I’ve had a cheap, no-name meat smoker sitting on the back porch for, oh, about 20 years. It was a freebie, so I never gave it much thought. Never used it but once, and that was to grill some steaks. The fire flared up and burned the paint off of one side. After that, it pretty
much served only to shelter nocturnal critters from the noon-day sun. My only other experience with barbecue was highly disastrous. All I’ll say about that episode is, if you don’t know how to cook ribs, don’t even think about serving your first attempt to guests, and don’t use a gas grill.
Some years later, after attending a real barbecue, where the meat is cooked “low and slow”, I realized I needed to learn the ways of authentic barbecueing. I got ambitious, cleaned up the old smoker, and gave it a shot. I was amazed that, even for a trial run – on this old hunk of junk – it didn’t turn out half bad. So, knowing it could be better, I set out to try to improve the results. After some web research, I found the answer in the form of the Weber Smoky Mountain Cooker, a/k/a the WSM or the Weber Bullet.