Apr 25 2009
Making your Charcoal, or Gas grill into a smoker!
In my last blog I talked about charcoal vs, gas! Well, I’m going to talk about both of them again, but this time I want to talk about how to use either charcoal or a gas grill to smoke your foods if you do not have a smoker type grill. With a gas grill and depending on if you have a dual burner or just a single burner, The first step is to get a non burnable pan for water, something that will hold atleast a quart of water, aluminum pans work great and you will need two of them. The second one is for your wood for smoking, and you will want to add some water to this pan to keep your wood from burning into flames, we want some smoke and not another heat source.
For a single burner grill, we will need to cover the heat source from one side of the grill using again some aluminum foil or an old baking sheet or cookie sheet. You are going to take the grillrack off and set the aluminum foil or baking sheet and put it on top of the burner itself. Now with one of the aluminum pans for your water, you want to put this on the non heat source side of your grill. Place your grill rack back on and add your water to the pan. You are ready for the foods you are going to be cooking. Start your grill and heat it up, this should only take ten to fifteen minutes. If you have a dual burner grill you will only want to start just one side for a heat source, the non heat side is where you are going to place your food.
Depending on what portions of food you will be grilling will define how long and when to put your smoking wood on the grill. If you are having burgers, hot dogs or brauts, I like to start my wood smoking right away, so the smokey flavor has some time to get into the meat. If you are doing a ham, roast, brisket, ribs, or a pork loin, you would want to wait untill the last four hours or so to start adding your smoke. You don’t want your smoke to over come the flavor of your meat, you just want to add the taste of smokey flavor to it.
There are many kinds of wood for smoking, add what ever wood you would like to use like, apple, pecan, cherry, hickory, mesquite, maple, ash. Any kind of hardwood is ok, as long as it hasn’t been processed with chemicals. (treated wood, plywood, any cut from a factory) or you can add some of these together if you like. There are also special wood smoking boxes you can buy, to put your wood chips in.
Using charcoal grill is pretty much the same as a gas grill, You want all of your coals in a pile on one side of your grill, placing your aluminum pan of wood chips above of the coals. The pan of water goes on the other side of your grill next to the coals. The reason for adding water pan is to keep your meat full of moisture, and it won’t dry out your meat. It also catches the drippings from your meat, mixing with the water and adding more flavor from the spices you have added to the meat.
Temperature and water is probably the most important part of smoking. Check your grill every thirty to forty five minute intervals. Your temperature should be between 180 to 200 degree’s. If your water is getting low, these times are the perfect time to add water or more coals. How much coals to add? That is something that you will have to experiment with, it took me quite a while to get the knack on how much to add, so I wouldn’t get the heat up too hot, but you will get used to that, I’m sure. Keep the Coals HOT! and The Smoke Rollin!
