My first cook was a butt it came out all right but I think with a little more time using my WSM it will turn out great

Pork butt since this is a very forgiving piece of meat.

My first cook was chicken with no water pan. Pretty good chicken done in an hour.

My first cook was ribs and chicken both, over cherry wood. Not only was it uber-tasty, but it gave me two data points for future cooking.

I agree with ribs after just doing my first cook 2 weeks ago, tasty and you get pretty fast results. Went out and got a standing ribs roast for my second cook, which also came out great. Id say with the knowledge and advice on here you can do anything for your first cook. Have a question... ask, and it gets answered in no time.

I would say pork back ribs. They are wonderful with many different rubs and or many different BBQ sauces. Even if over done they still rock, they are what got me started.

I did chicken, but for this poll said pork butt. It gives you a lot of time for a break in smoke, play with temp controll, and is forgiving if you have too high of cook temps.

I did a 6.5 pound Butt for my 1st cook...it was an overnight cook..pretty fun too...i wanted a nice long cook to see how the temps were with the vent controls...Ribs were my second...

Mine was a 7 pound slab of beef brisket done over hickory for a long cook. A real confidance builder and it came out great which is amazing since I didn't have temp controls and other mods done on my then new out of the box WSM.

Mike

Well, tomorrow I smoke for the first time, and on a new WSM. I was going to do turkey, but that does not seem to be popular, at least not for beginning. So I considered chicken, but some posts say it's the greatest chicken, others say it's better grilled. So I've taken the consensus advice and bought Pork Butt. 99 cents a pound. I bought the last two, one 4.5 lbs, one 2.8 lbs, and .8 lbs of baby back ($2 off, "sell by" today). I figure I'll cook the two butts together, and maybe throw in the ribs for a while. I plan to shoot for 225 +/- 25 at the meat level, and check after 8 hours. Water every 90-120 mins as needed.

I'll brine them overnight. I plan to cover them with mustard and rub tomorrow, and to use natural mesquite charcoal. I might add wood chunks for added smoke- or is that overkill, since the charcoal is mesquite?

Any other suggestions?

My first two smokes I did brisket and then threw on some chicken legs. Both were incredible. I had a good teacher though and he helped me out a lot. Plus, I had a lot of useful information from sites like this one.
*sniff* You guys made me a BBQ'er.
Pork butt is hard to mess up though, unless you really try.

It's just soooo hard to wreck a butt that it has to be the first thing to try, on any smoker. I have wrecked brisket. I have wrecked chicken. I have wrecked ribs.
I have never been able to wreck a butt.

So far I have only smoked pork butts, baby backs, and a brisket. The baby backs were the best followed by the pork butts.

My first cook was ribs, which I think I overcooked. Six hours was way too long, but who knew! They came out very dry.

I just did a butt that came out great! I don't think I could have done the butt first, because I would have had no idea how much charcoal to use. Three racks of ribs later and one butt, I think I'm getting a better idea.

My first cook was 2 pork butts . Started at 8 in the evening and let the temp get set. Then off to bed. Up about 7 to check and finished it in early afternoon. I still do that same cook. the WSM does it great.

My first cook was two butts and one brisket. I figured that if I was going to spend 17 hours on this, I had better get the biggest bang for my buck.

It was a little stressful trying to control the temperature (I still really don't have the hang of it!), especially with 30 people coming over for a party the next day, but the end results made EVERYONE very happy. Okay, the vegetarians were really jealous, but I can't be blamed for their heathen-like lifestyle. (Eventually, I learned how to please them with smoked mushroom dip, smoked cheese, nuts, etc.)

The only downside of going full-bore like this on your first try is that you raise the bar significantly, and then everyone continually bugs you to make more barbecue!

My first cook was a turkey breast on the bottom rack and ribs on top. The dripping from the rack was great on the turkey....tom

I have to go Baby Backs also. My first cook was chicken and it just wasn't that good. My second cook was baby back ribs and I got rave reviews from everybody even people that don't like BBQ loved them.

I think chicken is a great 1st cook. It is cheap enough so that is you screw it up, you won't feel so bad.

My first cook on a WSM was Ribs, it was in a BBQ competition. It was the first ever BBQ Competition that was held in my area and one of the few to be held in Australia. It was also the first BBQ competition that I had entered. I borrowed a WSM from Weber Australia and came third. This was the precursor to me demonstrating for Weber Australia.

I should add that the category was "Meat", it could have been any type of beef, lamb or pork and cooked any way you liked. You were allowed to submit 2 entries. The other categories were chicken, seafood; spit roasted whole pig and vegetables.
This competition did not follow any general accepted rules; all participants were encouraged to sell their food (it saved on catering costs). Professional caterers were competing with backyard cooks in all categories.(They had difficulty in getting participants)

Bottom line – fist cook a complete success with ribs.

Regards