How To Select A Food Smoker

By Author: nicksmith
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When considering a smoker you should first think in terms of both hot smoking and cold smoking food. Once you start smoking food you will want to do some cold smoking as well as hot smoking.

Size

The first thing to consider is the size of your food smoker. This will depend on how much meat or other food you want to smoke at one time. As the meat smoker size increases slightly the amount of food or meat you can smoke increases greatly. A good household meat smoker is about 18” X 24” X 36”. Don’t go too much smaller than this nor do you need a food smoker that is much larger unless you are smoking a lot of meat.

Insulation

Insulation of the smoker walls is an important factor for a meat smoker that is often overlooked. The reason most department store type food smokers do not have insulation is because it makes them more expensive. The insulated walls of a food smokers help retain the heat and can also help keep out the heat when cold smoking. Another advantage of an insulated meat smoker is that the heat stays consistent. ...
... When hot smoking, the most important things are consistent heat and consistent smoke. When cold smoking, the insulation helps keep the temperature inside the food smoker cold thus addressing the concerns of food safety.

Heat source

The heat source for a food smoker is only important for hot smoking food. The heat source can be electric as in electric smokers, gas, as used in gas smokers or charcoal. Electric food smokers provide the most controllable heat but should be insulated because the electrical heating elements do not provide as much heat as charcoal. Gas meat smokers can be larger because of the heat output of gas but generally the gas heat source is not as controllable as electric smokers. Charcoal food smokers are the most difficult to control the temperature on. They are the least expensive to build.

Smoke source

The most important thing in a food smoker is a consistent and controllable smoke source. The smoke is what flavors the food and the amount of smoke as well as the smoking duration are the key to great smoked flavor in food. The amount of smoke is difficult to control when using wood chips because all the wood will smoke at once then go out. There will be lots of smoke for a short period of time and then none. When the smoke stops the wood heats up and this throws the temperature off. In most cases the smoke source problem can be solved by adding a SmokePistol to the smoker. The SmokePistol® will deliver consistent smoke into the meat smoker for the whole food smoking session and the amount of smoke is controllable. The SmokePistol® can also be used when cold smoking food because the smoke output is a cool source of smoke.

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