Hello Fellow Members! Ted from Virginia Beach

[Butts Briskets & Birds]

Thank you for allowing me to join a group of like-minded individuals. To me this is like a sport but you get to eat the results. Hopefully. Even the best athletes never perfect their sport every time and from what I've researched, Smoking is the same. Even from the best pitmasters. So I've been smoking brisket, butts, birds, chuck roasts, ribs and bellies for a few years now, almost all on my Weber kettle. Mostly successes. A few failures. But that's where I learned how to control my vents and baffles. But I yearned for something more. I've been researching for years, considering pellet smokers and verticals and eggs and Bradleys and finally decided to start with a horizontal offset smoker. My Oklahoma Joe's reverse flow arrived today. (I'm sure it's the start of a collection, to which all of you will be invaluable.) Put it together and cured it. The first hour of heavy white smoke. The second hour started with a thin blue wispy smoke and continued from there. And there was much rejoicing. Still undecided on what to smoke first. Any recommendations? :)

 

[6GRILLZNTN]

Welcome to the SMF! Chicken seems to be a popular first smoke around here.

 

[tropics]

Chicken Parts let that juice spray to give it a good seasoning
Richie

 

[kruizer]

Welcome to SMF from Minnesota.

 

[davidhef88]

Welcome to SMF. I would have to agree with chicken for the maiden voyage. I personally would do a couple of whole birds, they are fairly inexpensive and always delicious. (Even if you don’t get it right)

 

[gmc2003]

Welcome to the site, smoked meatloaf is also a good starting point. That is if your family likes meatloaf.

Chris

 

[SmokinAl]

Welcome to SMF!
Chicken is always a good meat to start with, or if you feel adventurous, then a pork butt is about as easy as it gets. But you will have to man the smoker for several hours!
Al

 

[Butts Briskets & Birds]

Thank y'all so much for the suggestions. But I have to admit, after 6 straight days of turkey for lunch and dinner, I'm kinda poultry'd out! I found some nice looking beef ribs today at the butcher. Beef back ribs and beef chuck riblets. I bought them because they had just a bit more meat to them than the regular beef ribs. I'll rub them tonight since I'm doing a second cure of the smoker. (I'm using this for a bit extra curing and to get a feel for the vent controls for temp stabilization. IDK about y'all but my personal preference for beef is beef flavor. I don't like sweet beef so I'm going to create my own rub for these and I'll let you know how they turn out. Thank you so much for your help gentlemen!

 

[Butts Briskets & Birds]

So I used the 3-2-1 method for my ribs. The came out fantastic. I've never used beef chuck riblets before, but they were sooooooooo tender. There's a lot of beef on these ribs. Wanting to keep the beef flavor, my rub was a sea salt, black pepper, garlic and onion mixture. Then I injected the ribs as well. A great initiation for my new smoker. Now I want another one! :)

 

[SmokinLogs]

Welcome to SMF from Indiana!