Prep and BBQing a large Chuck step by step with weight losses. Pic heavy

  • After scoring a huge chunk of Whole Chuck in our recent Cape Grim buy I decided to chop it into a couple of bits as it was way too big for our family to get through as a single cook.

    Now that we are ready to BBQ a chunk we thought it might be helpful to others if we did a bit of a pictorial of how we trimmed and cooked it with the weights of the meat along the way. It may be handy to work out how much meat is left after trimming and shrinkage from the cooking process.


    We started off with a piece of chuck the weighed 2.395kg



    We ended up trimming off 191gms of fat and gristly bits



    Leaving us with this nice looking piece of meat that now weighs 2.204kgms



    We gave it hit with some Mad Hunky rub, no mustard just straight onto the meat.



    And into the Akorn Kamando at 250f with a bit of Cherry Pellets providing the smoke and Mallee charcoal the heat.


    We took it up to an internal temp of 197f where it seemed to be probing well in the flatter part and a bit firmer in the "roll" part of it.


    As you can see on the scales it now weighs in at 1.388kgms so we have lost another 816gms for a total loss of 1.007kgms from our start of 2.395kgms. That is quite a lot, isn't it? Definitely something to take into account when planning how much meat is needed to serve up.


    Splitting the "flatter" bit from the "roll" shows some more scraps to be trimmed away.


    Only a handful really which I forgot to weigh.


    Time to chop and pull it. The flatter bit pulled alright whereas the roll part sliced well. As we were planning on rolls we ended up pulling teh slices as well but they could have stayed as slices if that's what you were after. Here it is ready to go into some dinner rolls.


    Portioning for the Dinner Rolls worked out at a 1/4 cup per roll. This weighed 44gms which should give us around 31 rolls.


    These 2 pics will give some idea of proportions. The bread rolls are the standard small dinner rolls from the bakery.



    A quick recap is probably worthwhile now.

    We started with a chunk of Chuk that weighed 2395gms

    We trimmed away 191gms of fat and gristle giving us 2024gms of meat that went into the smoker.

    Cooked weight ended up at 1388gms (less a tad of fat we trimmed off)

    Yeild of around 30 rolls with 44gms of meat in each. Or if you were to serve up 200gm serves as a main it would yield 6-7 portions.

    Cheers, Wayne and Jan

    BBQ Junkster

    I just did a weeks worth of cardio after walking into a spiderweb

  • Everywhere I have read about cooking brisket is that you should expect a loss of around 25% during the cooking process, to see a loss of almost 40% on Chuck is really astonishing to me.

    I am thinking I might do something similar for my next brisket cook to see if it really is 25% or similar to what you found here.

    Smite The Shepherd And The Sheep Will Be Scattered!

  • Great write up Wayne and yep sound about right for catering i go by 30%loss for trimming and 30% loss for cooking makes a $22.50/kg brisket $45/kg cooked and no one wants to miss out.
    200 gram meat in a bun is a $10 plus meal who said BBQ was cheap

    Gasser Webber Q, Kamado Joe clasic, Dragon & Acorn, Webber Kettle, Fire Pit, Beer Keg smoker/cooker.

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