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Buying Prime Brisket is an important decision – one that comes with a price tag associated with it. Expect to pay anywhere between $40 to $70 for a reasonably priced prime grade brisket.
What your budget and brisket grade is and how it plays into the Brisket Price
Buying a brisket is an important process. It already costs a significant amount of your time just cooking the thing, so it makes sense to buy the right one.
How do you determine the right brisket to buy at the right price?
Check your budget and analyze how much you are willing to expend. This should determine what grade you should be buying. What this means is, if you don’t have a TON of money to be spending on a finicky piece of meat like brisket, it’s probably not a good idea to be buying an expensive version of brisket.
Don’t worry though, you can still smoke an amazing brisket without even having to buy an expensive grade such as prime or Waygu . If you’re interested in learning more about USDA Prime brisket specifically, please reference this article where BBQ Dropout provides in-depth insight:
What you’ll want to look for in cases where you aren’t able to expend anymore than $30 for a single brisket packer – you will want to look for an either select or choice grade brisket. If you’re concerned about the price per pound for each grade of brisket – I’ll be covering that in just one moment.
Where you are buying a prime brisket and how much it weighs can play heavily into the price
There’s two factors at play here:
- Where you are buying the prime brisket from
- How much the prime brisket weighs
Where you are buying the prime brisket from is a pretty interesting topic:
If you’re in the great state of Texas, you’re in luck! The wonderful grocery store H-E-B provides excellent pricing, especially for brisket. We also have places like Costco, where you can certainly buy just as price effective briskets – but H-E-B is unparalleled.
If you’re in other parts of the United States, just go with Costco. It’s still a great place to source amazing quality barbecue. They have all the different grades. Now, the only thing I’m uncertain of is – do they have all of the different grades PLUS different variations of each grade of brisket?
What I mean by that is, you have the top three grades of brisket – select, choice, prime. At H-E-B, you have all of that plus you can easily pick up just the brisket flat, the brisket point, burnt ends, and trimmed briskets – all separately as their own piece. Quite amazing!
Alright, so whether you are buying a prime grade brisket at either H-E-B, Costco, or any other grocery store nearest to you:
How much does it weigh?
That’s a great question.
BBQ Dropout covered this in his latest post regarding what a USDA Prime Brisket is – however you want to get a piece of meat that is evenly distributed throughout. This means that both the flat and point are relatively consistent in their thickness. This prevents any possible over cooking. Believe me, I’ve done plenty of briskets where both Ends of the brisket were either severely under cooked or severely overcooked or both.
Get insight into how long to rest a brisket here:
This is just something that you want to try and avoid because if you spend a lot of money on a certain brisket and you don’t precisely measure the sickness of the point in the flat part of the brisket, then you open the possibility to really messing up your overall cook.
No, you don’t actually have to precisely measure the thickness and weight of the brisket, but it just helps to get and eyeballs glance of the relative thickness of each part of the brisket. What this means basically, is that you want to sickness of the flat and the point of the brisket to be relatively uniform. This will not only make sure that your cooks will come out great, but you can rest assured that the weight distribution among all parts of the brisket are even.
Bonus:
Depending on the grocery store do you happen to frequent, you will find that there are multiple types of brisket, with multiple different grades of brisket, and most of all different cuts of brisket. Generally speaking a brisket that is in entire packer brisket can range anywhere from 10 to 20 pounds. I personally have never found a brisket more than 20 pounds, but I do know that they exist out in the wild.
Usually, a good grocery store will actually package up a flat part of the brisket which is just the leaner, front part of the brisket where it is harder to get tender. These can range anywhere from 3 to 5 pounds in weight. For the point sections of a brisket that is packaged up as it’s on separate entity, you will generally find that they weigh about 3 pounds as well.
Just be aware that these ranges can vary.
I’m just trying to convey the average weight that I have personally seen.
Now, you may be asking yourself how does all of this plan to the price of the actual brisket?
That is a really good question. When you factor in about $2.99 per pound in a prime brisket, this can add up quite a bit of money.. Which is why you want to Pay close attention to where you get your brisket from, and how much each brisket that you were buying Weights.
Now taking all of this into consideration, I definitely try to incorporate all of those above points. I try to go to the store whether that be Costco or H-E-B that I believe will give me the best bang for my buck. I want to get the best possible price for the best possible brisket so I can have an amazing output.
Putting Everything Together
To sum everything up, what I really want to stress is perhaps even take a look at the purpose of actually smoking a brisket. Do this, and see what type of event we may be smoking for.
Is it just for yourself?
Or is it for a large event?
These factors could also play a part in the price of the brisket in which type of brisket you buy as well as the creative process. It’s honestly pretty fun and the outcome is simply amazing.
I generally try to keep my budget around $30-$50 in price for a single brisket regardless of whatever choice grade or prime grade brisket it happens to be. Then, I will try to shop at either Costco or H-E-B. I believe they will give me the best price per pound of brisket, for the best grade.
Robert is a certified Pitmaster, with over a decade of experience in smoking the best meats you’ll ever feast upon. He also has a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Texas at San Antonio. When he’s not researching technical topics, he’s most likely barbecuing in his backyard.