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What to do with brisket drippings
Whenever you’re finished smoking your brisket, you’ll notice that the overall size of the meat has substantially decreased.
This is because a lot of the fat contents and residual moisture has been expended. If you happen to have had a drip pan underneath the meat, you’ll also notice that the moisture that was expended has fallen and been collected.
There should be a nice little pool of amazing brisket juices. Don’t throw them away! It’s time to start repurposing them.
There are a lot of different applications that you can use brisket drippings for. The first of which is making broth with them. You can use this to further dip your meat into and moisturize things.
There’s also the possibility that Pitmasters can begin to use the drippings as a base for other side dishes when preparing barbecue, such as gravy and whatnot.
The possibilities are exponential, and is up to your discretion as to how you want to re-use the amazing tasting juices from your brisket.
Smoked Brisket Au Jus
Au Jus is just another term for brisket drippings. It’s kind of a fancy way of explaining what they are, but just know that whenever brisket renders out all of the juices into a collecting drip pan of some sort – it’s commonplace in the BBQ realm to refer to these as just Au Jus.
Au Jus specifically is used for dipping sauce.
Basically, once you slice into your amazingly tender brisket, you can take the slices and dip them in the Au Jus dipping sauce for further flavor and moisturizing. It’s honestly really good!
Do You Let brisket rest in juices?
Outside of letting a brisket rest and dipping each individual slice into the Au Jus, consider letting the entire packer (or whatever cut of brisket you have) in the drip pan that has all the collected brisket drippings.
This helps to ensure that the brisket will always be tender, moisturized, and fall apart, when you’re ready to begin slicing into it.It’s definitely not necessary at all to do this, but can be a way to further ensure you always get a nice after product.
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.