Food, Home & Lifestyle
Finish: Brisket Slice
Lesson time 17:20 min
Aaron walks you through his detailed, cut-by-cut process for slicing your brisket to minimize waste and maximize balance and flavor.
Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars
Topics include: Cutting Dinner
Teaches Texas-Style BBQ
Aaron Franklin teaches you how to fire up flavor-packed Central Texas barbecue, including his famous brisket and more mouth-watering smoked meat.
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[MUSIC PLAYING] - So I've been hanging out all night watching this thing cook. I think it turned out pretty good. It's looking really nice so far. Feels really cool to the touch. I'm going to tempt it. And it is-- So I'm going to use the same whole back here. We'll see what it's looking like. It's a 165. It's a little bit hot. But we're going to talk about it for a while. So that's OK. I just want to open it up and have a brisket sitting on the counter. So kind of know where you're going with it. And I know I'm going to do an n-cut right there. I'm going to cut it right there, slice out about like this, and then I'm going to start slicing that way. So traditionally, you want to curl your knuckles for cutting things. You cut stuff. You kind of do that. Briskett's not really like that. It's more maybe like if you're watching a sushi chef cut fish. You kind of use your hands a lot, use your blade. You want to just kind of carve your way through it. It's kind of like playing pool. If I hold my thumb like that, I can always use that technique to kind of guide the knife, too. So a lot of times at the restaurant if I'm talking to someone, like, hey, how's little Jimmy, how's his braces, I can just kind of cut my way by feel. I don't really have to look and see what I'm doing. Back to the way that we season this thing, we were careful with the seasoning. We were careful with the trim. We spritz the edges. We kept the fire low throughout the cook. And now it's time to really find out if any of that stuff actually works. Hopefully, it did. I think it's going to be pretty OK. It feels really nice. So I think it's time to unwrap it. All right, so let's inspect our handiwork. That's what we're talking about. So this is kind of like the final reckoning for this brisket. I like to keep all this juice on the board as I'm cutting it. This is the fat that rendered out after we wrapped it. This is the stuff that reabsorbs. It feels great. It's pliable. You can see the fat kind of move around right in here. I think this is-- I'm pretty happy with this. So as you're pulling this before it's out of the bag, when it's on the cooker, I've got the towel going through it. I've got my fingers. I'm trying to find-- I'm trying to visualize how the fibers feeling there. And that takes a lot of experience. It takes a long time to get there. Or at least it took me a long time to get there. But there is kind of another way. You open it up. You can always check on the bottom side. And this is kind of a cool trick. If you really want to know, you can just kind of go through and poke around a little bit. This is where that seam fat is that we're going to cut out later. You can see the fibers they want to pull apart. Obviously, this is very tender. But you can kind of poke around with a toothpick. Over here feels pretty good, feels pretty good going in there. And if you really want to pull it apart, if you're in a good place te...
About the Instructor
Once a backyard hobbyist, Aaron Franklin is now the James Beard Award-winning owner of Franklin Barbecue, where the line for his famous smoked brisket is hours long. Now the Central Texas barbecue specialist teaches you his meticulous low and slow process for mouth-watering ribs, pork butt, and brisket. With perfectly seasoned cuts and optimal temperatures, you'll learn to handle an offset smoker like a true pitmaster.
Featured MasterClass Instructor
Aaron Franklin
Aaron Franklin teaches you how to fire up flavor-packed Central Texas barbecue, including his famous brisket and more mouth-watering smoked meat.
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