Smoking Meat in Oven with Wood Chips

writ­ten 3/4/2024

Background

I want­ed to try using smok­ing wood chips inside of the house because I did­n’t want to pull out the smok­er and the chim­ney starter, etc, and I just want­ed to imbue smoke in half of a chick­en. After an exten­sive online search on pages over­run by adver­tise­ments and liq­uid smoke, I decid­ed to just wing it. Here are my notes:

So, is it Possible?

In a word: yes. If you don’t mind your house smelling like a smoke­house for a few days

**WARNING: Please exer­cise cau­tion when deal­ing with fire, open flames, and char­coal. Have heat rat­ed gloves, oth­er fire pre­cau­tions, tongs, etc. When deal­ing with char­coal, have a ves­sel or means to starve it of oxy­gen, and a fire extin­guish­er. ALWAYS make sure to dis­pose of refuse prop­er­ly**

Materials

Equipment

XL Toast­er Oven with 2 racks

Meat ther­mome­ters

Attempt Process

• What’s need­ed is some­thing that will con­tin­u­ous­ly burn the wood chips
• I decid­ed NOT to soak the wood chips (I quit soak­ing my wood chips for the meat smok­er to begin with) because I’ve found that the smoke from wet wood is dif­fer­ent from dry wood smoke, chang­ing the taste. Plus, wet wood cre­ates steam (This could be use­ful if you want it, but is eas­i­ly achieved with just a small bath of water or apple juice) and we’re try­ing to keep the wood light­ed in the oven.
• I tried fire starters bro­ken up into small pieces under the wood chips, but those fiz­zled out real­ly quick­ly. Even try­ing to keep them smol­der­ing by blow­ing on them was­n’t enough to light the wood chips despite them being real­ly small (they were cock­tail smok­ing chips)
• That’s when I real­ized that the foil-lined cook­ing dish I was using had no air flow what­so­ev­er to main­tain a flame. Even the BIC flex­i­ble lighter I was using kept going out while I was try­ing to light things
• I tried light­ing sin­gle pieces of smok­er chips and then set­ting that into the pile, but that kept going out and it was sur­pris­ing­ly hard to light them on fire to begin with. They would bare­ly char even though the fire starter mate­ri­als burned strong­ly around them
• Con­sid­ered whether or not hav­ing an open, uncon­trolled flame in the oven was a smart idea, any­ways. Came to the con­clu­sion that even if I did suc­ceed in light­ing wood chips, it is not a good idea, so then a con­trolled flame would be nec­es­sary
• So, what’s need­ed: a con­tin­u­al burn source that would not be an open, uncon­trolled, flame… sounds quite a bit like: char­coal

With­out Char­coal

These were my many attempts to light the smok­er chips with­out char­coal and only fire starters. No suc­cess. Note the fire­proof mat and foil cov­ers

With Char­coal

Added the char­coal pieces and they’re suc­cess­ful­ly smol­der­ing. You can see how after 20 min­utes of try­ing, none of the smok­er chips were even charred from the firestarters

• End­ed up plac­ing a few small char­coal pieces  on top of the fire starters and wood chips
• Made sure to get them ashed over out­side so that the strong char­coal black smoke would not affect the meat so much
• Placed alu­minum foil over­top the small bak­ing dish with holes large enough for con­vec­tion air flow to con­tin­u­al­ly feed the burn­ing char­coal, but then too-small holes just put out the flame instead. The foil also keeps any pos­si­ble arch­ing flames in check
• Imme­di­ate­ly, smoke emanat­ed from the toast­er oven, so made sure to open win­dows enough to cre­ate a cross­wind. Smoke detec­tor did not go off! Sur­pris­ing­ly!
• Meat DID have smoked taste, espe­cial­ly on the parts clos­er to the exte­ri­or of the meat, and because the low and slow smok­er cook was employed halfway through the bake, much of the inte­ri­or was quite soft, espe­cial­ly on the breast por­tion of the chick­en
• Caveat: The house smelled heav­i­ly like a smok­er for sev­er­al days
• Fig­ured out lat­er that only 1 of the 2 pieces of char­coal I used had stayed lit which explains why that side of the chick­en was more smoked than the oth­er

What the small dish looked like the next day after every­thing cooled. You can see how every­thing around the spent piece of char­coal burned and there­fore smoked. The right side had a piece of char­coal that did not suc­cess­ful­ly stay lit yet did man­age to char the sur­round­ing wood chips. Con­se­quent­ly, the left side of the chick­en had a far stronger smoke fla­vor than the right side

Directions

These direc­tions are not to cook it ful­ly like a smok­er, but rather just give it the fla­vor of smoke. You are wel­come to add the smoke in incre­ments, or as short or as long as you’d like. The key is to start the char­coal to light the wood chips, just like in a smok­er.

Dis­claimer: While I used a toast­er oven, I don’t know how or if using char­coal inside of one would cause dam­age

• Start heat­ing up the meat in the Toast­er Oven with meat ther­mome­ters to mon­i­tor the temps
• Use 2 racks, plac­ing the meat on the upper one
• I used half a chick­en at 350F
• After about 15 min­utes or so, pre­pare a small, thick bak­ing dish by dou­ble lin­ing it with foil (prefer­ably cast iron, or thick ceram­ic, not glass)
• Go out­side, pre­pare a fire-safe sta­tion to start a fire (I use a fire­proof blanket/mat made for under­neath fire pits, had my heat gloves handy, some tongs are smart, and foil not only to cov­er, but to smoth­er in case it goes crazy)
• Place some fire starters (pulled apart tum­ble weeds, bro­ken up starter cubes, or what­ev­er) on the bot­tom and place a few small pieces of char­coal over top.
• Light up the fire starters
• When the char­coal is burn­ing (when you blow on it you’ll see it is red) and has a nice white ash on top, throw your chips on top of the burn­ing char­coal
• Poke some big holes into a foil sheet for smoke, fire con­trol, and air­flow to the coals. Too small and you’ll put out your fire
• After around 30 min­utes or when the meat reach­es around 100F, low­er the tem­per­a­ture to 250F
• Cov­er your smok­ing dish with the holey foil, put on your heat gloves, and place the dish on the bot­tom rack under the meat
• OPEN YOUR WINDOWS if you haven’t, ide­al­ly cre­at­ing a cross­wind through the house to help the smoke you’re cre­at­ing and will cre­ate when you open the oven door
• Mon­i­tor the cook for sev­er­al min­utes.
• When it’s about 10–15 degrees from being done, remove the smok­ing dish, and increase the tem­per­a­ture of the oven again
• SAFETY: Bring the smok­ing dish over to your fire sta­tion and cov­er it with a larg­er bak­ing dish to smoth­er the fire. I placed my small dish on an alu­minum roast­ing pan, and then the larg­er dish on top of that
• Once the meat reach­es done­ness, let it rest before eat­ing
• FIRE SAFETY: Make sure to allow every­thing in the dish to cool down for sev­er­al hours, and then dis­pose of prop­er­ly!! Do not just throw char­coal in the trash! You can cause a fire even hours lat­er!!!

ENJOY!