AusVarmint

No, not the filthy tobacco type...

I mean cooking type smokers.

Following on from BradY's thread:
viewtopic.php?f=62&t=21709

I would like to add a smoker to my backyard cooking arsenal. However I am a little confused on types and uses.

Could the guru's here possibly explain what types they use and what they are for?

Thanks

Rabz

The old man used and still does a 44 on 4 legs with door cut in the bottom and no lid. Small container with shavings sits above gas burner. Couple of mesh racks in it or run some spars in through drilled holes and through your fish eyes and out another hole to hang fish. Cover with ply and tarp. Still working great for fish chooks turkey lamb etc......

I "cheated" and went with the ALDI $199 special.

Step father was a butcher for 30 odd years and used to make all of his own smallgoods - so i pester him for brine and additive info.

Haven't had a failure yet, even cold smoking in it works well.

Im just using a standard weber charcoal grill. Google the snake method. Great for low n slow. The next step up is a Weber smokey mountain, pro q or even kamado style smoker. These are good as well, but capacity is limited similar to the weber. Im going to hit an offset smoker soon hopefully. Some are big dollars like yoder and other imported stuff from USA and some domestic models arent cheap either. But hark offer two models that are quite reasonably priced. Checked them out last weekend in perth. The hark tri fire is the entry level offset grill and is capable of some good cooks but apparently takes a bit to figure out. Capacity is a little more than the weber (not much though) They benefit of tuning plates made up to direct the heat across the chamber better, and some sealing around the door to keep heat in. They are only 2.5mm steel so quite thin. Where as the hark texas pro pit is another step up, bigger capacity, heavier duty and I believe doesnt need any work straight up. Its going to be what I start with in the world of offset smoking.

However the down side to offset smokers is they chew through wood. You can run charcoal and put sticks on it to help if you dont have much smoking wood around. Have a good research as to what woods suit what meats.

Managed to sneak 4 small cherry trees today from a friendly orchard near me. Hopefully will have a good stash of apple in a few months too. I have a big pile of jarrah too which goes nicely with beef.

Best smoker I’ve seen was made by an old pensioner mate, but even homemade, it was a ripper.

Made out of a 4 drawer pie warmer like the one below, that was found in a scrap yard for a few bucks (burnt out element). Like in the photo.....
Old mate cut a square hole in the floor of the piewarmer about 6 inches square. He fitted a couple of metal slides either side of the hole, so that he could slide a square cake baking tin (the type with the lip around the top edge) into the slides, and it would fit fairly snug, but not quite airtight. An old gas barby burner was fitted in a frame underneath the cake tin.

He knocked up four removable legs to support it, and drilled four ¼ inch holes spaced out along the top edge of the back of the pie warmer to let a little smoke out. He then mounted a Dee handle to each end so it could be carried easily.

The beauty of the setup was the drawers. They have stainless mesh in the bottom, but a solid back. When you checked the fish, you pulled the drawer all the way to the front, and lost very little smoke. And if you need more sawdust, you just slide the cake tin to the front, throw in more sawdust, and slide it back over the burner.

We used to take this smoker camping, and the legs, burner and cake tin all went inside the drawers for storage and it carried like a tool chest, so it was easy. And it worked really well.