One Man, One Pan: The Miracle Home Smoker; cheap, effective, easy…
10 July 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
As is my habit when I watch TV and there is nothing really on, I turn to the Food Network. I’m a “foodie” and love to cook – to me it is another creative outlet and I’m usually at my best when I’m involved with something creative and constructive. I like to watch real food pros inventively deal with ingredients. They alert me to new combinations I’d never thought about. One day last week I happened to catch a strange episode of Alton Brown’s show Good Eats. He is a strange combination of quirky chef, standup comedian, culinary wizard, Science Geek and food historian. In the particular episode I saw, he ran the voodoo down on meat smokers from a science and practicality vantage point. The subject of smokers may seem an odd choice for a fitness column, at first glance, however food plays a huge role in the fitness equation and to succeed we need break out of the love/hate relationship with food – which is really a love/hate relationship with taste. In order to break food habit-patterns, it is critical to develop a vast and virtually inexhaustible repertoire of recipes using foods that are nutritionally acceptable. The trick is to inject endless variety into a relatively narrow selection of foods. To succeed in altering your physique it is helpful to create genuine taste delights. Do so dieting is no longer problematic: the fitness battle in half won. One cool way to make meats, fowl and seafood taste succulent, subtle and delectable is to smoke them. Wood smoke applied to meat, fish and fowl, long, slow and using low heat infuses unparalleled flavor into the blandest cut. Slow smoking renders the final finished product tender and incredibly delicious. Over the years I’ve earnestly sought to recreate at home (even to a small degree) the amazing smoked cuisine I’ve sampled commercially. Until now it’s been nothing but fool’s gold. Last week Alton Brown explained in five minutes why all my home smokers were doomed before they started and why my frustrations and piss-poor results were to be expected. First and foremost: they were all made of metal and were inefficient and difficult to refuel.
*smoke needs to be thick, concentrated and consistent
*the best temperature for smoking is between 200 to 250 degrees.
*metal allows heat to escape through its surface
*propane emits chemicals that make smoking taste odd
*effective smokers are expensive – cheap ones are not effective
Brown’s solution was innovative and inexpensive, his home smoker solution was ingenuity cubed.
*purchase a large earthenware terracotta planter pot – mine measured 16-inches at the top
*purchase a 17-inch terracotta planter base – this is used as a lid. Price for both? $27
*purchase a 12-inch baking pan with high sides – this holds the hardwood - $3
*purchase a single burner electric hot plate – I got mine at WallMart for $8
*purchase a square wire rack and bend it into shape for holding meat – $6
*purchase a bag of hardwood, Home Depot - $8
*cooking thermometer, Home Depot - $8
Place the terracotta pot on two 2×4 or two bricks: this creates a gap under the pot. Set the hot plate in bottom of the pot and run the cord through the drain hole. Plug the hot plate into an outdoor extension cord. I run mine into the unheated garage gym. Turn the hot plate on and set it at ¾’s maximum temperature. Place the baking pan on the hot plate and place a goodly amount of hardwood in the baking pan. I use small slivers of hardwood and combined them with larger chunks. The little slivers get the smoke party started quickly and give the big chunks a chance to get rolling. Place the bent-to-fit wire rack into the pot: I purchased a lightweight wire rack from the kitchen supply bake accessory aisle at Wall Mart for five bucks. I bent it with my bare hands, no big deal. But then again I am a brute and bending things comes easy for me. I bent the square grate so the four corners touched and held when placed in the pot. Place the meat thermometer in one of the wire rack holes. Alton drilled a hole in the lid of his and sat the thermometer sensor into the newly created hole. Place the fish, shellfish, chicken, turkey, beef or pork on the rack and cover the whole deal with the 17-inch bottom. The top fits real nice. Within 10-minutes this weird contraption is generating wood smoke like crazy. The small internal chamber area allows a small amount of hickory; mesquite, apple or peach wood chips go a long way. The smoke is contained in this tight little container and the small chamber prevents the smoke from diffusing. Every hour take the top off and check the smoke. Replenish chips if necessary. Pull the rack out with the food cargo and set the wire rack onto the overturned smoker lid placed on a table adjacent to the smoker. I have found that one pan full of woods chips can go 2-3 hours without needing replenishment.
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