This smoke flow makes them an easy and cost-effective way to get fantastic smokey flavors from your grill that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to. How to choose your smoker box For a gas grill, this means turning one burner all the way up. For charcoal, open up the vents to let in as much oxygen as possible. Should You Soak Your Wood Chips? If you're going to buy just one grill for barbecuing, Traeger's Pro 575 is a tank built to maintain perfect temperature and last well over a decade.

Cave Tools have been making high quality, specialist grilling equipment for years, so it stands to reason that this beauty sits at the top of my list. If you don’t want to buy a new smoker, load up a foil pan with the wood chips and cover the top grill lid with aluminum foil. Poke little holes in the aluminum foil for the smoke to escape, which makes for a good substitute for smoker boxes. You simply cut a hole in the side of the trash can so that the flex from the hot plate has somewhere to go. Cast iron: While less common and generally more expensive than stainless steel, there are some cast iron barbecue smoker boxes on the market. Cast iron is more durable than steel, and when properly cared for, it will last a lifetime. Cast iron heats slowly and retains heat better than steel, which can lead to a longer smoke time with fewer wasted chips or pellets. Cast iron can also be used on a wider variety of grills. Gas vs. charcoal Disposable smoker box — Used only once. It’s made of aluminum foil. You can even make it yourself with foil pans and aluminum foil lids with holes. These boxes use wood chips and should be placed straight over the burners.Place your food directly on the cooking grate over an unlit burner on your gas grill and close the lid. Wrap your wood pellets in foil until you have a pellet burrito. You then cut an air hole in the side of the lower pan and the top of the upper one. Put your started coals on the grate in the bottom of the pot and add the soaked wood chips. Place your food above it on a basic circular BBQ grill grate and pop the top pot on top to seal it. A decent rule of thumb is to fill the smoker box about half full with chips or pellets. Arrange them in a flat layer in the box so they receive even heat. With a half-full box, you won’t be wasting chips or pellets, and you will have the option of adding more later. A word of warning. Unlike the ugly drum smoker or the flower pot smoker, this is a complicated build that requires specialist tools, skills, and a fair bit of time.

Keep grilling gloves and tongs on hand. Any barbecue smoker box that you use is going to become extremely hot. Keep grilling gloves or tongs on hand in case you need to move or refill the box mid-smoke. When you are buying your drum, make sure it hasn’t been treated with an epoxy coating to prevent rust. The epoxy will not react well to being heated up, and the last thing you want is to be smoking your meat in toxic fumes.It took me a little under two hours to build this 250-pound grill; instructions were clear and all the holes lined up effortlessly. To season the grill, we sprayed it heavily with vegetable oil and got it cranking to over 400 degrees for an hour. Another consideration when buying a smoker box is the lid design. The lid should be tight-fitting so no extra air enters the smoke box. The lid should also be easy to open. You don’t want to struggle opening a heavy and hot lid while trying to add wood. Fill up slightly more than half of the smoker box with dry wood chips. One other way is adding wood chunks to allow it to burn more slowly and consistently.

Drill a hole in the bottom of the tank, then fill the entire tank with water through the valve to displace any remaining propane. When it’s entirely full, just let it drain out. Traeger, like many other brands, falls short in the way of accessories. Camp Chef's Woodwind WiFi series, which we also recommend, is modular; you can add on grill boxes, a 28,000 BTU side-burner (great for searing, boiling, and clam bakes), a pizza oven, and much more. The original builders suggest using a round metal plate and large water bowl above the wood fire to both protect the meat and retain and moderate the internal temperature. Basic materials needed Propane and natural gas grills are all kinds of convenient, but they don’t give you that authentic smoky flavor you get from charcoal and wood fires.

Sahara Barbecue Smoker Box

Never try to rinse the ash from a full smoker box, or you might end up with a box of very stubborn sludge on your hands. Keep ashes away from your drain to avoid clogging your pipes. Better to rinse out your mostly empty smoker box with the garden hose. That's thanks to the depth and shape of the kettle you can build a small charcoal bed on one side and set the grate on the other. This is most easily done with Weber's Char-Basket charcoal holders and a bit of aluminum foil as a heat deflector.