With the growing popularity of BBQ and smokers, the price of inexpensive meat cuts has grown, but there are still plenty excellent and reasonable alternatives on the market today provided you know what you’re looking for.
The best meat to smoke is less desirable, fatty, inexpensive pieces of beef. This sort of meat is often simple to buy and provides excellent alternatives to more costly cuts without sacrificing taste.
Let’s take a look at some of the greatest smoked meats.
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Beef Brisket
Brisket is a beef cut that originates from the animal’s lower chest. Since it is a huge piece of meat that must be slow-cooked, it is the perfect meat to smoke.
Brisket, unlike other beef cuts, holds its form when cooked and can be readily sliced with a butcher knife, making it an excellent option for serving big slabs of brisket at dinner or tiny pieces for sandwiches.
Although it is one of the nicest meats to smoke, it may be difficult for novices to cook it perfect the first few times.
Pork Butt
Pork butt is the ideal meat to smoke since it is full of flavor. It originates from a pig’s upper shoulder, which is full of hard-working muscles and tight connective tissue.
It’s ideal for smoking since the thick tissues break down slowly throughout the extended cooking period, resulting in melt-in-your-mouth, soft meat. Bear in mind that smoking pig butt takes roughly 1.5 hours per pound.
Pork Shoulder
This meat is derived from the lower shoulder portion of a pig, just below the area known as pork butt. Since pork shoulder is often smaller than pig butt, you will need to lower your smoking time.
Since it has the same connective tissue and muscle as pig butt, it is the greatest meat to smoke and creates delicious pulled pork.
Baby Back Ribs
One of the most popular slices of rib comes from the area around the pig’s backbone. They’re meatier and smaller than spare ribs, yet they smoke just as well.
Keep in mind that since they are leaner, they will cook quicker. Hence, if you use baby back ribs instead of spare ribs in a dish, lower the cooking time and keep a closer check on them to avoid them getting chewy and rough.
Spare Ribs
They are produced around the pig’s belly. The fundamental difference between baby back ribs and spare ribs is that spare ribs are more flavorful and bigger, but not as meaty.
If you get an entire slab of spare ribs, youll receive a lot of cartilage, making them the perfect meat to smoke. You may trim them to remove the cartilage and transform them into Saint Louis style ribs, which are simpler to handle if you’re new to smoking.
Beef Ribs
Brisket on a stick is another name for beef ribs. These are more difficult to get than the other finest meat to smoke on our list, but they are worth a special trip to your local butcher to locate. It’s preferable to buy the huge ribs from the bottom end, either plate or chuck ribs, with about an inch or two of flesh on them.
They demand a slow, extended smoke, which might take five to six hours to create the extremely tender, melt-in-your-mouth flesh.
Lamb Shoulder
While pork and beef are the greatest meats to smoke, lamb is another excellent option. The rich flavor of lamb is readily matched by the smokey undertones of smoking, resulting in a wonderful taste that you won’t find anywhere else.
Lamb shoulder is thick and full of connective tissues since it originates from hardworking muscles, similar to hog butt or chuck roast. This makes lamb shoulder the ideal meat for slow smoking.
Lamb Leg
Lamb leg is another excellent piece of lamb for smoking.
They are often offered in two cuts: a fattier upper sirloin end and a thinner shank end. Since the fat slowly melts away while the meat burns, the fatty option is favored for smoking. A lamb leg will take around three to four hours to smoke.
Spatchcock Whole Turkey
Turkey is another excellent meat to smoke. This is because lean beef is the finest meat to smoke when flattened (spatchcocked).
Spatchcocking a turkey helps you to roast it quicker while also absorbing more of the smokey flavor from smoking.
Spatchcocked Chicken
A spatchcocked chicken, like a spatchcocked turkey, produces excellent results when smoked. A word of caution: avoid any instructions to smoke a chicken at lower temperatures since this results in rubbery skin.
Any temperature over 300 degrees F will suffice for cooking a chicken. The higher the temperature, along with the spatchcock cooking technique, provides in a shorter cook time (1-1.5 hours), making this the finest meat to smoke for beginners.
Beef Cheek
Beef cheek is made from a cow’s cheek muscles. Since cows are grazing animals, these muscles put in a lot of effort throughout their lives. As a result, beef cheek is a tough, inexpensive cut that is suitable for slow cooking.
When smoked, this meat becomes lean and soft, making it ideal for pulled beef tacos. If you haven’t tasted beef cheek yet, you should. Keep in mind that smoking this meat will take around five hours.
Chuck Roast
This is a kind of meat that originates from a cow’s shoulder. It contains a lot of taste, but since it is a highly utilized muscle, it may be rather rough. Yet it’s precisely because of this that this is the greatest meat to smoke.
This low and slow cooking procedure will gradually break down the connective fibers present in chuck roast, tenderizing this inexpensive, tough piece of meat. Allow up to six hours for smoking.
