Char-Broil Electric Smoker

[jgatoriv]

Long time griller, first time smoker. Found a never used char-broil h20 smoker in GF's garage and decided to give it a new home. It is the older version without the door on the side and the "thermometer" which reads "ideal" for whatever temp range. I put a 8 pound pork shoulder on last night at 2am thinking it would take 12 hours or so. It seemed to cook a lot faster and i took it off after 11 hours. I know i need to get one of the digital thermometer probes, but what else should i do to make this sub-par smoker better? I put the soaked wood chips in a pie tin and placed directly on the elements, but it got so hot that even the pie tin burned. Im sure im not the first to ask for advice with this smoker, but i was getting confused searching for old threads so i would appreciate any help.
thanks

 

[teleburst]

Soak your wood chips and roll them up in tin foil. Poke some holes in it with a skewer. You don't need a lot in each bundle - they should end up being about the size of a softball. Toss a couple of them in at the beginning. Even if they hit the element, it shouldn't be too bad. You don't have much surface area directly in contact with the hot element, since they are spheroid.

This worked for me with the Brinkmann, so I'm not familiar with this particular smoker, but it looks similar to what I have.. My Brinkmann seemed to cook pretty fast too, so I'm going to experiment with opening the feed door and cracking the lid. Since you don't have a door, you might open the top of it until you find the right amount of heat bleed-off. I wouldn't worry about losing smoke, because you can always add more "softballs". I had plenty of smoke flavor when I used my Brinkmann sealed up, but I'm sure I could have added more wood chips foil balls to compensate for the open top.

Hope this helps.

 

[smokin out the neighbors]

That's some fancy talking. I always called them ball shaped.

 

[laughingpanther]

You should replace the temperature indicator (warm, ideal, hot) with a real thermometer and put in a vent. If you have more money than time, you can get a machine shop to make these modifications for you. If you would rather do it yourself, it might look a little homemade, but you would save money. These two mods would improve the performance of the smoker and insulater blankets for the cold season would help.