Well with a few days off and the rain we have been getting hammered with I figured I had nothing to do and plenty of time to try my first smoke. I went with a turkey "fillets" which I guess are just breast pieces... Wife doesn't like pork that much so I wanted to get her hooked on this before trying something else. I've been lurking for a while to try and understand the whole process and I learned a lot today working through the process... seeing how to control temps... etc. Well we just tried our first bite and both said wow. I think I could have upped the temperatures and reduced the time but it was still very juicy, had a great smokey flavor and the rub (montreal cowboy rub) was perfect for turkey. I definitely don't understand what took so long to get it done. The pieces were only about .5 lbs each and I had the temps between 250 and 300 the whole time... figured with the small pieces it would take about an hour based on what I've read here (30-45 mins per pound)... ended up taking closer to 2.5 hours to get the temperature up to 160. Maybe someone can shed some light? Also, how big do you guys typically make your fire? I'm using a Charbroil American Gourmet offset smoker and i started with a small hot fire using natural hardwood charcoal to "season" it as directed. I then built it up a little more and added the hickory chunks but spread it out and turned the vents back to cool it down. I felt like I had to continually add more wood... Maybe that's normal, but I'm thinking if I would have had a bigger fire it wouldn't have required me to keep opening the firebox. Anyway.... we were very happy with my first attempt. Thanks for all the good info here!
