My name is Dee and I live in hot, humid Florida on the Space Coast. I had always wanted a smoker, but I knew that I'd never be patient and attentive enough to stand guard by a conventional wood smoker so I finally bought a Brinkmann Gourmet Electric a year ago from Home Depot (it's one of the fire engine red-colored bullet-shaped ones).
I only got to use it a couple of times before we left last year on our annual motorhome travels, but I loved the results. Since I couldn't find chunks of wood in my area, I was using some of the chips that I'd previously used in my cast iron smoking box on my gas grill. I used foil to create canoe-shaped containers to put my soaked wood chips into. I sat those between the electric heating elements, but made sure that they weren't touching the element itself. I was happy with how that worked, but wanted to branch out to using more than just the usual hickory and mesquite chips that I could get locally. Since my son in WA state had just purchased an auger-driven Traeger that he was getting fantastic results out of using the wood pellets, I decided to wait until we got out there during the summer to purchase some other flavors of chips/pellets/chunks. I figured that I could find a spot somewhere in the storage bays of the motorhome for a couple of bags of wood even if I couldn't fit my smoker in there to use during our trip.
Long story short...I ended up buying 20 # bags of Bear Mountain brand wood pellets to bring home. I got Cascade Alder, Sweet Cherry, Washington Apple and Smokehouse Maple. I LOVE the flavor that they give, but I'm still in sorta of a quandry on how to most effectively use them in the electric smoker. I decided to use the same foil "canoes" that I had used with the chips, but I very quickly learned not to use as many of them as I had with the chips. I ended up with a fire inside of the smoker because the pellets got waaayyy too hot.
Unfortunately, shortly after that fiasco I ended up having to have open heart surgery to replace my aortic valve so I've not yet tried smoking anything else. I just used the last pieces of the smoked salmon that I had done using the Alder pellets and want to smoke some more to take with us in the motorhome this summer.
Does anyone have a magic formula on the best amount of pellets to use in my Brinkmann?
Thanks,
Dee in FL
I only got to use it a couple of times before we left last year on our annual motorhome travels, but I loved the results. Since I couldn't find chunks of wood in my area, I was using some of the chips that I'd previously used in my cast iron smoking box on my gas grill. I used foil to create canoe-shaped containers to put my soaked wood chips into. I sat those between the electric heating elements, but made sure that they weren't touching the element itself. I was happy with how that worked, but wanted to branch out to using more than just the usual hickory and mesquite chips that I could get locally. Since my son in WA state had just purchased an auger-driven Traeger that he was getting fantastic results out of using the wood pellets, I decided to wait until we got out there during the summer to purchase some other flavors of chips/pellets/chunks. I figured that I could find a spot somewhere in the storage bays of the motorhome for a couple of bags of wood even if I couldn't fit my smoker in there to use during our trip.
Long story short...I ended up buying 20 # bags of Bear Mountain brand wood pellets to bring home. I got Cascade Alder, Sweet Cherry, Washington Apple and Smokehouse Maple. I LOVE the flavor that they give, but I'm still in sorta of a quandry on how to most effectively use them in the electric smoker. I decided to use the same foil "canoes" that I had used with the chips, but I very quickly learned not to use as many of them as I had with the chips. I ended up with a fire inside of the smoker because the pellets got waaayyy too hot.
Unfortunately, shortly after that fiasco I ended up having to have open heart surgery to replace my aortic valve so I've not yet tried smoking anything else. I just used the last pieces of the smoked salmon that I had done using the Alder pellets and want to smoke some more to take with us in the motorhome this summer.
Does anyone have a magic formula on the best amount of pellets to use in my Brinkmann?
Thanks,
Dee in FL
