Category: personal

I’ve owned my unit since ear­ly 2020 as a new­bie smok­er get­ting the cheap­est (mean­ing thin met­al, bad joints and seams) smok­er I could find and also being the light­est smok­er for my ele­vat­ed deck. After some shoring up of said seams, etc, I’ve kept it around and quite enjoy smok­ing meats.

Unlike more auto­mat­ed smok­ers, this smok­er requires more atten­tion whilst cook­ing. Here are some notes for my future ref­er­ence and if it will help any­one.

Smok­ing in the winter/cold weath­er

• More fuel need­ed
• Longer cook­ing time (almost dou­ble or triple depend­ing on the weath­er) because it’s a fight to increase temps
• Help­ful to have some­thing to help retain heat (e.g. thermal/ weld­ing blan­ket, large sheets of met­al or the like set around the unit to reflect heat back)
• Small­er char­coal pieces burns hot­ter and faster than larg­er pieces for quick­er temp increas­es

Smok­ing in summer/hot weath­er

• Faster cook­ing time
• Less fuel need­ed
• Help­ful to have shade over the unit like a patio umbrel­la to help with sun-dri­ven tem­per­a­ture increas­es.
• More large chunk char­coal (slow­er burn so won’t dri­ve temps high quick­ly) than small pieces (burn hot and fast)

Tem­per­a­ture con­trol

• Clos­ing inlet and out­let will starve the oxy­gen and decrease tem­per­a­ture
• Open­ing inlet and out­let will increase oxy­gen, increas­ing tem­per­a­ture
• Clos­ing out­let and open­ing inlet can cause cre­osyte which makes food bit­ter
• Open­ing the out­let and min­i­miz­ing the inlet caus­es a vac­u­um that draws more air through caus­ing temp increase
• Ful­ly clos­ing all vents puts out char­coal (although that takes a long time)
• Open­ing of door or fire­box decreas­es tem­per­a­ture
• Though not rec­om­mend­ed, open­ing and leav­ing the door par­tial­ly closed will keep the tem­per­a­ture from going too high (had to do because I put way too much char­coal in for the sum­mer and I have noth­ing to store extra burn­ing char­coal in. How­ev­er, it changes the cook­ing and taste)
• Try not to freak out when the tem­per­a­ture goes too high or too low because open­ing and clos­ing the doors will cause the tem­per­a­ture to be all over the place. Fid­dling with the vents will allow the temps to rise and fall more grad­u­al­ly

Gen­er­al Notes

• Make sure to clean cook­ing grates often as left­over debris goes ran­cid, can mold, and affect not only safe­ty of food (smok­ers oper­ate at low tem­per­a­tures cre­at­ing ide­al con­di­tions for ther­mophilic bac­te­ria) but taste of the food too (Blech, sad­ly, from expe­ri­ence).
• Lin­ing the bot­tom of the smok­er with foil helps catch drip­pings
• The floor of my fire­box and under the soot tray are def­i­nite­ly rusty out from rain and mois­ture, despite use of Dyna-Glo’s cov­er
• Built-in ther­mome­ter is only an indi­ca­tor and not accu­rate
• Using a water bath can be help­ful to keep more mois­ture in the meat. I place a small foil loaf pan with water on the floor of the cook­ing side. You can add juice to it, just be care­ful because it can change the fla­vor of the meat. I used too much apple cider vine­gar once from a recipe and it gave every­thing a sour taste/smell
• I also placed a fire brick on the floor of the cook­ing side because it sup­pos­ed­ly helps with more con­stant heat dis­si­pa­tion? I’ve been using it since the begin­ning, so I can’t say if it is use­ful or not.
• Wood chips
  • I’ve found through time that my fam­i­ly and I don’t like heavy smoke on the food. In my opin­ion, less is more.
  • Some peo­ple ral­ly against it, but I like to soak my chips before use. Has a side bonus of slight­ly reduc­ing tem­per­a­ture when it’s wet
  • Apple and Pecan have a nice, light fla­vor
  • Cher­ry also has a nice fla­vor, but will give the meat a red col­or, too
  • Hick­o­ry is strong, so less used the bet­ter
  • Mesquite is very strong. Less is def­i­nite­ly bet­ter. I per­son­al­ly don’t like to use it.
  • My favorite wood chips fla­vors (the ones I keep going to every time) are apple and pecan.

Use­ful Items

• Heat gloves
• Wire­less ther­mome­ter with mul­ti­ple probes
• Sunglasses/safety glass­es (smoke in your eyes is not par­tic­u­lar­ly fun)
• Foil loaf pan for water bath
• Weber lighter cubes
• Chim­ney starter
• Large chunk lump Kama­do char­coal
• Nor­mal lump char­coal that con­tains small­er pieces
• Met­al pail with secure lid to respon­si­bly place char­coal waste
• Fire bricks
• Grate scrub­ber and clean­er
• Wood chips
• My safe­ty fea­tures:
  • Pro­tec­tive mat under smok­er (like an Ember Mat) espe­cial­ly if using on wood deck
  • Heat shield on top of pro­tec­tive mat to pro­tect deck from heat and reflect it back at the smok­er
  • Old pans to help catch tiny pieces of burn­ing char­coal when pour­ing into fire­box
  • Mini, round, portable char­coal grill to hold chim­ney starter
  • Safe­ty glass­es
  • Heat gloves
  • Long tongs