which propane smoker to get?

What width are you looking for? Do you do whole packer briskets and full racks of ribs? This will narrow down your options.

The Smoke Vaults are popular as well as the Landmann gassers. They can easily hit 325 for crisp Chicken skin and with a Needle Valve Mod will give a full range of temps for just about anything you can think of...JJ

I started with a Masterbuilt 7 in 1 as my first gasser. I could do 3 racks of SLSR rolled, 2 butts around 8 lbs each, or 2 whole chickens. You could probably do a turkey if you cut it into halves or quarters. It's not big (grates are about 16 in.), but it's portable and versatile (you can use it as a grill, fryer, and boiler, too). Plus you can get them for around $100-$150. 1 problem is that it's like a bullet smoker, so moving food around can be a pain if you are working with multiple grates and you need to flip or rotate levels. Also, the access to the burn tray is cramp (I moved the water pan to the bottom grate and bought a cheap 16" grate to still have 2 levels, and I could then fit chunks or chips easily), and accessing the water pan is impossible without opening the cook chamber but the pan is so big you would only need to worry about filling it when a cook goes past 8 hours.


I wanted something with more room so I could do whole slabs flat, whole packers, and where moving food around would be much easier. I ended up getting a Smoke Hollow 38. It's easily lifted, but I would not want to have to move it regularly from one site to another.