How come my MOSFET was a "smoking", I thought it was rated high enough.

No one seems to have mentioned it, but your driver ckt is completely wrong.

You do not bias MOSFETs the same way you bias BJTs. A Darlington ckt is
wired as it is to increase the base-current drive into the 2nd BJT, ie IC1
becomes IB2.

What you need to do with n-MOSFETs is make the gate-source voltage large
[ie, typically 10V plus]. With your ckt, you are actually losing gate-source
voltage for your 2nd MOSFET.

  1. as others mentioned, try a logic-level MOSFET, eg IRL540, where you'll
    get a good turnon with Vgs=5V.

  2. go look up how to design a proper MOSFET driver.