PLEASE READ: This tool is a work in progress. The calculations, cook time estimates, meat doneness temperatures and other ingredients used are based on those suggested in 9 out of 10 BBQ books/guides, friends, personal recommendations from competition pros like Harry Soo at Slap Yo' Daddy, various websites and on my own personal cooking experiences.
Meat weight is based on a single post-trimmed piece, not the purchase weight with fat that you might trim. It is also not based on the entire contents placed in the cooker.
All meat cooking times are unpredictable. Larger pieces of meat over 13 pounds can be even more tricky and may or may not cook within the suggested cooking range. I am working on this but need cooking data from the community.
As the old saying goes, "It's done when it's done." I recommend checking your internal temps regularly when you get to around 70% of the suggested cook time.
If you are willing, please share data with me in the comments below! Include meat type, weight, avg. pit temp, finish temp and actual cooking times. I'll use this data to help dial it down to make the calculator as accurate as possible (within reason). Again, every piece of meat is unique and will differently based on their geometry, fat & muscle composition, moisture content, general humidity, etc. These factors make it a real challenge (if not impossible) to create a tool that is absolutely accurate. Honestly, it will probably forever be imperfect...BUT...It will likely HELP us to not have friends passed out on our couch at 10:30...still hungry and waiting to bite into some meaty goodness! 😉
Please feel free to share data, calculations and ideas to make improvements! I'm a sponge and am committed to creating a tool which will be valuable to the BBQ community.
Thank You,
John Kirker
I know more about women then BBQ - and according to my wife, I don't know much about women!
Start Here!
Do you ever BBQ (slow and low) and struggle to figure out when you need to start your cooks based on your desired serve times?
Whether you are a backyard BBQ guy or an old school aficionado, it happens to the best of is.
I know it happens to me!
You know those times when the meat is done too early and you live in fear of serving a dried out brick?
Or, how about those other times. You know, when it's 10 o'clock at night, the beer is gone, your friends are passing out on the couch and your wife is screaming at you, "Is it done yet?"
Between having this happen to me, and watching some actual competition guys struggle with cook schedules and turn-in times, I figured I'd do what I do... And help all of us take some of the guess-work out of one of our favorite old school rituals...
Below you'll fine the Meat Smoking Calculator. You simply select the type of meat you want to cook, enter the weight, tell it when you want to eat and dial in a few more settings and voila! The MeatSmokingCalculator does the hard work for you.
Now of course, you can leave all the default setting in place and you'll come out with a pretty good product at the end of the day...Or, if you want to play around and customize your cook you can do that too.
Ultimately, if this is used by the BBQ community, we'll build hooks into FB and allow people to create their own profiles, share and save their cooks along with notes on what happened, etc.
And the mobile versions for iOS and Android should be done in the next few weeks.
So I hope you get a kick out of this tool, that you find it useful and that it makes smoking meat a whole lot easier.
After using it a few times myself, I'm just glad my wife is no longer off my back. 😉
Happy Smoking!
Dear Mr. Kirker,
I loved this tool and used it last week, but it does not seem to be working exactly right for me again this week. It seems the Desired Finish field isn’t accepting times now for me. Did something change? Am I doing something wrong? I’ve tried both Chrome and IE and neither seems to want to accept a date and time.
Deer John,
Thank you for your work on this tool. I have been using Meat Smoking Calculator for more than three years and use it often. Having the ability to see my start, wrap, and finish times for brisket and pork butt really takes the stress out of planning in answering the question, “WHEN should I start?” The M.S.C. is WHERE you should start! WHY? In general, I have found the cook times and temps to be surprisingly accurate.
I do have one issue I need tech support help. Since the new website facelift, when I click “Desired finish” the calendar does not come up. I am using Firefox. Thanks!!
Randy, can you give it a try now? We’ve been hammering on it over the last few weeks trying to improve it – hope we have – it’ll certainly be easier for me to add more things to it – and even add a couple other temp settings. Let me know.
Thanks also for the kind words! I appreciate them very much!
John
Give it a try now. Sorry…