Got a smoker for my birthday -- rolling through the forums looking for tidbits

[arikc]

Hi folks,

I'm up in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle suburbs) and just received a nice Masterbuilt Electric Smoker as a birthday present :-)

My hope is to perfect a beef brisket and try out a variety of other items... 

This looks like a great community -- I'm looking forward to learning a lot.

-Arik

 

[SmokinAl]

Hi Aric!

Welcome to the forum!

Congrats on the new smoker!

Al

 

[801driver]

Welcome from Oklahoma.  You have found the best site in the world for smoking anything. Lots of recipes and lots of help and opinions from most everyone here, just ask. 

You have a smoker to start with, you can have quite a few accessories but the only other required item is a remote read temperature sensor to poke into your meat to measure the Internal Temperature.  Try Home Depot or Lowes if you need one quickly, then decide what you might want for later.

Slap on a good rub, set your smoker for 225, and smoke till you reach at least 195 IT minimum, more for more tender, pull off, foil and rest in a cooler for at least an hour,  Slice and enjoy.  Nothing to it.

But, like most of us at first, you most likely will start to worry.  Why Is it taking so long?  Is my temp sensor broken?  The temp is not moved an hour and a half, just sitting at 170 or even going down during the stall.  All the other stuff. 

After a while, you will start early. put it in, wait for the beeper to go off, put it in the cooler for one to five hours depending when you need it, and be done.  It all works out and gets almost boring after a while. 

Now you can start having fun experimenting.  Vary you rub, vary your wood, vary your amount of doneness, etc.  Find different things to smoke.

Welcome again, and share some of your smokes.

 

[scooby]

Amazingribs.com has some great recipes that will have you cooking like a pro on your first cook. Don't get me wrong, the folks here are great and have some super advice but you can never have too much info. Also get Aaron Franklin's book A Meat Smoking Manifesto.

 

[sauceboss]

I recommend you research the thermometer that can installed with your new smoker. In the past I have found some smokers and grills have wildly inaccurate thermometers for the cook chamber. You can also use an oven thermometer to test it and compare it your installed one. I used charcoal grills in the past for smoking ribs and ended up drilling a hole in the top big enough to wedge a wine bottle cork into and just shoved a standard meat thermometer through that. Cheap, easy, and accurate. Keep in mind I'm not saying the installed thermometer is inaccurate, I'm just saying it is worth the few bucks to check. I ruined a couple of ribs before I started doing that. Happy smoking!