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smoking virgins....

by Nicole
(California)

My husband and I have bbq'd plenty but are still smoking virgins. We bought a HUGE pork shoulder roast from Costco to make our first attempt with but we are still unsure of how to do this.

He has a charcoal smoker with a fire box on one side and a chimney on top. I have read several sites, like this one, but want to make sure we don't screw this up.

Any advice on how exactly to use the charcoal and hickory chips together? How often do we add wood chips? How do we maintain the charcoal? How to control the temperature in the smoker????

Ahhh.....we're sooo confused. Please Help!!

Thanks!

Mike and Nicole
Southern California

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smoking virgins....

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by: SmokerBill

No reason to get overwhelmed over smoking a pork roast. It's not really that difficult of a process.

The first step is to season the meat. You can use a marinade or a dry rub. The dry rub is the easier of the two. You can use the rub mix by itself, or do what a lot of smokers do...coat the roast with yellow mustard first, then shake on the dry rub. The mustard makes the rub stick to the meat really well.

Fill up a charcoal chimney with good quality charcoal and light it. Pour the lit charcoal into the firebox. Leave the chimney pipe on the smoker open 3/4 of the way, and use the air intake adjustment on the firebox to regulate temperature. Try starting out with the vents on the firebox open halfway. In a half hour, the temperature should stabilize. If it's not hot enough, open the firebox vents a bit. Close them a little if the smoke chamber is too hot.

You can add foil wrapped wood chips directly on top of the hot charcoal several times to add smoke flavor to the pork roast. As the charcoal burns down, the temperature will begin to drop. When that happens, add another full chimney of hot charcoal.

Try to keep the smoker running between 225-250 degrees. Figure on about one hour per pound, maybe a little longer.

The most important thing is to get regular practice with your smoker and different kinds of meat, read books, and study websites to learn all you can about meat smoking. You'll soon lose the confusion and be filled with confidence!

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