Meat smoking (wood chips) question

Maybe mount it sideways? That way the door will open to the side and be easier to work with. Make up some racks out of stainless and smoke it up. Lot's of interesting recipes online as well as in books. I have a neat list of wood/meat combos that work pretty good together. Some ideas

Sounds good, yes, I may mount it sideways if I weld on some hinges.

Thanks for the recipes too. I really like smoked meat (smoked by normal methods)

i

Here are the pictures

That should work pretty well. Make a stand to put it on and make a separate smoke box for it. Feed the smoke in from the bottom and put a pair of small damper vents on the sides and fire up the smoke. I would also mount a couple of thermometers on it. One on the bottom of the door and one on top. That way you can see what the heat/smoke is doing and control it better. Makes it easier to determine where to put bigger hunks of meat and where to place them for different smoking levels. Don't forget you can also smoke cheese in there as long as you keep it at lower heat and let it smoke a while. Apple smoked cheddar with some home smoked ham sliced on homemade bread..... MMMMMMM Oh the bread can be baked on a grill to keep the heat out of the house.

Well, I learn something new every day! I guess with the main thing I do being jerky, the lower temps work well for leaving the pieces in for about a day to get the desired level of cure. How long do you leave your meat in the smoker?

Jon

16 hours or so. Out of those, the smoke is actually produced for maybe 5 hours, the rest is just heat applied. i

This is just a guess, but you probably won't have the burner set to

250, but higher to account for heat loss. Some insulation will help.

You'll need to cut some holes to let out the smoke. Also, temperature will vary as you go up the box, so you might want to put in a couple of BBQ-style thermometers, one near the top, one a little further down.

As far as stopping the chips from catching fire, soaking them is as as far as I've ever gone. I'd think you could just raise then up a bit off the surface of the burner so it's a little cooler. I don't know, but I'd think covering the chips might produce an acrid/creosote smoke. On the BBQ groups they sometimes talk about "fresh" smoke being important, so you need to let some of the smoke out, and some air in.

You might think about putting a water pan in the bottom, above the burner and wood chips. Just like the bullet smokers... they do a great job keeping the everything moist, and help regulate the temperature a bit.

Just a suggestion -- you might try the alt.food.barbecue newsgroup, too. I'm sure there are at least a few BBQ makers there.

[I see I'm getting into this a little late, so some of these comments have already been addressed]

Jeff P.

(better pictures are at

Yes, that's right, I will set the burner set higher. The thermostat that I have is completely independent from the burner. It will turn the burner on and off based on temperature inside the enclosure. (it can be set at 90-250 degrees F)

maybe I should also add some circulating fan... The bad thing is that it would, to be fair, operate in quite hostile environment. The good thing is that the demands are very low. It can probably have the motor outside the enclosure, and the fan itself could be inside.

Good points, another poster also alluded to same thing.

Never heard of that newsgroup! Thanks!

Some, but not all, I appreciate your help!

i

Before you go to that trouble, consider offsetting the burner all the way to one end, and just adding a baffle between it and the main cook area to stimulate convection stirring of the air.

LLoyd

I'd bet a fan would do the trick, but I think it's something you could add after-the-fact. I think I'd add a chimny first, to help draw out the smoke. See if you can find a length of 1"--2" tubing or pipe and drill a hole to fit. If you make it so you can adjust how far down the pipe goes into the smolker you can control the heat a little more that way. The further down you shove the chimney, the more hot air collects at the top of the smoker (above the outlet for the chimney).

Oh, one thing I wanted to mention -- I'm not sure how food-safe those seals on the door are. You might want to replace them with a food-safe silicone gasket. I've used some of the high-temp stuff from the auto store, but it's more on the outside of my smoker.

I've been smoking food for about four years now. It's a lot of fun! Good luck with your new project. Let me know how it turns out!

Jeff Polaski