Free, accurate BBQ tools for backyard pitmasters.
HowLongToSmoke started in a backyard, staring at a brisket at 2 a.m. and doing math on a phone calculator to figure out when it would be done. Every existing answer was a vague blog paragraph buried under a life story. We built the calculator we wanted: enter the weight and smoker temperature, get a real cook-time estimate and the exact internal temperature to pull each cut. Then we added recipes and guides for the questions that come next.
HowLongToSmoke is run by a small team of backyard pitmasters based in the United States. We have spent years running pellet smokers through briskets, pork butts, ribs, and the occasional ambitious holiday turkey, and built this site to turn that hard-won trial and error into tools other people can rely on. The cook times and pull temperatures here come from real cooks and widely accepted BBQ food-safety guidance, not guesswork.
Smoking is part science, part feel. Our time estimates are based on standard per-pound rates at a given smoker temperature, adjusted for the stall and a proper rest. Our internal pull temperatures follow established food-safety and tenderness targets for each cut. We say it on every page because it is the single most important rule in barbecue: cook to internal temperature, not to the clock.
Every calculator, recipe, and guide on this site is free to use. The site is supported by affiliate links to gear we genuinely recommend and by advertising, which costs you nothing. If a recommendation is an affiliate link, it is labeled as one. We would rather lose a sale than send you to a bad thermometer.