About the Meat Smoking Calculator

We built the first meat smoking calculator in 2011, and gave it its own home here in January 2012. It came out of the competition circuit, where our team kept getting the same thing wrong. Everyone obsesses over turn-in times. The actual problem is everything that has to happen before them, planned backward, in the right order, so the meat is resting when it should be and not still stalling at 160°F.

Nobody had a tool that planned all of it, so we made one. It has been running and getting corrected ever since.

Who is behind it

The site is run by John Kirker, who built the original calculator and still does the cooking that keeps it honest. The writing here comes from cooks that were actually run on a pit, not assembled from other people’s blog posts. Where something is genuinely contested – whether to wrap, whether the stall is collagen or evaporation, whether 3-2-1 belongs anywhere near a baby back rib – we say so plainly and explain the trade instead of pretending there is one right answer.

Where the numbers come from

Every timing estimate on this site traces back to logged cooks, refined over more than a decade. That matters because it sets the limits of what a calculator can honestly promise:

• Times are estimates. Temperature and feel decide. Two briskets of identical weight can finish three hours apart. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
• The stall is the biggest variable in any long cook, which is why the planner builds a buffer in rather than pretending the clock is reliable.
• Safety guidance follows USDA figures, and we mark clearly where the safe minimum and the good-eating temperature are different numbers. On a brisket they are nearly 60°F apart.
• We never present an estimate as a guarantee, and we never silently change a pitmaster’s numbers.

What is on the site

• The calculator – plans your cook backward from the time you want to eat, including prep, trim, injection, rub, smoke, wrap, rest and hold. It exports to your calendar.
• The times and temperatures chart – every cut we cover, in one reference table.
• Guide pages for each cut, with the method, the pull temperature and the questions people actually ask.
• Community recipes, where cooks log what they did and rate it afterward. Ratings unlock only after the cook is finished, so the reviews reflect a cook that happened.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, we want to know, and we would rather fix it than defend it. There is a report-a-bug button on the calculator itself, and the contact page reaches us directly. Suggestions for cuts we have not covered are welcome too – a good part of the catalogue exists because somebody asked.