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Hello from Australia
- Thread starter WillLove
- Start date
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- first time smoker
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Welcome from Stokes County, North Carolina.
SmokinLogs
Smoking Fanatic
Welcome to SMF from Indiana!
Hi there and welcome!
Good on ya m8!
You will be a cooking machine in no time and can wow your friends with something other than those flat top BBQ's that I saw used so heavily there in oz :)
RiversideSm0ker
Master of the Pit
Welcome to SMF from So Cal. I look forward to seeing the results for your new obsession. There is nothing like smoked meat to get the blood pumping. Or clumping, however you prefer to keep your perspective. Have a great day.
George
George
Nice!
I would suggest you start with the easiest and least expensive thing possible. That combo to me is Boneless Skinless Chicken Thighs. Just season up with some Salt, Pepper, Onion (minced/granulated/or powder), and Garlic (granulated or powdered) and then smoke those guys!
They will smoke quickly so I would recommend you go at a lower temp but focus more on learning how to control the temp and the smoke (Thin Blue Smoke - TBS). The thighs are fairly forgiving. You can take them as high as like 175F/79C Internal Temp (IT) and they would be fine. Most chicken parts you want 165F/73C IT but thighs can handle a bit higher.
Chicken is the least expensive meat out there. Learn your smoker. Get confident with controlling smoker temps at 225F/107C, 250F/121C, 275F/135C, and 325F/162C while ALSO producing TBS (Thin Blue Smoke) so that you know you can smoke anything at those temps.
Additionally learn how your smoker behaves. Things like hot spots, cold spots, air flow, etc. etc.
You can learn all of that on chicken and eat amazing smoked chicken!
Next, if you decide to branch out from the boneless skinless thighs I highly recommend you Brine any chicken breast or whole chickens you decide to smoke. A lot of the time breast meat a WANTS to cook up and be dry, even at 165F/73C IT. Brining is the best defense against that. I use a simple brine of salt and water. I like to do whole chickens a minimum of 24 hours and breasts only 12 hours but you should notice a difference even with a 2 hour brine on chicken that normally comes out dry.
Finally, understand that the final quirk of chicken is the skin. If you don't cook the chicken at a high enough temp the skin comes out like leather/rubber. If you cook/smoke it at 325F/162C or higher then that should give you edible/bite through skin. Also taking the chicken off early and throwing on a screaming hot grill to cook up the skin will work also. There are some other techniques but these are the ones that work best for me.
Have a good time and get ready to eat great food while learning your smoker!
Hey mate thanks for the reply and the advice. I like the idea of smoking something cheap to see how i go with temp control. What cooking temp is good for smoking chicken thighs and how long for?
Yeh I think chicken is the cheapest here well would be very close with pork to be honest that's quite cheap aswell.
Yeh I think chicken is the cheapest here well would be very close with pork to be honest that's quite cheap aswell.
Go 225F/107C for boneless skinless chicken thighs. Heck I would suggest that for any kind of skinless chicken.
The lower temp means you get more smoke flavor since it takes longer to cook.
When you start doing chicken with skin I would recommend 325F/162C to try and get edible skin. At this temp chicken parts (not whole chickens) will cook up very fast and will be a good experience so you kind of know what you get time-wise as well as smoke flavor wise on such a fast smoke.
A nice progression would be the following:
- Boneless Skinless Chicken Thighs (ease in and learn your smoker behavior some; learn temp control and smoke control as well)
- Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast (brine these with salt and water - to learn some simple brining)
- Chicken Wings (smoke to an IT of about 140F/60C and then throw on a screaming hot grill to fix skin - to learn how to fix chicken skin on a grill)
- Whole Chicken (use brine + skin fix skills you have learned + try vertical chicken vs laying down vs spatchcocked vs hanging chicken. There are a number of different ways to work with a whole chicken)
- Pork Butt/Shoulder (you will learn how to do a big piece of meat for a long time and begin the wrap vs no wrap to compare bark and smoke flavor differences)
- Tackle other meats from there!
Once you get to item 5 you will be doing a very forgiving large cut of meat and it will teach out many things like how to make your fire and smoke work for like a 10+ hour cook and smoke and how to plan/manage/handle such smokes. The pork butt/shoulder is forgiving in that you could transfer to the oven, it is harder to over cook, and if you under cook some you should be able to fork and knife it without issue so no meal is really ruined :)
There is a 5 day eCourse here on the forum somewhere that people recommend that may also help you out but I honestly never went through it as I had plenty of cooking experience and mostly 2nd hand helping experience with smoking so I just dove in with what I knew and worked from there.
