How long to smoke beef, cut by cut: brisket, chuck roast, ribs, prime rib, tri tip, steaks, burgers, pastrami and jerky, with pit and pull temperatures.
Google's AI Overview and Traeger both pull a tomahawk steak around 100°F to 115°F, before it's ever seared. Smoked Meat Sunday and No Limit Cooking put the finished steak at 130°F to 140°F. The two pairs aren't disagreeing, one is measuring before the sear, the other after.
Updated Sep 2026
Google's AI Overview says to pull a London broil at 125-130°F before searing in its opening line, then 110-120°F in its own bullet list two paragraphs later. Both halves agree on 130-135°F without a sear. The two pull temps for the same step never get reconciled.
Updated Sep 2026
Recipes for smoked pastrami run from four hours to eighteen, and the smoker isn't where most of that gap comes from. It starts with whether the brisket arrives already cured, and it doesn't always end when the smoke stops either.
Updated Sep 2026
Google's AI Overview puts a flank steak at 45 to 90 minutes. Jerkyholic gets there in 20. Traeger's own recipe runs a full 3 hours. Most of that gap is a fast reverse sear against a full smoke-through, which aren't the same cook. Traeger's number is the one that split doesn't explain.
Updated Sep 2026
Google's AI Overview times oxtail at 6 to 7 hours. Kamado Joe stops at 2 to 3. Neither one is wrong, because they're not timing the same thing: one counts the smoker phase alone, the other adds the covered braise that actually breaks down the tail's connective tissue.
Updated Sep 2026
Four sources give four different smoking times for a beef tenderloin at nearly the same pit temperature, a wider spread than this site found on prime rib, where weight explained almost everything. Tenderloins don't vary in weight nearly as much. What they vary in is shape, and none of the four sources say whether they accounted for it.
Updated Sep 2026
Ten to sixteen hours is the number most guides give for a whole brisket, but Google's own AI Overview contradicts its own math inside that range. This site had already measured the three moments responsible for the gap, the stall, the wrap, and the rest, in three separate pieces. This is the first one that adds them up.
Updated Sep 2026
Recipes for corned beef split into two camps: some stop at 2 to 4 hours and 165°F, others run 6 to 9 hours past 200°F. The gap is not a disagreement about doneness. A cure changes flavor and color, not collagen, and this cut still needs the same breakdown as a raw brisket.
Updated Sep 2026
Recipes for smoked jerky run from 2 hours on a hot pellet grill to 10 hours on a cool electric smoker loaded with thick slices. The spread isn't really about disagreement on temperature. Sliced this thin, the meat reaches chamber temperature in the first half hour. What takes the rest of the time is water, not heat.
Updated Sep 2026
Search how long to smoke short ribs and the times run from two hours to twelve for what looks like the same cut. Most of that gap has nothing to do with temperature. Butchers sell at least three different cuts under the name "short ribs," and only one of them is built to survive a smoker.
Updated Sep 2026