I upped my meat game a while ago by trading in my Pampered Chef knives for a Mairico knife, and I’m happy with the decision.
I didn’t really “trade it in” I mean, we still have the other knives. My wife would have a thing or two to say if I actually traded them in. The Pampered Chef knives are great knives, but they aren’t brisket knives, or at least the ones we have aren’t.
I’ve found it’s important to have a long, thin, sharp knife for slicing brisket correctly, and my Mairico checks all the boxes. You’ve spent a lot of time trimming, prepping, smoking, and resting your brisket. Don’t half-step on the slicing process.
“Pencil width” slices are easy to get with this knife.
It’s a beautiful knife that I keep in a kitchen drawer in the package it came in. Very nice presentation and a super efficient knife for slicing brisket
Mairico knife specs:
From a technical aspect, the Mairico knife is well made, sturdy, and feels like it’ll last a long time.
Cost: About $25 when I bought it last year. Just having checked, the price today on Amazon is the same. You can find this specific knife, as well as other Mairico products, on Amazon. If you look around, you’ll find you can easily spend hundreds of dollars on knives, so I consider this a very good and inexpensive alternative to some of the higher-priced knives you’ll see.
Blade length: 11 inches, to easily cut through the full width of whatever meat you are slicing. Eleven inches is a pretty standard length for brisket-slicing knives.
Overall length: 17.9 inches. Given its length, you’ll want to consider where you’ll be storing it. For me, I keep it in the original case, in a drawer with other knives. Fits well.
Full tang: Ensures the blade and the handle are essentially all a single piece of metal end to end. This gives the knife better overall strength and ensures pressure can be exerted without breaking the blade from the handle. When in doubt, always opt for a full tang knife rather than a partial tang. Read more about full tang vs. partial tang here.
Knife blade width: Real skinny. A thinner blade is best for slicing brisket, so this is important to me. I’m not sure how thin it is, but here’s a pic:
From a “how popular is this on Amazon” perspective, as of the time of this writing (March 2023), there are over 9,000 reviews with an average of 4.7 stars.
Using my Mairico knife
It’s important to understand that this knife works well for slicing the brisket once it’s smoked and rested. You can also use it for slicing just about anything else. Other meats, poultry, veggies, etc., all slice easily with this knife.
But you will want other knives for harder work, such as cutting through bones, or for more precise work, such as trimming your brisket before smoking.
“I like the Japanese knives, I like French knives. Whatever’s sharp.”
~ Wolfgang Puck
I still use my Pampered Chef knives for much of this, and I’ve also picked up a couple of fish fillet knives for the really fine work. These fillet knives (orange handle below) are super sharp and make short work of trimming the fat from brisket ahead of smoking. So think of it as slicing vs. trimming brisket.
These Billy Bay fillet knives are super cheap (about $7.00 each) and work wonderfully. You can find them on Amazon here. Nobody needs to know you are using a fish fillet knife for trimming your brisket.
Other knives, brisket or otherwise
As I mentioned, you can easily spend hundreds of dollars on brisket knives and perhaps thousands on other types of kitchen knives. I’m not quite built like that, so the $25 Mairico knife is fine for me. But, if you take a look at some of the other knives that are available, you’ll find some that are super efficient and just downright cool looking. These are normally classed as “pitmaster knives”, “Viking knives”, and “boning knives”, and many are just called “chef knives”. Whatever the case, they’re worth a look just for the aesthetics, if nothing else:
I can’t vouch for any of the above as I haven’t bought any of them, but the prices aren’t too terrible, and the reviews are generally pretty high. I may have to get some of these after all!
Anyway, my main point here was to bring up the Mairico knife and share that it is a solid and efficient knife that won’t break the bank. This is a solid choice if you’re looking for a good knife for slicing your smoked brisket.
Happy smoking!