Smoking

[gblrklr]

I am considering purchasing a KK and I enjoy slow smoking different meats. One question that I have is how often will chips have to be added during a long smoke? I do like to keep the smoke "rolling." How difficult is it to add chips/charcoal during a long cook? Thanks in advance for any help.

[Curly]

I have a ceramic cooker of a different brand but the concept is similar. It's a very simple thing to throw in a few chips during a cook. The main grill has a part that lifts up just for that purpose.

By the way, welcome to the forum. Firemonkey is from down your way, might be a neighbor.

[Firemonkey]

Yep...FL is building a posse. Where in FL, gblrklr?

BTW, I have the same variety of cooker as Curly (soon to have a KK to go along with it). While it is easy to add chips/fuel via the hinged grates, I prefer to use chunks of wood. I mix them into the lump before I light the fire. If enough wood is intermixed with the lump coal, you will get contiuous smoke as the burn reaches it.

With long low and slow cooks, there is only a small amount of "fire" going on.

[gblrklr]

Firemonkey,

I am near Gainesville. Do you soak dry chunks in water?

[Firemonkey]

I have done it both ways, and honestly havent seen much difference. The difference between smoke and fire is simply limiting airflow. Even wet chunks will dry pretty quickly in a 225* environment. After an hour or so, its all dry anyway. To maintain the low temps, you are providing very little air, which also prevents actual fire from erupting. Even the dry wood just smolders.

At the end of a long cook, after I shut off the airflow, the wood which hasnt been burned yet can be pulled out and used next time. I toss them into a shallow dish under the grill. If it has rainwater in it, then I use wet chunks next time, otherwise I use them dry.

I usually do my longer cooks overnight, so I try to put enough wood and lump in there to keep from having to add more.

[TheNakedWhiz]

Drbbq says that he builds his fire by mixing chips throughout the entire load of charcoal. No need to add more if they are distributed throughout the fire to begin with....

[tcoliver]

I've always heard that the smoke will only penetrate the meat in the first 30 mins to an hour so there is no need to keep adding wood?

[Firemonkey]

FWIR, its a matter of temp, not time. That is, it will absorb more smoke when cold (opinions vary, I have heard up to 140*). I have seen some people actually place their meat in the freezer for about 30 minutes before hitting the grill to try to maximize the smoke time.

Personally, I think the longer the smoke hits it, the more flavor it picks up. Even just a little smoke for the last 30 minutes of a chicken roast can be tasted to some degree.

[Curly]

I've always heard that the smoke will only penetrate the meat in the first 30 mins to an hour so there is no need to keep adding wood?

That was what I heard also.

[ThreeDJ16]

FWIR, its a matter of temp, not time. That is, it will absorb more smoke when cold (opinions vary, I have heard up to 140*). I have seen some people actually place their meat in the freezer for about 30 minutes before hitting the grill to try to maximize the smoke time.

Personally, I think the longer the smoke hits it, the more flavor it picks up. Even just a little smoke for the last 30 minutes of a chicken roast can be tasted to some degree.

I am gonna agree with the monkey on this one. Otherwise there would be no such thing as cold smoking. Certainly temp would have to factor in.

-=Jasen=-

[leejp]

No soaking, Beginning of cook only...

I've experimented with many different ways to make smoke before settling on my present technique:

no soaking

begining of cook only

liberal amount of smoke wood

wrap wood in foil but leave a small opening

put wod on coals with openeing on top

This suits my lazy approach to que. Once the dome comes down it ain't opening until there's meat going in or out. I find that wrapping in foil keeps the smoke going a bit longer than just throwing the wood on the coals. The smoke dies off someplace between 100*~150* but I get the smoke ring/flavor I want with this approach.

[gblrklr]

I agree with Firemonkey too. If I am smoking, the smoke will be rolling from start to finish. Maybe it just makes me feel like I am more of a part of the cook, but I like to think it does make a difference.

The main reason I began the post was to get a feeling about how difficult it is to keep smoke going from start to finish with a KK.

I really appreciate all of the comments so far. What I can gather is that it would be necessary to add wood to a smoke if I wanted to keep it smoking for the duration. If I had the KK loaded, would it be difficult to add the wood?

[ThreeDJ16]

I agree with Firemonkey too. If I am smoking, the smoke will be rolling from start to finish. Maybe it just makes me feel like I am more of a part of the cook, but I like to think it does make a difference.

The main reason I began the post was to get a feeling about how difficult it is to keep smoke going from start to finish with a KK.

I really appreciate all of the comments so far. What I can gather is that it would be necessary to add wood to a smoke if I wanted to keep it smoking for the duration. If I had the KK loaded, would it be difficult to add the wood?

It is easy to add wood or charcoal. But it has been my experience, with ceramics, that if you place the wood properly (dispersed throughout the charcoal), you could easily have smoke as long as you have charcoal.

I love the hickory smoke so much I used to start a small fire with plenty of wood just to get the smoke in air when I sit on the porch in the fall. It was easy to keep it smoking for many hours.

