The Absolute Best Cuts Of Meat For Smoking

No type of food satisfies your carnivore instincts on a primal level like smoked meat. Every year, the warm weather makes legions of backyard pitmasters emerge from hibernation to try their hands at the ancient art of cooking meat over an open fire. It's no secret that wood smoke can make almost any meat more delicious, but some cuts fare better on the smoker than others. There are also certain cuts of meat that are delicious when smoked but require skill to prepare correctly, while others can be smoked to perfection by barbecue novices.

Whether you're a seasoned master of the art of smoking or just got a smoker for your birthday and are figuring out what you should do with it, we've compiled a list of the absolute best cuts of meat to cook with wood smoke. This list includes various cuts that span from classic favorites you'll find at any barbecue place to underhyped pieces that are unexpectedly great for smoking. It has something for everyone (well, except vegetarians).

Like beef brisket, pork shoulder comes from a part of the animal that gets a workout. In this case, it's the area above the front legs of a pig. Per MasterClass, pork shoulder is generally separated into two different cuts. The upper part of the shoulder is often sold as pork butt (or Boston butt), while the lower part is sold as picnic roast (or simply pork shoulder).

If you love pulled pork, pork butt is the right cut for you. It's filled with fat and connective tissue that melts during hours of smoking, giving you perfectly juicy, shreddable pork. Compared to pork butt, picnic roast is a bit leaner and less forgiving. However, you can still cook it on a smoker or grill. Picnic roast often comes with the skin still attached, so it's a great choice if you like crispy cracklings. Ultimately, both ends of a pork shoulder are very fatty and flavorful compared with some other cuts of pork, so they'll both turn out delicious if smoked for a long time.

Red meat may be the star at most barbecue restaurants, but poultry can be a great candidate for smoking too. If you've never had smoked turkey before, prepare for your mind to be blown. It will make you forget all the dry, bland, oven-roasted Thanksgiving turkeys you've had in your life.

Smoked turkey has several advantages over traditional roast turkey. For one, the gentle heat of the smoker cooks all the meat evenly instead of turning the white meat into a dry husk. Also, the smoke and the flavor of a good rub liven up the relatively neutral taste of turkey.

Although you could smoke turkey pieces like breasts or legs, we like doing a whole turkey for a couple of reasons. First, with a whole turkey, you get a lot of bones. While Amazing Ribs argues that the idea that bone-in meat is more flavorful than boneless is mostly a myth, they do mention that keeping poultry on the bone helps prevent it from losing juice during the cooking process. With a lean meat like turkey that's prone to drying out, we'll take all the help we can get in the moisture department. Second, a whole turkey takes longer to cook than a turkey breast, which gives it more time to soak up the smoky flavor.

Many different cuts of lamb are good to smoke, but lamb breast might just be the best one. The breast of a lamb contains several parts of the animal that are all great for smoking: brisket, belly, and ribs. It's a forgiving cut of meat because it's chock-full of fat and connective tissue that keeps it moist even if you leave it on the smoker a little too long (via Texas Monthly). It's no wonder this cut is a favorite at barbecue joints in Texas.

One thing to keep in mind is that the flavor of any meat mostly comes from its fat. If you enjoy the unique gaminess of lamb, you'll get that in spades with lamb breast. If that's not your favorite flavor, you may find the taste of lamb breast to be a little intense. Even after it's cooked, lamb breast tends to have big chunks of unrendered fat mixed in with the cooked meat. If you'd rather not pick around all the fat at the table, you can always remove the excess fat and shred the lamb before serving.

Tri-tip is a cut of sirloin named after its distinctive triangular shape. There are only two tri-tips per cow, and they were historically thought of as off-cuts, either ground into hamburger or chopped into stew meat. According to the Santa Maria, California tourist website, tri-tip first gained prominence when local business owner Bob Schutz started using it to make what is now called Santa Maria-style barbecue. In that region, it's traditionally smoked over red oak and served with beans, salsa, and salad (via Santa Maria Valley).

Tri-tip differs from many other barbecuing cuts because it's boneless and lean. The method for cooking is sort of a hybrid between grilling and smoking; first, you sear it over a fire and then let it slowly smoke until it reaches the desired doneness. You can serve it medium-rare, just like a smaller cut of steak.

Besides proper cooking, the carving is the most important thing to pay attention to with tri-tip. Cutting this piece of meat is tricky because the grain changes direction. To cut it perfectly, you have to carve half of it in one direction, then change your knife angle to make sure the whole thing is carved against the grain to make tender slices.

As we've previously reported, the biggest mistake you can make with pork belly is trying to cook it too fast and hot. This cut is filled with fat and connective tissue. It becomes unctuous and silky if treated gently but is unpleasant to eat if you try to rush it. What better way to cook it than by smoking, which not only treats it with the gentle heat it needs but also adds layers of flavor?

Everyone loves bacon, and American-style bacon is just pork belly that is cured with salt and a few other ingredients, then smoked (via S. Clyde Weaver). If you smoke your own pork belly at home, you can recreate many of the sweet, salty, fatty, savory notes you love in bacon. You can even go whole-hog, so to speak, and follow our instructions for making homemade bacon. Our recipe jerry-rigs an oven to make an impromptu smoker, but there's no reason you couldn't use a real smoker to make it.

We know what you're thinking: "Pigs have hooves; what part of a pig could possibly be the knuckle?" Confusingly, pork knuckle has nothing to do with a pig's feet. Instead, it's another name for pork shank, particularly the shank of a pig's front legs. It's cut from the leg of the pig directly beneath the shoulder (via Professional Secrets).

The knuckle contains a big piece of the pig's leg bone and is surrounded by a thick layer of fatty skin. While that means that there isn't a ton of meat on it compared to some other cuts of pork, it's quite flavorful, and the skin is the best part. You can smoke it whole, but make sure to crank the heat at the end of the cooking process to turn the outside into a crunchy pig crackling.

Smoked pork knuckle is delicious on its own, but the bones and leftovers can be used to flavor other dishes like split pea soup.

If you want to make smoked pork without the long cook time required for pork shoulder or pork belly, pork tenderloin is the way to go. This recipe from Mashed can be ready in under two hours and produces a showstopping centerpiece for any dinner. It's a great recipe for aspiring pitmasters who don't have a lot of experience smoking meat.

Since tenderloin doesn't have a lot of connective tissue or fat, it doesn't need long hours of smoking to make it edible. However, cooking it on the smoker does have its own set of challenges. Pork tenderloin is, of course, tender, but it's also lean, which means it's prone to drying out. The Mashed recipe remedies this by wrapping the tenderloin in bacon. The fat in the bacon should protect the tenderloin during the cooking process and add a lot of delicious flavor to boot. Just make sure to find thin-cut bacon — the thick-cut stuff could get tough in the smoker.