off when it's done so okay let me go ahead and jump ahead of the curve here and go ahead and cut it off I made just a nice cut in then for just one kind of round that off a little bit I mean it seems really really excessive I know and I don't necessarily intend for all these briskets to look like a cookie cutter just like hanging down and stamp them but they kind of do and that's kind of okay them you know just what what we're cutting off wouldn't yield us any anything that's going to be exciting anyway so so I cut that off and that exposes a little more fat than I thought I had okay so this part right here this needs to go a lot of people oh just remove that whole scene get all up in there and stuff and if you do in Burton's for a competition you totally would do that because that's you're looking for this whole point you you would shape this whole thing or not this is going to burn up kind of start off right there you can get your fingers in there and you can find the seam and you can just get pretty close just kind of get that out of there oh is that what is that all that that's empty Irish hard facts if Abby's in there it's great for sausage yeah so that's enough to protect this but it's not too much where it's going to be nasty we're still going to lose this on the cutting board when it's done cooking but you know it the thinner it is the more probability you'll be able to get seasoning through it not much but maybe really this is good enough I mean you could you could really you could spend all day trimming one of these things and just try to make it as pretty as possible God all day you can sell that way if you can sell that one for watching sell 100 of them for your okay okay you know Oh anyway so then we go to this leftover Jeckle that's on there just kind of get that stuff off this key anyway so here's a little something of this these things just happen but see that little feathery cutting edge right there it's going to burn up off it goes

Channel: Dan Hale

Views: 1,626,621

Rating: 4.657877 out of 5

Keywords: Aaron Franklin, Brisket, Brisket Camp, Trimming a Brisket, Aaron Franklin BBQ, BBQ, Texas A&M University, Trim, Aaron Franklin Barbecue, Barbecue, Texas A&M University Brisket Camp

Id: yaMgt1Altys

Length: 21min 9sec (1269 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 18 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/MAKAZEN]

That’d be great for sausage.