Packer Cut Brisket: Packaging and Terminology Explained

The term “packer cut” brisket simply means a whole, untrimmed brisket.

The People who prepare your meat for retail sale are technically Butchers but in the industry they’re called “Meat Packers.”

The job of a Meat Packer is to do things like:

• Inspect the meat
• Cut, prepare, weigh, and process meat
• Slice meat into retail cuts from whole primals/sub-primals
• Package, wrap, and label meat
• Store meat

Essentially, these people quite literally, prepare animal’s – like cows – for retail sale.

Why a Packer’s Brisket isn’t Simply a “Whole Brisket”

While both of these terms do refer to a whole brisket – ie. a brisket that has both the flat and point musculature still attached – they are not the same thing.

A Packer’s brisket is as is – meaning it hasn’t been trimmed, shaped, or altered, at all.

Here’s the meat side of the brisket above, right out of the packaging:

Some “whole” briskets can be trimmed for retail sale.

This is common when purchasing brisket online and in some grocery stores.

Here’s the same brisket above, trimmed – this would still be considered a whole brisket:

You’ll see phrasing and labeling like:

• Whole brisket
• Whole brisket, super trimmed
• Whole brisket, trimmed

I personally can’t source good brisket locally.

Meaning, I buy almost all my briskets online and the above wording is important.

Buying a packer brisket allows you to have more control over the trimming.

Here’s the fat side of the packer brisket above:

Here’s the fat side after trimming:

Not everyone likes paying for fat that they can’t use and not everyone renders their own beef tallow or makes their own sausage or hamburger.

Buying a pre-trimmed whole brisket affects price as they have to pay for the labor.

To illustrate, we’ll use the pricing from Wild Fork Foods (as of 6/6/2024) to demonstrate:

So in the above table, the first 2 briskets are packer briskets, even though they’re labeled differently.

The prime brisket is described as a “Packer’s” in the description where-as the choice is listed as “whole.”

In this instance, the price per pound is higher because the meat is graded higher.

Wild Fork Foods also sells a “trimmed” version of their whole Choice brisket – the one they use for their pictures shows the deckle off and some of the exterior fat cap trimmed.

This trimming caused the price per pound to increase by $2/lb.