With my background and my built up of 1st hand smoking experience/knowledge I put together the list above since it seems to be about the simplest progression you can go through for the least amount of money and time :)
Thanks mate seems like a pretty straight forward list and some definetly good advice I will start with the breast I think. As I have read this smoker does get alot of hot and cold spots so would be good to know before I ruin a roast hahah
Im knew to smoking but do have a fair bit of experience with cooking and sorts so hopefully should be all good. Yeh I read the ecourse was pretty informational but a little vague in some spots which is fine. With the chicken do u only have smoke on for half the cooking time? Or the whole time
Im knew to smoking but do have a fair bit of experience with cooking and sorts so hopefully should be all good. Yeh I read the ecourse was pretty informational but a little vague in some spots which is fine. With the chicken do u only have smoke on for half the cooking time? Or the whole time
With chicken I run smoke the entire time. It usually cooks so fast that it can be hard to get as much smoke flavoring as you may want.
I run an MES (electric smoker) and the AMNPS (smoke generation tray) so with chicken and other fast cooks I often burn two rows of pellets at once to double up on the smoke. The AMNPS produces perfect TBS (Thin Blue Smoke) so I'm fortunate that I don't have to fight with the smoke generation to get double the smoke. Perfect smoke X 2 is nice in these cases. Using a stick burner or chunks producing extra smoke may be more of a challenge due to temps and whatever it takes to get TBS to begin with in those smokers.
Starting with boneless skinless chicken breast should be fine. Also if you don't brine or want to play around with brined vs not brined you can do that as well with the chicken breast. The good thing is that as you learn your smoker you can try all kinds of things with the same cut of meat so you learn in multiple areas :)
Hey mate seasoned my smoker yesterday and did my first smoke started with some chicken pieces I brined and then rubbed them then smoked them I had issues keeping the smoke in there but it still cooked perfect except the skin was a little rubbery was delicious tho
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I'm glad it was a success!
Yeah the skin can be tricky. You have to smoke at a temp like 325F/162C OR pull the chicken off a bit early and throw on a hot gas grill skin side down and finish cooking it that way. There are some other approaches where people dry the skin but I didn't have the best of luck and found the hot gas grill was easier for me.
It looks like you are in luck too having a gas grill included with your smoker :D
Keep practicing and you will get it. Again if you want simple and hassle free just do boneless skinless chicken OR pull the skin off your chicken. I'm sure you will be making flawless smoked meat in no time!
Yeah the skin can be tricky. You have to smoke at a temp like 325F/162C OR pull the chicken off a bit early and throw on a hot gas grill skin side down and finish cooking it that way. There are some other approaches where people dry the skin but I didn't have the best of luck and found the hot gas grill was easier for me.
It looks like you are in luck too having a gas grill included with your smoker :D
Keep practicing and you will get it. Again if you want simple and hassle free just do boneless skinless chicken OR pull the skin off your chicken. I'm sure you will be making flawless smoked meat in no time!
Yeh I was Gona fry the skin to get it crispy but it tasted good and I was to hungry haha if I was Gona serve it for dinner or something I probably would have pan fryd the skin quickly tasted good. I used Jeff's rub on the chicken and pork belly came up delicious. Used a marinade of sweet baby rays and honey as I didn't have any other sauce made up Gona be doing some pork ribs this weekend should be delicious
I had trouble getting the smoker to sit steady at 325 i could get it to sit easy at 300 then 225-250 but was hard to get it where i needed it for the skin
I had trouble getting the smoker to sit steady at 325 i could get it to sit easy at 300 then 225-250 but was hard to get it where i needed it for the skin
Yeah that is the learning process. Everyone's smoker is a little different and we just have to figure out how it behaves and what it wants to do or not to do. Hence chicken being such a great place to start as it is quite cheap.
Good luck with the ribs! SmokinAl has a great post about how smoking the ribs to an Internal Temp (IT) of 195F/90-91C gives you perfect ribs. It works well in my experience!
Also another tip on pork ribs. They are EASY to over-salt. So if you have a seasoning with salt in it be careful. I use SPOG + Paprika (Salt, black Pepper, Onion, Garlic) for most of my smoked pork and I have a seasoning mixed up for it like that, HOWEVER I also have POG + Paprika just for ribs so I can go as heavy with that as I want and then Salt separately to avoid over salting. This is a simple way to avoid a common rib seasoning issue.
Best of luck on the ribs and please report back with some pics on them!
Good luck with the ribs! SmokinAl has a great post about how smoking the ribs to an Internal Temp (IT) of 195F/90-91C gives you perfect ribs. It works well in my experience!
Also another tip on pork ribs. They are EASY to over-salt. So if you have a seasoning with salt in it be careful. I use SPOG + Paprika (Salt, black Pepper, Onion, Garlic) for most of my smoked pork and I have a seasoning mixed up for it like that, HOWEVER I also have POG + Paprika just for ribs so I can go as heavy with that as I want and then Salt separately to avoid over salting. This is a simple way to avoid a common rib seasoning issue.
Best of luck on the ribs and please report back with some pics on them!
No I follow SmokinAl's approach and I don't wrap my ribs, I like them better unwrapped and smoke till they hit an IT of 198F-201F these days.
Here is his post https://www.smokingmeatforums.com/threads/perfect-ribs-every-time-this-really-works.240916/
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