So for the weekend I got myself an 8lb (~3.5kg for the civilized world) bone in pork butt (boston butt?) and did the following things to it.

So after all was done and said., we ate about 4 lbs of it and packed the last 2 into the freezer for later. The best part of it though was the haunch closest to the heat that got that nice chewy texture to it much like burnt ends bbq. Tossed on some Stubb's Sticky & Sweet BBQ sauce (great for pork, not so much beef) and it was a mouthful of smokey goodness.

Next attempt will be beef jerky.

that sounds really good - we do pulled pork in the croc pot every once in a while and i always forget how good and easy it is to make (although using a smoker sounds more intense).

have you been smoking meats for a while? is it a lot of maintenance and would you recommend it before getting a proper grill first?

obligatory:

So first off, Zuckerberg is creepy as hell, I could not watch the full video. As for smoking meats there are the different schools of smoking, those being:

1. Charcoal

2. Pellets

3. Electric/Propane I cannot speak for outside the US, but you have some hardcore smoker buffs who will fight over how you smoke your meat. If you use anything other than charcoal you can get a response similar to "If you use electric you don't get that wood/charcoal flavour and it sucks! You suck! Eat a d*ck!". And yes, I have had that said to me before.

If you are willing to make is easy on yourself and don't care about the schools of smoking, I would suggest going with an electric smoker. I spent several years using charcoal and the attention needed to keep your temperature just isn't worth it for me. I switched to an electric smoker so I can set my temp and do other things with my time since most smoking takes a good portion of a day or more to complete. And no, you do not need to start with a proper grill or anything else, smoking meat really is easy entry, but can take a long time to develop your own rubs/brines to get the flavour you want. Using other peoples recipes will usually be enough for most people but I like to experiment. My smoker does set next to my 70K BTU grill and 36 inch 50K BTU cast iron griddle.

So maintenance on an electric smoker is simple: Clean out the inside (walls, door, covers, racks) with a mix of water and vinegar and wipe with an old cloth. I usually only do this when the walls/door get too covered in grease/fat and starts looking brown or getting smelly. The place to focus cleaning efforts is the drip pan. I started lining it with foil so I can do a quick cleanup instead of scrubbing it out after each smoking.

The great thing about using electric is that you set the temp you want and then you don't have to mess with that anymore. Your main focus should be on your rub/brine & the wood you will use to get your smokey flavour (I am preferential to mesquite since I grew up in Texas), not having to manage the temp constantly. This way you can just manage the stages of smoking if there are any. As an example with what I smoked, I want to smoke it uncovered until the internal temp reaches ~160 degrees. At that point I wrap it up in foil or butcher paper (latter being the preference) and let it finish until it hits that 195-200 degree point. 195 is when the fats start to break down and disperse through the meat which makes it tender and adds a lot of flavour. If you let it get past 205, at that point the meat has probably dried out and become a bit tough. You usually have a stall point though around the 165-185 point where it can cook for hours and the internal temp doesn't increase, which is one of the reasons to wrap it in foil or butcher paper to help keep the heat in better as well as keep the juices in the meat. Once the stall point is passed though its usually only a couple hours until it reaches the temperature you want.

Of course different meats will cook at different rates. The items I have cooked so far are beef brisket, pork butt, ribs (St. Louis Style & Baby Back), and whole chickens/turkeys. The chickens/turkeys cook really fast if you break them out properly and hold in the smokey flavour really well, so it can be a nice flavourful meal or a dried out mess if you don't keep an eye on the internal temp. I have a 4 probe thermometer so I can have probes in different parts of the meat, usually one next to the bone if the meat is bone in, and another in the thickest part of the meat.

Mind you I have only been smoking meats for about 7-8 years so I am still learning a lot from others and through my own experimentation, but my very first attempt at a smoked brisket in my electric smoker came out so perfectly compared to my first charcoal attempt (it was a burnt mess) that I don't think I will ever go back to charcoal again.