You have questions. We have answers, of a kind.
Frequently Doubted
The things people ask before they start, and a few they ask after, when it is already too late.
Define safe. You will be standing over heat for many hours. You will be tired. You will be happy in a way that is hard to describe to people who do not smoke. We do not use the word safe here. We use the word ready.
Yes. It is the realest thing we know of. People have been doing this for thousands of years. People are doing it right now, three houses down, behind a fence, not telling anyone how long they have been out there.
No.
We prefer the word committed. You will buy one smoker. Then you will buy a bigger one. Then you will build a small structure to keep the bigger one out of the rain. You will not notice this happening. That is normal.
There is no such thing. A child who is handed a rib at a family gathering and goes quiet, who looks up at the cook with a kind of solemn understanding, has already started. Hand them jerky. Let them stir the rub. Let them learn the smell of oak before they can spell it. We are simply passing it down, the way it was passed to us.
Get a second opinion. Many doctors smoke. Some of the best brisket we have ever had came off the cooker of a cardiologist who told us, quietly, in the dark of his backyard, that he would never tell a patient what he is telling you now: low and slow, fat side up, and do not open the lid.
Secondhand smoke is how we recruit. When the wind carries it over the fence and into the home of someone who has never started, and they stop what they are doing, and they walk to the window, and they ask aloud, to no one, what is that – that is the beginning for them. You are doing them a favor. You may be saving their weekend.
No. Indoors is not where this happens. Indoors is where you wait for it to happen. Go outside. Stand by it. Stay with it. It needs you out there, and after a while you will understand that you needed to be out there too.
Yes. It begins with a chicken thigh on a Sunday. Within a year you are sourcing whole packer briskets from a man named Dale who only answers his phone before six in the morning. We are not going to pretend this does not escalate. It escalates.
It is never the smoker. It is the wood. It is the thermometer, then the better thermometer, then the thermometer that texts you at 3 a.m. It is the chest freezer you bought so you would always have something in reserve. It is every weekend from now until the end. People who ask about the cost have not started. People who have started do not ask.
It will call you back. You will be at a desk on a Tuesday and you will smell oak that is not there. You will find yourself reading about pork shoulders at your lunch break. There is no relapse, because there is no quitting. There is only the time you spend away from it, and the time you come home.
Yes. You will lose touch with people who do not understand and you will grow closer to people who do. Your family will learn to plan around the cook. Strangers will smell it on your jacket and trust you immediately. You will meet others, out back, at parties, and you will know them on sight.
You will think you do. You will want a thermometer that does the worrying for you, a course, a forum, a man named Dale. You do not need any of it to begin. You need fire, time, and the willingness to stand in your own yard for a very long time, alone, certain. The rest finds you.
It is never too late to start smoking. We have seen people start in their seventies. We have seen people start the week they retired and weep openly the first time the bark set. There is time. There is always time. There is more time than you think, and all of it can be spent out back.