Different Meats and Cooking Times

I am fairly new to "smoking" but already have had some small success with salmon fillets and a few small cuts of meat I want to get a bit more adventurous and cook larger meals, i.e. for a family party but have a few questions that hopefully someone can answer for me.

I am wanting to cook 2 legs of lamb, 2 chickens and around 15 small salmon fillets. They obviously will all have different cooking times and normally in a conventional oven need to be added at different times. Do I just add them into the smoker as and when or is there some way I can arrange the food so it cooks all together. I have heard that opening the smoker will add around 15 minutes to the cook time each time its opened. I am assuming they will all need adding and I need to adjust my cooking times.

After reading through a lot of the forum here I was anticipating the following cooking times assuming a temp of around 225F. Lamb 5 hours so its only slightly pink, Chickens 3 1/2 hours, Salmon 1 hour. Does this sound about right, obviously will check with a thermometer before removing

The next question is do the cooking times alter the more food you are cooking. Example, does it take longer to cook 4 legs of lamb than it would do to cook 1.

Any help and advice would be truly welcome.

I have a ProQ Frontier, if that makes any difference.

Andy

Hi Andy. Welcome to the forum.
Your times seem about right. There is no other way, that I can think of, to avoid putting on the different meats at different times.
You will have to be careful to avoid cross contamination.
The amount of meat cooked at one time does not alter the overall cooking times by too much, but as you say it is best to check the temps of the meats.

Thanks Mack.

Will be having a trial run this weekend with 1 leg of lamb, 1 chicken and a few bits of salmon.

Will let you know how it goes.

Andy

So here is the 1st Leg of Lamb

http://www.flickr.com/photos/53003652@N03/4891323913/

Leg of lamb, pierced in lots of places and cloves of garlic inserted into piercings. Couple of storks of Rosemary on top and smoked at 225F for about 5 hours till internal temp was 165F ( I wanted 155F but its “not allowed to bleed or go Baaaaaah”). Oak chips from Jack Daniels whiskey barrel in the smoke box directly on the coals.

How did it taste? Lets just say, 6 diners and there was nothing left on the bone for the poor dog.

Chicken and Salmon tomorrow

Andy