Brisket Catering

Another suggestion is to pull the point end of the packer and slice the flats. This way you can pick the fat out of the point and have lean slices with the flats. The meat can be basted every half hour with apple juice or au jous. You can keep it nice and moist in a proofer or chafffing pan. This will keep the meat nice and moist.

I recently discovered that round roast is something people really love smoked. Many prefer it to brisket. You can serve it side by side with brisket. I might try to substitute top round roast with some bristet flats. It smokes in much less time also. Put the pans side by side. People will love both and the price per pound yield is better in top round.

I think packers will cook up better but they will take a little more work to finish than just straight flats.

And I love cooking a large batch with the fat keeping everything juicy, dripping on each other.

You'll need to look at price per pd. Flats would be higher, is it too much?

Set the line up and start trimming, you can get a LOT of good meat out of the point.

To tag onto Smokin',who is the labor?

Are you having to do all the pre trimming,are you going to be working the buffet line,slicing to serve?

If you are the labor for the beef dish,can you afford to devote much of your time to this,at the possible neglect of other chores.

Are your diners a group that accepts/expects to have some fat on the meat to enjoy/cope with?

If you are "it",often the labor from start to finish,leads towards flats.

Due to large number of guests, all of the brisket will be cooked, chilled and sliced prior to the event. I've read some old posts discussing re-heating brisket, and plan to utilize some sort of slice and vacuum seal method, with re-heating to be done in the au jus captured during cooking. So the only thing that will happen at the event is that hot sliced brisket will be put directly on everyone's plate. So, if I've got the time to pre and post trim, than it almost sounds as if the packer would be a better approach?

Is there a significant amount of sliced brisket that will still come out of the point? Almost feel silly asking that question because I've cooked a lot of packers, but typically I'm cooking it for brisket sandwiches or peeling off the flat slicing and keeping the point for myself. Need to be cost effective as possible considering the size of the event, and don't want to have a bunch of points lying around afterwards.

Tom you posed a great question as to the type of diner that I will be serving. Anymore I almost always assume that my diner's won't be used to "real" BBQ, so I'm just not sure how the fat would be accepted. However, this is a pre-college football event (Alum, Booster's etc.). Hmmmm!?

Seems like "real" brisket eaters,i.e. Tx/Ok are used to fat on ,or between sections of the packers-whether comps,or restaurants.

Seems like diners/judges in the east/Southeast almost gag with fat on it.

In your case,I'd think most cooks just say"let them trim it,if they don't wish to eat it".

Although we trim out a lot of packers,I couldn't guess at the percent that have good slicable points,or mostly choppable.

The CAB s/primes may be pretrimmed more by the packer,but the remaining point may have fine quality to slice.

Smokin'Okie should have a better feel for your market,but he is living and dying during the Sooners vs Longhorn battle right now.

Sounds like with your crowd,i'd do like Smokin'.

Rough trim the excess fat of packers,and convert all the rest into slices..

Good luck and let us know.

quote:

Originally posted by 2Ks Smokn:
Need to be cost effective as possible considering the size of the event, and don't want to have a bunch of points lying around afterwards.

Well, to be cost effective, you need to compare brisket flat cost to packer costs. I've seen flats for got $2 or more a pd above packers and that's too much.

For slicing a point, it depends on the brisket. I'll get some that have great points and some that have trimmed points.

Keep the points for other things, such as beans or chopped brisket if that's a concern.

Just wanted to say thanks to all that responded to the post. Unfortunately I don't have any good information on what i decided to do and how it actually turned out... Because I pulled out of the event all together. Kept getting different guest count numbers from the organizers. When it came right down to it, they were trying to cut there costs by decreasing the guest count, instead of adjusting the menu to fit their budget. I most likely would have run out of food and was going to have my catering companies name all over the event. Would not have turned out good.

That was a smart move on your part. People always blame the caterer.