On 22-Feb-2008, Grant Erwin wrote:

I'm getting ready to pull the trigger on my NBBD, now all fixed up and
ready to go. Like all newbies, I'm nervous and not sure of what to do.

I'd like to hear some stories about the first time YOU tried smoking
meat ..

Grant Erwin

Are yout tuned in to the "HORROR" channel? You need to be. Like
you, I read all the mail, read all the FAQ and then proceeded to prove
that I knew everything that I needed to know. I wasted more then a year
trying to prove that I was the master of that pit. (NB Silver). The pit won.
Now I make excellent barbecue anytime I want and the outcome is always
garenteed.

1. Clean your pit out pretty good. (Guess you've already done that)
2. Ensure there's at least 3" of space under your fire grate. (Ash spare
you know.)
3. Dump about 10# of charcoal fuel into the firebox. Make a hole about
3" in dia in the resulting pile.
4. Dump a full chimney load of lit fuel into the center of the pile.
5. Make sure that the chimney is full open and that the firebox draft
is cracked about 1".
6. Go away for 30 minutes.. Have a drink. Watch some TV. Get some
meat ready to cook, anything but mess with that cooker.
7. Check the cook chamber temperature. (don't mess with the fire. It
knows what it's doing.) If the cook chamber has managed to climb into
the 200°F to 300°F range, load in your meat and go away for the next
couple of hours unless you're cooking fowl or tender loins or loins or
some other such meat that don't really want to be barbecued. For
ribs, butts, briskets and such, just leave it alone for at least a two full
hours.
7a. If you're doing a full load and six or eight racks of ribs in there,
you probably ought to rotate them at about two hours to get the
furthest closer to the fire and vice versa. No need to turn them
over. In fact I never do. Same thing with butts. If you have four
butts in there, you might want to rotate them two for two closer
to the fire. Again, don't turn them over. (I don't have a scientific
reason for that except, play with your food as little as possible.

Since you're talking about your first burn and you haven't mentioned
what you're planning to cook, we're a little in the dark.

Do you want to cook pork butts, ribs, brisket, chicken, turkey
or what? A minuscule clue would help.
-
Brick(Youth is wasted on young people)