What's the best brisket to buy?


 
Also, if you’ve got to buy a $200 brisket to impress your future in-laws you’ve got bigger problems than brisket. 😜

I feed mine bologna.
 
Been reading all the follow-up comments.

Of course, everyone should shop within their budget and shouldn't feel like they have to cook a Creekstone or SRF brisket just because other people do. Having said that, Aaron Franklin WOULD NOT AGREE with the statement that he can turn a Costco or Sam's brisket into an amazing product. For him, the way the animal was raised and treated all the way through slaughter is important, even if you can't taste it...and he might even insist that you can taste it.

Also, it's true that using the best meat does not guarantee the best results, that pitmaster experience is really important...however, when it comes to competition barbecue, sometimes switching to very high quality brisket like SRF is the last piece of the puzzle that brings in the winning calls, checks, and trophies.
 
Thanks Chris, you make a very good point about the “conscious, humane” raising of the cattle. I have a friend who has worked as a working cowboy for a number of years and some of the treatment of stock is rather harsh.
We, as end users, often are very insulated from the reality of a killing floor, and the resultant butchering of stock. The best still isn’t pretty but, when that can be avoided it’s better all the way around, the meat is better, our minds can rest easier. I’d love to be able to follow from the sweetgrass to the packing house but, I can’t afford it. I do the best with what I can afford, the roots of this style of cookery is still taking the “less desireable” cuts and making something fabulous out of it.
When I’m in a position to have an animal raised and brought through a good life to end up in my freezer, I surely will.
 
Dustin Flavell said:
Not really. When determining quality grades (prime, choice select) intramuscular fat is a main factor in determining. There are a few others such as maturity and meat color. But for the most part the amount of intramuscular is the main deciding factor. The other part to this is there are plus and minus grades for each grade. Since quality grading is strictly done by observation there is room for error since nothing is measured. The difference between choice plus and prime minus would be really hard to tell just by looking at intramuscular fat.

Overall fat content or cover fat (the amount you trim) is not part of the quality grade. This is a part of the yield grade. Cover fat like intramuscular fat is not the only factor in the yield grade but the characteristic that is weighted the most. Rarely when you buy meat at a retail store will you ever see the yield grade. Restaurants however will order based on both quality and yield grade. Quality grade that customers will recognize but a yield grade of 2 maybe 3 so they are not trimming a bunch of fat which is a loss. If you are trimming a lot of fat likely you have a yield grade 4.

Enough about meat grading and back to the basic question. For me the best brisket to buy, albeit spendy, is from Snake River Farms. These cattle are part of a strict certification program with a cross breeding program using Wagu bulls. Makes for an exceptional product with extraordinary intramuscular fat and tenderness. If you want to impress your future in laws I’d buy a Snake River Farms brisket ;)
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That's interesting--the butcher at my local Costco told me that they do consider the overall fat content in their labels. Perhaps that's why we sometimes still notice differences in intramuscular fat among all these "prime" cuts. I would definitely agree that some looked more like "primus minuses" with a big fat cap than true primes.

In any case, I wonder if anyone has ever done a true taste test among similar brisket cuts from Costco vs. SRF. Now that would be worth watching on Youtube!
 
Prime beef grades are determined by marbling within the lean, and maturity of the animal.
External fat has nothing to do with the grading.
 
Well, the other thing is Costco is not allowed to grade the product, that is under the flag of the USDA, so, the guy at Costco was telling stories out of school.
 
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