Before cooking a brisket is one of the toughest muscles on a steer. Since cattle spend most of their days on their feed the brisket is one of the primary muscles that holds up the steer’s weight. Muscles like this that do a lot of work are very, very tough especially when compared to something like a tenderloin that does very little work.
Cooking for a long time breaks down fat and collagen which helps make the meat a bit more tender but knowing how to properly cut a tough piece of meat can turn a jaw-tiring, chewy piece of meat into a wonderfully tender bite. A poorly sliced brisket will not be pleasant and will be stringy and tough but if you learn how to slice a brisket properly it will be a thing of beauty.
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When cutting meat you want to cut across the grain or against the grain. Most regular steaks like a ribeye or NY strip are already cut against the grain when they hit the plate and have short muscle fibers but other whole muscle cuts like flank steak or skirt steak have muscle fibers that run the length or width of the muscle. Brisket has similar long muscle fibers but since there are two different muscles it complicates things a bit since the fibers in the two muscles run different directions.
Since those two muscles run in different directions you can’t just slice the whole brisket in the same direction. You will need to cut half of it across the width of the brisket and cut the other half going with the length of the brisket like the image below shows.
I will usually put my hand on the point and give it a little shake or jiggle. You will be able to see where the point ends. Get your best, sharpest slicing knife and cut the brisket across maybe an inch or so towards the point end of where the point ends to separate the brisket into two pieces. The flat end will be mostly flat but since the flat runs quite a ways under the point you will still have quite a bit of that muscle under the point.
Slice the flat across the width of the brisket. You want to cut the flat into slices about ¼ inch thick. Any thinner than that and your slices will probably start falling apart. Thicker than that and it starts to get a bit tougher.
For the point end you want to slice in what would have been the length of the brisket. Again, this will be cutting across the grain of the point muscle. Don’t worry too much about that bit of point at the bottom of these slices. It will be more than fine sliced this way. I like my slices of point to be slightly thicker than the flat, about ⅜ inch thick. Most of the time I will cut the point in half and slice from the middle out. And now is when you want to take your Instagram photos with the moisture dripping off the meat.
Most of the time I like to slice to order. I have people get all their other food and then come to my carving board for their brisket. I ask if they want lean (the flat) or fatty (the point) and slice it right then. If you slice ahead of time the brisket starts to oxidize a bit and the quality degrades slightly. There are times where you can’t help it and need to slice ahead of time but every little bit of perfection you can squeeze out of the brisket will be worth the extra time and effort. Any brisket restaurant worth its salt will slice to order like this.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words (well, about 700 in this case) and that picture above will show you how you need to do it (and show my awesome Photoshop skills). If you are more of a video person here is a video from Aaron Franklin showing how to slice your brisket:
The Aaron Franklin Masterclass also has a 17 minute video dedicated to slicing brisket.
Please, please, please… you have taken hours to properly trim, season, cook, and rest your brisket. Don’t ruin it by slicing it wrong!
12 Commonly Asked Questions About Brisket
- What is a brisket?
- Where can I buy a brisket?
- What should I look for when buying a brisket?
- How big of a brisket should I buy?
- How should I trim a brisket?
- How should I season my brisket?
- What type of wood should I use when smoking brisket?
- What temperature should I cook my brisket at?
- How long should I cook a brisket?
- Should I wrap my brisket?
- How long should I rest my brisket?
- How should I slice my brisket?