Just curious, are you into cold smoking any (smoking 75-150)? That is another route you can go with ceramics since they are so well insulated. You just have an exterior smoke source pumping it in through the built in guru port.

-=Jasen=-

[Curly]

My wife thinks food smoked with lump is smokey enough...and I like it plenty so I've pretty much spared her all of the woodsmoke. I may have to sneak a little in there again to see what all the hulabula's about

[ThreeDJ16]

My wife thinks food smoked with lump is smokey enough...and I like it plenty so I've pretty much spared her all of the woodsmoke. I may have to sneak a little in there again to see what all the hulabula's about

I be quite honest, I think a little really goes a long way in ceramics. Seems like a couple of well placed pieces of hickory do more in a ceramic than a few pounds did on my old New Braunfels grill. I guess it has to do with the efficiency - being I also went through about 3 times as much charcoal on it too.

-=Jasen=-

[missing]

Cold smoke

isnt cold smoking defined as smoking below 100 F. it seems i heard that somewhere , but i cannot produce it. ???

what do you do to draw smoke thru your smoker, put a fan on the top with the damper out and pull smoke from an exterior source thru the unit. since it is sealed more or less it just drags the smoke thru and minimal heat. if so do you have any pictures of that setup. would work great with cheese and fish. i smoke salmon with grape wood, as low and slow as i can get it with only a few pieces of lump. nice effect on the meat.

some think if you have too much smoke you get too many of the undesireable Aromatic Hydrocarbons from the smoke, giving it that creosote taste to some. i think it also depends on how fast moving the smoke is going over your meat. good example of this is in lockhart, tx at smittys bbq. lots of smoke but fast moving and hot. just an observation.

[ThreeDJ16]

Re: Cold smoke

isnt cold smoking defined as smoking below 100 F. it seems i heard that somewhere , but i cannot produce it. ???

what do you do to draw smoke thru your smoker, put a fan on the top with the damper out and pull smoke from an exterior source thru the unit. since it is sealed more or less it just drags the smoke thru and minimal heat. if so do you have any pictures of that setup. would work great with cheese and fish. i smoke salmon with grape wood, as low and slow as i can get it with only a few pieces of lump. nice effect on the meat.

some think if you have too much smoke you get too many of the undesireable Aromatic Hydrocarbons from the smoke, giving it that creosote taste to some. i think it also depends on how fast moving the smoke is going over your meat. good example of this is in lockhart, tx at smittys bbq. lots of smoke but fast moving and hot. just an observation.

The book I have actually defines it as below 85 degrees, but I can find numerous source all with different temps. I generally refer to it as the temp your normal smoker/grill cannot achieve. There is a little German meat store down the road from my house who has a cold smoker (I do welding for him time to time). Some recipes has him barely introducing smoke for days at the time and others have him pouring on the smoke with the electric elements to get it hotter. So it would just depend on your recipe. Side note - he makes the best salami I have ever eaten!

My setup is a stainless container with a screen tube inside for the smoke sawdust. It has a port on the bottom at the side to attach my guru and a port at the top on the other side to tie into the guru port. I been meaning to take some pics but I keep forgetting - I'll put it on the schedule - hehe. Others I have seen or heard of use a smoky joe or other small grill along with a length of hose to connect the top of the small grill to the guru port on the ceramic grill. Then you just build your smoke fire and crack the top of the ceramic grill. Convection would carry it, but the guru makes a nice booster.

I don't know about the belief that slow moving smoke is bad. There are numerous cold smokers on the market that hardly have any air change overs. They use that as a selling point for more moist food - I don't know for sure since I have never used them, but doubt they would sell very well if they produced soot on food. I think you would only get creosote if you were trying to use conifer as the smoke wood.

Just my 2 1/2 cents (inflation)

-=Jasen=-

[Porkchop]

I've never cold-smoked, BUT...

regarding creosote and VOC's, i would think that if you gave the smoke opportunity to cool before it reached the food (ie, run it over/past something cold, or thru some conduit of some kind), that those things would condense out of the smoke before it reached your food. like distilling wood alcohol or something.

other input? am i way off here?

[Porkchop]

Additional thought...

yknow, that guru port could be used to connect some flexible conduit from say, a smokey joe or a couple ceramic pots (ala AB) with a hotplate and some chips/sawdust. open that upper draft on the KK all the way to get a nice draw, and you've got fast moving smoke that gets cooled by its trip thru the conduit. you could even put a big steel bowl of ice in the bottom of the kk if that wasn't cool enough as is. could be a nice jerky setup too!

[Sanny]

Not that I'd ever have seen such a thing, or even heard about it (of course), but might there be some way to set it up in the manner of a ::ahem:: bong? Such that the smoke went through the water before it went into the ceramic cooker? Dunno how one would create a draw, though, to get the smoke to go where one wanted.

Perhaps an exhaust fan in a closed tube, with one end of the tube above the water, other end in the ceramic cooker, to draw the smoke out of the burner, through the water, and push it into the ceramic cooker?

Somewhat different from a Bic and a mayo jar, I grant you... But the principle is about the same.