Meat Smokers - Smokers for Meat, Smoked Meat

Meat and Food Smokers

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What is hot smoking?
What is a meat and food smoker?
How to build a meat and food smoker?
How does a meat and food smoker work?
How to smoke meat and other food?
These are the questions this page will answer.

What is a meat smoker?
A meat smoker is a device that imparts the smoked flavor of wood into the meat. A barbecue grill is the most common. However, the gas barbecue grills, electric barbecue grills and charcoal barbecue grills of today don’t do much to smoke meat because they don’t use real wood smoke in cooking. The idea is the same if the wood smoke were present. A meat smoker cooks meat slowly while wood smoke surrounds the meat. The flavor of the wood begins to penetrate the meat giving it a great and unique barbecue flavor. The penetrating of the wood smoke also helps cure the meat as in beef jerky. The difference between a meat smoker and barbecue grill of today is that a meat smoker cooks meat over smoking wood. Any barbecue grill can be used as a meat smoker by attaching a SmokePistol or GrillKicker™ to the barbecue grill and cooking the meat on very low heat.

How to build a meat smoker?
How to make a smoker is simple. Basically, a meat smoker is nothing more than a box. An insulated box would be better. A meat smoker can be made out of metal, wood or even cardboard especially for cold smoking cheese. This is because to smoke meat you cook it at a low temperature, approximately 220? F. Therefore, you don’t have the problem with the meat smoker burning up as long as your heat source is not too hot. The best heat source for your meat smoker is an electric element. That is because it is very controllable and constant. When smoking meat you should keep the temperature constant and that is why it helps to have an insulated box for the meat smoker. The next thing you need is a moisture source. When smoking meat you should keep the meat you are smoking moist. Basting helps but causes the cooking temperature to drop, so placing a pan of water inside the meat smoker will help keep the meat moist while smoking. This pan of water should be between the heat source and the meat racks but not too close to the heat. You don’t want to boil the water because you will have steamed meat instead of smoke meat. The racks for holding the meat while smoking, can be barbecue grill racks, barbecue skewers, or wire mesh. The meat can be smoked while laying on the racks or hanging inside the meat smoker. The last and most important thing you need for you meat smoker is a source of wood smoke. The SmokePistol and GrillKicker™ have been designed for this purpose. They are both designed to deliver the constant stream of real wood smoke necessary for smoking meat. The SmokePistol will deliver a constant stream of real wood smoke to your meat smoker for about 4 hours on a single cartridge and the cartridges can be purchased in 9 of the right wood flavors.

How does a meat smoker work?
So how does a meat smoker work? Very simply, what a meat smoker does is to cook meat very slowly in a moist smoky environment. As the meat cooks, the smoke inside the meat smoker the smoke from the wood covers the meat and seasons the outside of the meat. As the temperature of the meat increases the meat cooks and the seasoning deposited on the outside of the meat from the wood smoke is absorbed into the meat giving it the great barbecue flavor.

How to smoke meat and other food?

The SmokePistol and GrillKicker™ have made smoking meats and other food very easy.
Smoking food is divided into two categories, hot and cold smoking. Traditionally, hot smoking, which is also referred to as barbecuing has been accomplished by cooking food over burning wood. The burning of the wood creates both the heat necessary for cooking and the smoke from the wood creates the flavor. With the mass migrations of people into the cities the art of cooking over wood was lost. The wood was replaced with charcoal because it was lighter in weight and then charcoal was replaced with gas and electric. Neither charcoal, gas or electric provide any flavor to the cooked meat or other food. The SmokePistol and GrillKicker™ have brought this back by making a source of smoke quick, easy, neat and convenient and when used with a heat source like charcoal, propane or electric the real barbecue flavor is back.

The SmokePistol and GrillKicker™ can also be used for cold smoking. Cold smoking is the placing of meat or other food into a smoky environment for an extended period of time, 2 - 12 hours, without heat. The food is flavored by the smoke but not cooked. Smoked bacon, sausage and smoked cheese are some examples. For further details on hot and cold smoking please see our Smoked Favorites page.