Smoker grills are to the serious backyard barbecue enthusiast what power tools are to Tim "The Tool man" Taylor. Your backyard barbecues will become the talk of the neighborhood once you learn how to smoke meat the right way. Your hickory smoked chicken or mesquite smoked steaks will be not only in everyone's satisfied stomachs, but on everyone's lips come Monday morning at the water cooler. Forget the standard steaks, hot dogs, hamburgers and chicken on the grill top. Put smoked salmon on the menu and look out. We are talking about taking how to smoke meat to a whole new level.

If you can, get a combination grill, one that will let you grill your food the boring, traditional way, and give you the choice to smoke your food too. Traditional means grilling your meat over an open flame, using charcoal or a gas fire. But if you are going to learn how to use a smoker, you are going to have to heat up the fire box, put on your favorite wood -- hickory, oak, cherry, mesquite, to name a few -- and get to it.

These hardwoods, in the form of chips, are placed into the smoker's firebox. When burning, they produce specific flavors when absorbed by the meats being smoked. This not only gets your mouth salivating, but the flavor cannot be bested by regular grilling methods. What's nice about it is when you learn how to smoke meat; you learn that the fire never reaches the meat when it is being smoked. The downside of this aspect of how to use a smoker is that it takes longer for the meat to be ready to serve, but the upside is that none of the meat juices will cause fire bursts to reach up and blacken the meat, and your barbecuing reputation. The process of smoking generally takes about 3-5 hours for most meats, and up to 12 hours for larger cuts.

Another angle when learning how to smoke meat is that the heat from the smoker is lower. This means that you not only learn how to smoke meat, you can learn how to steam vegetables. What you end up with are vegetables that not only taste superb, but vegetables that keep all the good stuff in. All the nutrients stay with the vegetables. Good taste, and healthy for you to boot. When you learn how to smoke meat and vegetables, then you can move on to the more exotic eats like hickory smoked chili.

Part of learning how to smoke meat is learning how to choose the right smoker for your needs. There are several manufacturers, so you have many makes and models of smokers to choose from to learn how to smoke meat. They may not be low cost, but the investment in healthy eating, and tasty eating, is well worth the price you will pay to get just the right kind of smoker to learn how to smoke meat and vegetables, and anything else your healthy heart desires, all with less fat and cholesterol than with other grilling styles.