BiscuitoftheSea
Fire Starter
- Jun 10, 2019
- 59
- 21
I've been having pretty poor luck with putting wood directly in the hopper layered in with charcoal (lump or briquettes). It just isn't consistent. It seems best if you add say 4in+ of charcoal, then a few pieces of smoke wood, then more charcoal, then more smoke wood. This allows the wood to get up to temp and produce clean smoke by the time the heat and fire get to it. Problem is, if I'm smoking a steak, pork chops, etc. and I am only doing it for about an hour, I'm really not getting any of that wood on there as it hasn't reached the wood. When I put the wood lower, I get dirty smoke. Another issue is if you layer it in with one type of wood, and you don't burn through it all (like a short cook) and your next cook you want a different wood flavor, you are stuck with whatever was in the hopper. It isn't an easy process to remove everything.
To test a way to produce good smoke flavor and not have to deal with all that, I decided to load the hopper with one type of charcoal (just filled it up with charcoal briquettes - Kingsford Competition). Then I take all the medium sized pieces of charred wood / charcoal that are remaining in the ash bin from the last cook and pull them out and set them to the side. I toss the rest of the ash away and then put the stuff I had put to the side back in the ash bin. I then toss a couple fresh pieces of wood in the ash bin. After that, I light the main hopper with a firestarter square and throw a half of a firestarter square in the ash bin and light that. Give it about 2-3 min to heat up and then close everything down and let it heat up.
I did pork chops in it. Cooked them for about 50 min at 225. Temps held perfect as expected since I was using a full hopper of charcoal. The few times I checked on it, there was good smelling, clean smoke in the chamber. I checked the ash bin and everything was smoking well in there. Threw a couple more small chunks in at about 30 min in. Took the pork chops off and seared them on the Weber. Only seasoned with salt and pepper and the smoke flavor was strong and very tasty. No hint of dirty or weak smoke.
I think this is the way I will do it for now. If I run into issues, I might try the split in the hopper surrounded by charcoal, but this method allows the unit to be consistent because you aren't messing with the hopper and allows you to get good smoke flavor still.
To test a way to produce good smoke flavor and not have to deal with all that, I decided to load the hopper with one type of charcoal (just filled it up with charcoal briquettes - Kingsford Competition). Then I take all the medium sized pieces of charred wood / charcoal that are remaining in the ash bin from the last cook and pull them out and set them to the side. I toss the rest of the ash away and then put the stuff I had put to the side back in the ash bin. I then toss a couple fresh pieces of wood in the ash bin. After that, I light the main hopper with a firestarter square and throw a half of a firestarter square in the ash bin and light that. Give it about 2-3 min to heat up and then close everything down and let it heat up.
I did pork chops in it. Cooked them for about 50 min at 225. Temps held perfect as expected since I was using a full hopper of charcoal. The few times I checked on it, there was good smelling, clean smoke in the chamber. I checked the ash bin and everything was smoking well in there. Threw a couple more small chunks in at about 30 min in. Took the pork chops off and seared them on the Weber. Only seasoned with salt and pepper and the smoke flavor was strong and very tasty. No hint of dirty or weak smoke.
I think this is the way I will do it for now. If I run into issues, I might try the split in the hopper surrounded by charcoal, but this method allows the unit to be consistent because you aren't messing with the hopper and allows you to get good smoke flavor still.