I swung by Home Depot last night and on impulse and with a craving to try this out, I bought an electric smoker. All they carry are the cheapie Charbroil line of smokers and they only had a couple left of both the electric and wood/charcoal fired ones. I grabbed a bag of hickory chunks, some of those ceramic briquettes, and some other junk that I needed for the house. $60 for the smoker, $5 for the wood chunks, $12 for the briquettes, and $20 of house stuff.
Soaked the wood, assembled the smoker then placed the briquettes in and around the heating element (meant to temper the heat and provide a hot bed for the wood chips). I fired that baby up (plugged it in), set it to "medium", put in a couple handfuls of wood chunks, filled the water pan and let it run for an hour or so. The temp gauge in the lid didn’t get above 150° F but the water was boiling away and the wood was just starting to smoke so obviously the temp gauge is worthless.
I grabbed a meat thermometer and stuck it into the side of the smoker where the lower rack is. After a little wait, the thermometer was reading a bit over 200° F. The smoke was building with a nice hardwood aroma.
I monitored it for the next few hours and topped off the water twice. It seemed as though I went through water pretty fast, I put in 96 oz over 5 hrs or so. Oh well, it’s late so I let it run overnight and hit the hay. In the morning, it was still smoking along, the water pan was empty, and the thermometer was reading 300° F. Too hot, I know. I still need to get a feel for the settings on the temp controller and I haven’t played around with the vents yet.
When I set off for the maiden meat voyage, I’ll monitor it more closely and adjust the temp setting and vents until I get it right. After that I hope its “set it and forget it.”
Few questions:
1) What volume of smoke is desirable? At steady state, I had wisps of smoke/steam bleeding out from under the lid and access door. I’ve read that too much smoke will ruin the meat. How much should I be looking for?
2) I’ve also read that if your not burning the wood at the right temp you’ll get creosote build up - again ruining the meat. How do I tell if the wood is burning at the right temp? In the morning there were signs of creosote (tar like stuff) around the crack between the lid and body and also around the access door. Not too much but noticeable.
3)Is it normal to go through so much water?
4)Do you have a favorite quick smoking recipe that I can try? I’d like to do a small 6 to 8 hr smoking that I can start in the morning and have done by dinner time. Just as a trial run before I go for the overnighter.
I welcome any comments, criticisms, suggestions, tips…