I did some pork butt in my SM045 on Saturday. This was my second cook using the SM045, first one was chicken. I had a little too much smoke on the chicken so I think I went a little too light on the wood for the Pork Butt, but it still tasted really good. My wife thought the smokey flavor was just right. I have done pork butts before in my Traeger and they turn out really well too, but I generally foil at about 145 to get them nice and moist. I didn't foil once and the meat was a little too dry and the bark was very dry.
On the SM045 I didn't foil, in fact didn't open the box at all until it his 195 and I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out. Meat was very moist and the bark was firm but not dried out. The smoke flavor is different from the Traeger, don't know if it is better, just different. And I know the cost of running the SM045 was a lot lower than burning pellets for 10 hours!
One other thing, yesterday I wanted to see if I could use pellets for my smoke, so I built a little tin foil boat and put in about 3/4 of a cup of pellets. I had the SM045 empty as I was just testing. About 30 minutes into it there was a lot of smoke coming out so I figured it was working just fine. I had it in my garage with a fan blowing the smoke out the door. As I was watching it there was a loud BOOM that actually shook the cooker a bit(scared me as well since I was about 2 feet from it). I immediately turned the smoker off and unplugged it. Opened it up and it was very smoky but no fire like I had expected. All else looked fine. I did a search on this board and found out that it is somewhat common. Glad I found info about it here as I though something bad had happened!
Tim
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