Welcome, Tom--lots of good advice here as you can tell. The importance of letting your meat spend a couple hours at room temp to wamr up bnefore putting it in the BS can't be overestimated. I have done a rough calculation that the mass of heated BS components is about 5#. That means if the pre-heated BS temp is, say, 215F and you put 5# of meat in the BS at 35F, the "equilibrium" temp will be 125F. If you put 20# of 35F meat in a 215F BS, the equilibrium temp will be closer to 70F. On thne other hand, if you let 20# of meat warm up to 55F before putting it in the smoker, the equilibrium temp is 165F. While the calculation is very crude, the point is that putting cold food in the BS will add lots of cooking time and conversely, warming up the food before putting it in the smoker is an underrated step in determining the overall cooking time, IMHO.
John
Newton MA
