Should You Buy a Flat Cut or Point Cut Corned Beef Brisket for St. Patrick’s Day?

So you’re making corned beef for St. Patrick’s Day. That’s great, because it’s one of the rare holiday meals with a highly favorable effort-to-deliciousness ratio. On Thanksgiving, you’ll bust your buns for hours for ten pounds of dry turkey. But in mid-March, you can simply toss a beef brisket and a head of cabbage into a Dutch oven or slow cooker and, just a few hours later, have piles of salty, delicious meat—nine times out of ten, the brisket even comes with a packet of brining spices. You can’t screw this up!

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Really, the only complicated thing about making a corned beef brisket is buying a corned beef brisket. When you approach the meat cooler, you’ll find not one but two options: point cut corned beef and flat cut corned beef. So which are you supposed to buy?

Point cut or flat cut corned beef? That is the question.

And where do we go when we have questions? Reddit, of course. There are LOTS of threads on the subject, but since you should be cooking and drinking green beer instead of perusing forums, let us break it down for you:

Basically, the flat cut vs. point cut debate is all a matter of taste. In general, brisket is a tougher, less desirable cut of meat—it’s actually the cow’s chest muscle, which means it gets a lot of use, and with more use comes more fat and more connective tissue. That’s why brisket is generally cooked low and slow, whether you’re smoking, boiling, or braising.

The point cut, which comes from an area attached to the cow’s ribcage, is generally the fattier cut. The flat cut is leaner because it comes from an area closer to the cow’s breastbone. It’s flat because it’s had the point removed. If you buy a whole brisket, you get the flat and the point.

So really the question is: Do you like a leaner cut or a fattier cut?

If you agree that fat equals flavor, buy the fattier point cut. If you like your corned beef shredded rather than sliced, point cut is the the way to go because it can tend to fall apart like pot roast if it’s been cooked low and slow enough to break down a lot of fat. The flat cut is better if you like lean meat and you like your corned beef cut into uniform slices for sandwiches and the like.

Still not sure? Okay I’ll make the decision for you.

We’re going point! Sure, it shrinks up a lot when you cook it. And yeah, fatty meat isn’t exactly good for you, but we’re all about flavor around here and point cut tends to be juicier and more flavorful. If that wasn’t the advice you were looking for (hey, confirmation bias is real), take into account that Langer’s, one of the oldest and most famous delis in Los Angeles, generally uses flat cut for their corned beef and pastrami.

Whatever you do, don’t forget the good mustard.