Cajun Microwaves - Ideas for Design and Build with Q-View

[walle]

Afternoon!
Had a user ask me some questions on my Cajun Microwaves - design, build, etc. Thought the rest of SMF land might be interested

Basically a Cajun Microwave can be built of anything with four sides and a lid!

Below are the pictures I took that show what I have used and a very ROUGH diagram at the end of the basic principle.

My smoker acted up on me last night, so I'm doing ribs in my small one right now.



My small CM


Smoke Box for small CM


Small fire for demo


Smoke Box inserted




Smoke coming up through chimeny


Shot of lid


Shot of inside - I set my grate on fire bricks in my sm CM.


different angel


Here's pictures of my big CM


Lid picts




Inside - I have two different shelves to adjust the rack up for small stuff - chicken thighs, legs, etc.



Smoke box - key to entire operation (second to lid)



Grate and lid


air slits on all four sides



hole in big CM for smoke box - I keep it plugged to keep the critters out.


smoke box installed


Hope this helps and gives you some ideas. These are really good contraptions. Biggest difference is that you have to turn your meat 1/2 to 2/3 through as all the heat comes from the top. I use charcoal for fuel, but if you have the wood and are in a location where you don't have to worry about the mess, wood works just as good. If you use charcoal, you have to scoop and get rid of the ashes every so often. I built an ash bucket using two metal five gal buckets. cut the bottom out of one of them and welded separated iron on the bottom. fits inside the other. you scoop ashes and coals into the top bucket, shake, and dump just hot coals back onto the lid. works really slick.

here's the diagram for my designs.



Enjoy!
Tracey

 

[carpetride]

The addition of the smoke box makes the machine.

Nice build...points for sharing!

 

[salbaje gato]

very nice build, i have used the chinese box with good results, and wanted to build one for myself.thanks for the pics.

 

[mballi3011]

It looks like a neat and cool contraption for sure there Walle and really is someting I would put right up your alley. I'm really like the way it works but how long are the smokes and how much fuel do you use cause with the fire open it seems like it would burn up pretty darn quickly to me.???

 

[dick bullard]

Boy oh boy....what a great looking machine and I do mean machine.....! Did you ever weight that thing....looks pretty hefty to me .....also makes me jealous.....if it cooks and smokes just half as good as it looks....you got a great thing going.....Rick

 

[walle]

It's a heavy SOB! that's why it has wheels

. Actually not to bad if pull the lid off and load separately.

Mballi - smokes are in the general range of 5 - 7 hours. Usually end up using around 1, 20lb of charcoal on a typical cook. Both are insulated refir's, so it is super efficient at holding the heat, and the addition of the smoke box also helps warm it up. Once up to temp 250'ish, it will hold that temp with a half a chimmeny of charcoal for a long time. The larger one actually takes less fuel than the small one. ??

Thanks for bumping this old post!
Tracey