Chicken Breast
Cooking chicken breast might cause it to dry out, but with a little care, you can properly smoke it. The additional smokey taste is worth the extra time and effort if you get the smoking correctly.
A brining procedure should be used to preserve the chicken breast soft and moist. You can also add dome smoked chicken rub for more flavor, but keep an eye on the temperature during the smoking process.
Chicken Thigh
When it comes to smoking, chicken thighs are disregarded since they are more flavorful and fattier than breast meat. Yet, when correctly smoked, they have a great flavor, so the next time you wish to smoke, consider smoking a couple chicken thighs.
To maintain more moisture, it is strongly advised that you smoke chicken thighs with the skin on.
Turkey Breast
When properly smoked, this flesh is wonderful; smoking is the finest technique to transform a normally bland meat into a delightful feast.
Since turkey breast tends to dry up when cooked, it’s a good idea to utilize an injection or flavored brine treatment before smoking it. This keeps the meat moist and delicious, resulting in tender and soft outcomes.
It takes around four hours to smoke a turkey breast.
Prime Rib
Prime rib is a more costly piece of beef that comes from the animal’s forequarter. It comprises meat from the sixth to the twelfth ribs, which includes the loin and chuck.
It is normally roasted and pan-seared, but you may smoke it to give a bit more flavor. Smoking prime rib guarantees a tender, excellent piece of meat in around six hours.
Sausage
Smoking sausage is a simple and fast technique to add a delightful smokey flavor to everyday recipes. There are no restrictions on the kind of sausage you may smoke, so it all comes down to personal choice and recipe.
But, you must maintain a tight check on the sausages while they cook and allow them to cool.
Pork Belly
This meat originates from the lower stomach area of the animal and may be surprisingly delicate when properly smoked. This is due to its high marbling and fat content, making it the perfect meat to smoke.
Cutting pig belly into little pieces and smoking them for around three hours is a common method of smoking it.
Tri-Tip
This is one among the greatest meats to smoke and has grown in popularity in recent years. This meat originates from the animal’s back, or the bottom half of the sirloin, and is distinguished by its triangular form.
After trimming, the typical tri-tip weighs roughly two to three pounds; untrimmed tri-tips weigh more. It’s a very lean cut, so it doesn’t take long to smoke, making it an excellent alternative if you don’t want to commit to a full day of brisket smoking.
Check to see whether your tri-tip has adequate marbling to provide tender results. It smokes in roughly two hours, making it ideal for late-night dinners at work.
What is Smoking?
Smoking is a culinary technique that involves using extremely low cooking temperatures and extended cook periods to prepare food. Smoking can transform any piece of meat with a lot of fat, marbling, and tissue into a tenderized, flavor-infused cut of meat.
Since smoking focuses on meat, it is an ideal complement to grilling. In fact, certain slices of meat are started in the smoker and completed on the grill.
Smoking periods are much longer than with other cooking techniques. This is because the smoking process softens and melts the fat in the meat, infusing and basting it with a smokey taste.
The normal rule of thumb is to cook meat slowly and low around 225 degrees F, although in rare cases, you may smoke at lower or higher temperatures. The cooking time will be determined by the size and amount of the smoked meat. As a result, smoking periods are often given in relation to the weight of the meat.
It seems counter-intuitive to choose your meat for smoking. If you’re planning to grill, for example, you’ll usually aim for the most lean and costly piece of meat. If you’re smoking, though, you can get away with a cheap, fat-filled, tough piece of meat and yet have it come out soft and juicy.
The fat content not only improves the taste, but the inexpensive cost of the meat allows you to purchase in bulk and smoke in bulk.
If you don’t already have a smoker, learn about the best offset smoker, best pellet smoker, and best electric smoker. These guidelines will assist you in locating the ideal smoker for your requirements and will show you some of the greatest units on the market today.
Final Thoughts
Smoking meat is an excellent technique to enhance flavor and tenderize it. Even rough, inexpensive slices may be transformed into soft and tasty dinners for the whole family by slow, extended cooking.
You should have realized by now that the best meat to smoke is the inexpensive, rough slices. Any lean, pricey pieces of meat should be avoided in the smoker since they might overcook and dry out.
Smoking, on the other hand, causes the fat, tissue, and marbling of inexpensive cuts of beef to melt away, leaving behind a delectable feast.
Keep in mind that cooking times may vary based on the cut of meat you choose. Also, the ideal sort of wood chip to use depends on the type of meat you’re smoking.
Thus, before smoking any meat, do some study to verify that you’re smoking it at the appropriate temperature, for the right length of time, and with the right wood chips.
We hope that this vast list of the finest meat to smoke has inspired you to begin your smoking adventure.
You can smoke whatever kind of meat you desire, whether you’re a novice or an expert. But keep in mind that certain cuts will need more upkeep than others.