cooking.stackexchange

Is this meat that I was told was brisket in Barcelona the same as U.S. brisket?

This question originally asked on The Stack Exchange Network.

By: Albert All content is licensed under CC BY-SA
——————————————–

Q: Is this meat that I was told was brisket in Barcelona the same as U.S. brisket?

I was born and currently live in Barcelona. Here in Catalonia, or in Spain, beef is not butchered in the American style, so I can't get the cuts that are used for American BBQ.

So, after my search and speaking to many butchers, the final conclusion is that apparently, our cattle is very slim and the brisket part is too thin to use as U.S. or other briskets.

I finally found one place where they sell briskets. It is a very specialised shop with lots of rare meats. I ordered two briskets and I'm posting two pictures of each. The meat was just unpacked.

In these pictures I still had not touched or trimmed anything.

The two pieces of meat were apparently very different from what I had seen in videos and pictures. First I even thought it was not a brisket at all (now I'm about 90% confident it is). One of the pieces had almost no fat. There were several cuts, one really big. My general feeling was that both pieces were not treated properly.

Now I want to order another brisket from there and I'd like to ask them to give me a better product but I'm not sure if I'm right and the product could be better handled or if it is just my ignorance.

So, what should I ask them?

Answer

That looks like a pretty typical brisket to this American.

The tricky thing is that "brisket" means different things. I'll put aside that butcher cuts are different around the globe, and just speaking from an American perspective.

"Brisket" is both a large primal cut, made up of two smaller subprimal cuts that you would see trimmed and available at the grocery store or butcher shop.

The "brisket plate" is the trimmed cut most often sold in American grocery stores as just "brisket" and what many folks mentally associate with what brisket looks like.

What you have looks like a whole brisket primal, untrimmed.

So what should you ask your butcher?

I'm not a Texas BBQ expert, but I have bought and smoked large briskets, and I think your brisket looks similar to what I can buy if I want a brisket primal. It looks fine. You could direct your butcher to trim it a bit more, to get rid of some excess fat and various "dangly" small bits along the edges. But I personally prefer to do that myself, so I can keep the trimed pieces and eat it myself.