Website design By BotEap.comThe first smoker I bought was a shoebox smoker at the Ideal Home Exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham. I took it home, managed to smoke some sausage (with reasonable success) and some duck breast (with less success) and then for some reason that was it.

Website design By BotEap.comI think part of the problem was that my shoebox smoker was a bit primitive, didn’t really have a recognized recommended heat source (I used a camp stove burner), and to some degree I didn’t know what I was doing.

Website design By BotEap.comThat being said, I’ve been a lifelong grill enthusiast and I love cooking outdoors, so when I started reading more about grilling and understanding the differences between what Americans call barbecue (hot smoking) and Europeans we call BBQ (basically grilling), I became enthralled with not only learning how to smoke, but also building my own smoker, something a little bigger than a shoebox I hasten to add.

Website design By BotEap.comSo what is the basic principle of smoking?

Website design By BotEap.comConsider a kitchen oven running at 225 Fahrenheit with meat on the top shelf and a water bath below, essentially slow roasting in a humid environment. That’s all plus a bit of smoke, the challenge of course is using the same heat source to create the smoke that provides the heat and making sure there is a continuous supply of both.

Website design By BotEap.comThat’s the traditional way, in most modern hot smokers you may find that the power (heat) supply for the food chamber is separate from the power supply for making the smoke. This will arguably make everything easier to control and therefore your results will be much more consistent, but you might be put down by the purists.

Website design By BotEap.comWhat is needed to create smoke?

Website design By BotEap.comEither wood chips burning on a hot plate or wood smoke (this can be directly from burning logs or wood chips in a charcoal fire). It doesn’t get any simpler than that, other than you need to keep the smoke flowing, as there’s nothing worse than cooking with stale smoke.

Website design By BotEap.comIt is here that we come to the absolute basic principle of the smoker, a vent by the fire and a chimney vent above the food chamber. The hot air rises, thus creating a draft that allows the smoke to continuously pass over the meat. The clever thing is that this draft also provides air to the fire, making it hotter, as it heats up the draft flows faster and the fire gets even hotter. Therefore, careful control of these two vents controls the supply of smoke and the amount of heat.

Website design By BotEap.comThat’s all about it. No matter what your smoker is made of, whether you made it yourself or made for the best price, the basic principle of how a smoker works is exactly the same. Of course, there is much more to smoking meat for competitions etc, but if you can keep a moist food chamber at a constant 225 Fahrenheit and pass smoke through it, then you have the basic meat smoking skills required.