First Smoke

Wendy75 said:

 
Ok, so after reading hours and hours worth of posts (and my husband saying on you on that forum again lol), I am planning my first smoke this weekend. 

My equipment:

Masterbuilt Sportsman Elite 44" propane smoker.

Thanks to jimmy1957 I purchased a Lavalock to seal my doors (waiting for that to arrive tomorrow)

Thanks to smoker21 I am removing my chip box and placing a 8" cast iron skillet on top of the chip box rack

I have done no other mods, although I will be going and purchasing the Stainless braided High Pressure LPG M5HPR-1 thanks to another friendly forum posters post (however this will not be done before my first smoke).

My first smoke will be done with a 8.5lb Boston Butt to make pulled pork. (The weather forecast for this weekend is cloudy 41 degrees here in Lancaster County, PA)

My plan - Saturday rinse and pat dry my Boston Butt, rub yellow mustard all over it, cover with my rub, place in foil pan and cover with plastic in refrigerator until Sunday morning when I start smoking.

So I have a few questions to ask before this weekends smoke:

1- With switching my chip pan for the cast iron skillet I will be using Hickory wood chunks, do I need to cover the top of the skillet with foil after I place the chunks in the skillet and poke holes into the foil? You do not need to cover the chip pan with foil.

2 - My smoker has 6 racks, which rack should I place my Boston Butt on for smoking?  On a rack in the middle of the smoker. If I'm only using one rack I don't even put the other ones in the smoker.

3 - I have seen many posts that state when they were placing their meat into their smoker they placed a therm. probe into the meat and others state they wait at least 4 hours before probing their meat.  Does it matter when I probe the meat? No, you can put the probe in right from the beginning.

4 - This smoker has two burners, do I turn both burners on and should I set the burners at medium or closer to high? Your going to want to run the smoker at about 225. I would suspect that either both burners on low, or one burner on med., will get you there. I'm hoping you have a therm other than the factory one to monitor the pit & meat temps.

One other thing about my upcoming first attempt at smoking is, I plan to place the Boston Butt directly on the rack, no pan and I do not want to wrap in foil.  Is there any issues with doing that? There is no problem smoking the butt that way, that's the way I do them. We like the thick bark mixed in with the PP.

Sorry for all the extreme newbie question I just want to make sure I can have the best first smoke experience I can.

Thank you all for any tips, suggestion or help you provide.

Wish me luck lol

Good luck!

Al

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