Smoked Meat - Our Masterbuilt Smoker Review

by Dan O'Brien

Meat! Who doesn't love meat? Well, maybe not vegans or vegetarians. Regardless, meat is delicious and good for you when you eat it in moderation. You can prepare it many different ways. Fry it in a pan. Bake it in an oven. Grill it.

I have done it all of these ways and it is delicious. I never tried smoking meat at home, but I love it. We recently bought a smoker, so I let's find out if I can get that great smell and taste you get from a local food truck at home? I'm going to give it a shot and see how it goes.

Where do I begin? I needed a smoker. The market has a ton of options out there.

• Barrel smokers

• Gravity feed smokers

• Electric smokers

• Grills that have smoker capabilities

You can get them cheap, expensive. Smokers that use pellets. Smokers that use wood chips. My head was spinning on my options. In the end, I decided on not going big and purchased something that was simple to use for beginners. I bought the Masterbuilt 30 inch electric smoker. This, I figured, was enough to get my feet wet.

(Note: Some of the links in this blog post are affiliate links. If you click on the link and make a purchase from it my family and I may or may not receive a small portion at no additional cost to you)

Masterbuilt 30 in Electric Smoker

I purchased my new smoker from Amazon. When it arrived, I was excited and could hardly wait to get into it. The product was very well packed and it was fun unpacking. There was not worry that something would be damaged. With all the parts unpacked and laid out it was time for assembly.

I like to think that I am a pro at putting together things. Lord knows, I have assembled hundreds of things. The directions seemed to be straight forward. Put the legs on, attach the handle, put on the control box. No problem! I can handle this, or so I thought.

There was a bit of confusion on how the legs attached. The directions were a bit vague. With a little trial and error, success was reached. The rest of assembly was a breeze.

I was a little disappointed there was no cover for the unit and a small bag of wood chips to get you started. No worries though. Amazon had a cover that fit this model perfectly. Wood chips of your choice can be purchased at most nearby stores. We grabbed ours at our local Menards. All assembled, the smoker looked nice. Now I'm excted for the next step.

To my disappointment I would not be smoking meat the day that I set the smoker up. I had to pre-season the unit to burn out any chemicals from manufacturing. This was easy enough. 275° for 3 hours, adding wood chips in the last 45 minutes. The last 45 minutes was heaven. The smell of hickory wood chips burning was amazing! I can't wait to try it out with meat.

Now, what meat to smoke first? I decided on chicken breasts. A siimple enough meat that should be a cake walk, or so I thought.

I filled the smoker to it's capacity. It became apparent that this was taking much longer to get up to temperature to be safe (165° for poultry). I suggest getting a quality meat thermometer. I used an analog one that seemed a bit wonkey.

I may have oversmoked the meat. It was very strong for my liking and it dried out. I am quickly learning that smoking meat is an art, and it will take trial and errofr for me to master it and have delicious moked meat. Sorry! We ate it and didn't take any pictures. We may have been hungry.

I am using the Masterbuilt website, Youtube, and other social media websites to to learn recipes and techniques to get me to the point of being able to eat mouth watering meats.

Overall, I love the Masterbuilt product. It is higih quality at a fair price. I would definitely recommend there products for both beginners and professionals. I look forward to using mine this summer. I will enjoy experimenting and trying different meats and recipes.