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How Much Brisket per Person?

By: Author William Thomas

William Thomas

Editor-in-Chief & Pitmaster

I have been smoking and grilling meat from an early age and enjoy sharing my knowledge and expertise through the hundreds of articles I have written about BBQ. I hope to make everyone’s BBQ journey that little bit easier.
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How Much Brisket per Person?

Believe it or not, you can eat too much during your meals. This is where portion sizes come in, which can help you figure out how much you and your guests can eat.

By following portion sizes, you help reduce the chance of you over or under-eating. Both of these things can lead to you gaining excessive amounts of weight. Even under-eating because of snacking.

Sometimes, people tend to do this with brisket. In this article, you’ll find out how much each person gets, if you can eat too much brisket, and finally, what are the benefits of eating meat in general.

What Is a Brisket?

Before we touch on how much brisket each person should get, we figured we might as well go into what brisket is. Some people may not know what it is, so if you fall into that category, this is for you!

The brisket comes from the lower breast or pectoral muscles of the cow. You can imagine that this meat is tough because of the amount of muscle in the cut. This can easily be remedied during the cooking process, of course.

When deciding to buy a brisket, you need to be aware that there are two cuts. The first cut, or flat cut, is a leaner piece of meat on the larger side. Now the second cut or deckle point has a lot of fat on it.

Brisket is something you might have to visit a butcher for. Your local grocery store might have it, but you’ll have to check ahead of time because not all grocery stores are going to have it on hand.

How Much Brisket Does Each Person Get?

Before we get into how much brisket each person should get, let us preface by saying that brisket is on the expensive side.

It is an expensive cut of meat, so you might not want to make it for, say, a party or something.

It might be better to just make it for yourself or your household. This way, you won’t be breaking the bank.

Food is very expensive now, thanks to inflation, and you want to try to save every bit of money you can. Every little bit helps!

For each adult, there should be about a pound of brisket for all of them. If you have children, then you are going to want to cut that in half or even make it smaller than that. So, if you had six people over, you’d end up with a six-pound brisket.

Now imagine if you were just cooking for yourself. You wouldn’t have to bother buying an extra five pounds, of course, unless you wanted leftovers to have over the next few days/weeks/months.

This depends on if you put your brisket in the freezer, which will help lengthen the amount of time it will last.

Sometimes, it’s best to just wait until the holidays and special occasions to get brisket. Makes the money you spend seem worth it.

Can You Eat Too Much Brisket?

Brisket is delicious, but it isn’t great to eat a whole bunch of it. The reason for this is because:

  • Brisket has a lot of oleic acids. This is a fatty acid that can increase your chances of high cholesterol. In high cholesterol, fatty deposits form on your blood vessels, and then there isn’t enough blood flow in your body. It can lead to heart attack, chest pain, and, finally, stroke.
  • Red meat, in general, is very high in saturated fat and cholesterol. Eating a lot of it can increase your chances of cardiovascular disease.
  • Cholesterol doesn’t have any symptoms, so keep that in mind. The only way to tell is to have your doctor test your blood. Once you reach a certain age, they do this automatically, but for young people, this isn’t always the case. You could technically fly under the radar. So, always get checked out for your cholesterol when you go to the doctor.

It’s easy to prevent this by just monitoring how much red meat you are eating. Don’t let this stop you from eating brisket. This is a very delicious food that you don’t want to miss out on. Trust us on that.

What Are the Benefits of Eating Brisket?

Despite some of the risks of eating a lot of briskets, there are benefits to eating it as well. This includes:

  • Protein which is found in a lot of different meats, is also in brisket. You can get about half of what you need for the day in just a 3-ounce serving of brisket. This is pretty awesome when you think about it.
  • There are a lot of vitamins in brisket. This includes vitamin b12, vitamin b6, niacin, and riboflavin. The amounts vary depending on what vitamin you are talking about, but it still is impressive that all these B vitamins are available in just brisket alone.
  • Finally, Brisket is high in iron, zinc, phosphorus, and selenium. Again, the levels vary, so brisket might be higher in one mineral when compared to the others out there. However, it’s good that you can get these four minerals that your body needs.

These are the biggest benefits of eating brisket. They may not seem like much on their own, but when you add them together, you surely improve your body’s health, which helps increase your life. It’s not a surefire thing, of course, but nothing is. This is just how life is.

Final Thoughts

And there you go, all you brisket lovers out there! We first wanted to touch on what brisket is, followed by how much each person gets.

Then we figured out if you can eat too much, plus the benefits of eating it, if there are any. This is because you can have all the information at hand.

Remember, there can be too much of a good thing in life. By following portion sizes, you’ll make sure your weight will stay under control. Plus, you won’t end up getting sick, so that is always something good to focus on!

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