I've yet to try a roast, but being a chef for some years I now do it as a hobby as my line of work changed for some years now I'll experiment with this.
My goal will be to cook this roast to a consistancy of like a beef stew meat texture, you know how the meat simmered for hours and then you have that fall off the bone texture so to speak, kind of like braised short ribs, that's the key I think is to smoke it, then braise it.
What I'm gonna do when I do a chuck roast smoke is marinate the roast overnight or even 2 nights, in a light teriyaki type of sauce, this will serve 2 purposes, 1 it will be a brine to tenderize and also add that island flavor. Smoke it for a good 3-4 hours (use a drip pan,save the drippings), then put into a pan and add the drippings and I think I'll do half teri sauce and half beef stock or chicken broth in the pan to about half way of the beef, cover it up real good and back on the smoker, keeping the temps around 250 for another 3-4 hours or so, when done I invision the internal temp of the meat to be that of pulled pork or beef around the 180-200 range, and at that point I'm hoping the meat will be that fall off the bone, stew soft like texture rather than a full x? hours of dry smoke and the meat be on the dry side. I believe a long chuck smoke will be on the dry side, nothing wrong with that, cut it/pull it, sauce it and have a feast, It's just the nature of that cut of meat vs a brisket which has a blanket of fat and marble to keep it moist even on a long smoke.
That's my 2 cents of my 1st chuck roast smoke. It will be a new one for me and the times of the smoke and braise will vary with the size of the beef. But you get the idea, I'm shooting for tender/juicy smoke/braised beef. I'll post it up when I do that.
With that said, any one of those beef cuts will do you fine, however as mentioned always look for the one with the most marble or fat, that will help keep the beef juicy.
Like I hear on this forum when doing ribs they say 3-2-1 method the 2 being the braising part of it, I'll figure out what those numbers will be when I do my roast, think it will be somewhere of a 4/5-4/5? (smoke hours/braise hours) we'll see.
Hope it comes out good, don't forge the pics.
