Why we don't sell brisket

Brisket is a low-and-slow smoking cut. The whole point of an 8–14 hour cook is to render the seam of intramuscular and external fat that runs through the muscle, basting the meat from the inside as the connective tissue breaks down. Without that fat, you don't get juicy, sliceable brisket — you get dry, tight beef.

Piedmontese cattle carry a natural myostatin mutation that produces unusually lean, double-muscled beef. The breed simply doesn't lay down the fat that brisket smoking depends on. We've tried it — the briskets came out the way every cookbook warns: tough on the slice, dry on the chew, nothing like what brisket should be.

Rather than sell a cut we wouldn't be proud of, we route the brisket portion of each animal into ground beef, chuck roast, and stew cuts that the breed actually excels at. You get more usable beef from the same animal, and we don't end up apologizing for the one cut that didn't work.

If brisket is what you're after, look for a marbled, grain-finished Angus from another Idaho rancher — the cut is built for that animal.