New Smoker - Now What?

I was gifted an excellent smoker. What do you all suggest as my first project?

(I’m tired of googling stupid websites.)


It came with a lot of wood chips.

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hot smoke bacon. only advice you need is from meathead at amazingribs.com

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plate short ribs

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Pork shoulder.

Chicken it’s easy and cheap until you figure it out with trial and error.

This is true. Hard to screw up a chicken. Just salt, pepper, stuff the cavity with herbs, lemons, aromatics, etc… but I think @Bookwich probably knows their way around a smoker.

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We opened our experiments with smoked chickens. They take about 2 hours…the carcasses make amazing stock afterwards. Salmon will take only about 1/2 an hour in the smoker, but need about 1 hour to brine and another hour to sit on a rack to dry out. Pork ribs take 3-4 hours of cook time. Plate short ribs are a total of 6-7 hours. Pork shoulder takes about 8 hours. A full brisket takes at least 12 hours.
It all depends on how much time you have to experiment with.

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This is very useful! Thanks for the timeline tips. Based on this, and other suggestions, we will probably start with a chicken.

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Lol, I know my way around roasting and grilling, but I have never actually smoked anything. I do love a new challenge!

I have a traeger pellet smoker . Still figuring it out for ribs . I used to put water pan in it and it would steam the ribs . Did not like that . Now I just baste them . I smoke them for 1 1/2 hours then turn the heat up to 275 for a little over a hour . Take them off and wrap for a 1\2 hour .
Way different than the traeger recipe that calls for almost 6 hours of cooking . Used their recipe and they came out terrible.

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I think you’re right on the mark. I smoke ribs for 2-2.5 hours. 6 hours is crazy.

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I used to have a Smokin’ Tex electric smoker. Plate short ribs, baby backs, or pork shoulder would be my suggestion. What I loved about that smoker was that I could put a pork shoulder in at 2 AM and leave it for 14 hours. It was done perfectly for dinner then next day. Pork shoulder is probably you most forgiving cut with all of the connective tissue and fat. Happy smoking!

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Electric smokers do make it easier to set it and walk away.
The manual smokers take a little more finesse, but are easily managed if you use probe thermometers for both the proteins and the coals/wood.
@Bookwich make sure you brine your chickens overnight. I bet using your preserved lemons as carcass stuffing during smoking would be so good!

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you could also consider cheese. take a 2 lb chub, mix it with a couple TBLS each of blended whisky and maple syrup in a freezer bag… freeze for 4 hours and smoke at 95 degrees F until the cheese reaches a temp of about 40 degrees F.

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We used to know a guy in El Granada – when he wasn’t busy hot-smoking salmon, etc, he would cold-smoke hard cheese for us. I don’t know what his techniques were, but when he returned the cheese to us, Cryovac’d, we found that we needed to store it in the fridge unopened for a month or two, so the smoke flavor could permeate through the cheese. If we opened it right away, the flavor was only on the surface.

i would imagine that to be true of hard cheeses. my friend did it with cheddar. i think the whiskey got absorbed and helped transfer the smoke flavor deeper into the cheese.

ribs!!!

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Applewood smoked bone in turkey breast! Great with some Gjusta olive bread, avocado and wild arugula.

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That sounds like smoked turkey with a lot of my favorite things on the side. I’m on it!

Start with ribs or chicken to get acquainted with the smoker . Then move on to the 301 meats - like pork shoulder and brisket.

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