Making a home made smoker

If you like smoked foods, there is the option of buying a smoker already, at high cost, or you can easily make one yourself from simple bits and pieces at home.

Depending on what you want to smoke, will determine the size of the smoker you need. Most people like to smoke roasts or chickens, so it makes sense to make a smoker of a size that can handle a decent size piece of food.

I'll start with the easiest smoker to make, which makes use of a barbeque burner to supply the heat. You can make this smoker for use indoors, but as you will find, without adequete ventilation you might smoke the house out!

All you need to do, is to get hold of a large stainless steel roasting pan set, with a lid that fits well. Inside, all you need is a stainless wire tray that sits above the bottom of the pan, about an inch and a half or 2 inches above the bottom. On the bottom of the pan, under the rack, you sprinkle the sawdust, to provide the smoke. Sitting the whole lot over the BBQ burners, with the chosen meat or food on the rack, provides a great hot smoke experience. One dish that ive found work a treat, is the fullsize 'bain marie' dishes, around 8lt in capacity each. Two of these stacked on top of each other works great. You may find you need to space them out a little in the middle, to allow the smoke to disperse.

The second method that I use for a home smoker is based on a using a benchtop oven, one of the smaller 20-25litre ones.

These can be picked up really cheap and are great for a home smoker. I always look for ones with full controls, ones that you can activate the bottom element only, indepedant of the top element. If you have one you would like to use, that functions both elements, you may need to unplug or disconnect the top element. Its easy to do. The reason for only having the bottom element going, is that you only want to power the smoke tray, and dont need to heat the oven too much, which is what happens if you have the oven on grill or have the top element on.

The other modification I do, is to dissconnect the thermostat if its one that cuts in to much. You ideally want a element that is constant in its heat. Ones that cut in and out on a thermostat dont provide contant heat. Older models tend to have no thermostat, and are ideal.

The next thing to do, is to find a small metal (alloy or stainless) tray, that will hold the sawdust and sit atop the element on the bottom of the smoker. This makes it easy to remove and replace the sawdust and to clean. A small cake tin with low sides is perfect.

The cool thing about the benchtop oven smoker, is that the trays are prebuilt into the unit, and are about the right size to hold fillets of fish or chicken breats etc. Using just the bottom tray makes it ideal for doing a whole chicken. The other great aspect, is that they are easy to use and just plug in. No gas or furl to ignite it. With the temperature control knob, you can easliy fast or slow smoke food, based on the temp you set on the dial.

Food from your own smoker tastes great, and once you try it you'll be hooked on this great way to cook food!

In New Zealand, a popular style of home made smoker is the 44 gallon drum smoker. This is essentially, a large old fuel drum that has been burnt off on the in and outside to make it safe for food. Dont use new or recently used ones! Ideally, they should have some rust showing which indicates any fuels have gone and it is safe to use for smoking.

Basically, the process is to sit the drum up off the ground on a couple of cement blocks or garden pavers, and then have the fire between them, rising up through the drum and the smoked food - which hangs of racks, wires or trays inside the drum interior.You can then place a lid on the unit to control the temperature. These smokers can handle large meats, large fish or many meals. The steel drum retains good heat and is durable and hygenic. Make sure you have a tool to remove the hot trays without spilling them when they are done! This type of smoker is a 'hot smoker' and is very popular in New Zealand modern maori culture, replacing the need for a traditional 'backyard' hangi for many families.