08/09/2026
Let’s talk brisket for a minute because a lot of people don’t realize what actually goes into getting that brisket from our smoker to your tray.
We start with briskets that are usually around 15–17 lbs.
First thing we do is trim them. We’re taking off the hard fat and anything we don’t want while shaping them up for the cook. Just from trimming, we’re already down to about 12–14 lbs.
Then we season them and get them on the smoker.
Now this is where patience comes in.
Our briskets can smoke for 6–8 hours before they even hit the stall. If you’ve ever cooked a brisket yourself, you know the stall is where you start looking at that thermometer thinking, “What the hell is going on?”
The temperature stops moving and that’s usually when people start messing with the fire or turning the pit up.
We just let it ride.
We keep the pit where we want it, keep feeding the fire and let the brisket do its thing. Sometimes it’ll take another 3 hours or so just to get through that stall.
And once it does, we still don’t cook it to some exact temperature and call it done.
We let it keep going until it’s probe tender. When that probe goes in with almost no resistance, that’s when we know it’s ready.
Then we wrap it in butcher paper with some beef tallow and let it rest for at least 4 hours. If we have the time to let it rest even longer, we do. We’ve found the longer we can properly rest and hold it, the better that brisket gets.
And here’s the part most people probably don’t realize.
We started with a 15–17 lb brisket.
After trimming, we had 12–14 lbs.
After all those hours of rendering fat, losing moisture and cooking over the fire…
We end up with roughly 5–6 lbs of brisket that we can actually slice up and sell to you.
So next time you’re watching us slice brisket at the window, just know there was a whole lot of time, fire management and patience that went into getting that slice onto your tray.
That’s brisket.
