Cooking aboard or outdoors

All its got to do is contain the smoke and about 200° of heat, tops. For fish at least. Meat and poultry need about 400°F. In Alaska they make them out of corrugated tin and some rocks, you don't have to light the fire inside the thing at all, just pipe in the smoke. I only bought one cause I'm in a more densely populated area. Cant afford to burn anything down you know. It was something like 60 bucks for that thing. I've got a propane head for it that I bought for something else but next time I do roast duck I'll do it outside. Roomy hates the smoke. Besides duck is a fire hazard in itself the stuff sheds so much grease when its cooking.

Maybe next week if it dries out some, its kinda snowing at the moment and I just don't feel like slogging through the mud that's going to be left tomorrow and the next day.

Thing is Troy if you want to smoke up a pile of stuff you can do it in just about anything. Any metal rack will do fine. Go hit up the thrift store and see what they have. Just drill some holes in the top of the thing and hang them on wires or something. Use a grill big enough to hold enough coals, I guess that depends on the size of the box your trying to heat. But simple is better. I suppose an old fridge would be OK as long as you get all the plastics out of it. If its insulated I suppose you'll have a smaller fire.

If I build a bigger one it will be metal studs and corrugated roofing tin over a small dry laid brick fire pit. Oh and you need a boil pan. Just something to boil water in over the fire so the stuff your cooking doesn't end up all dried out.

Traditional wood is drift wood but alder is really common for fish, I like mesquite as well but thats less than traditional. Jerky you can smoke with just about any kinda wood just don't bother with pine. Leaves a really acrid taste. I hear a lot about box wood but I've no clue what that might be. Maybe box alder or something.

I'll do up some roast duck in the smoke oven next so you can check out how easy it is.

 

Boxwood is a shrub,never heard of it used for smoking.

Anything will do,just depends how nice looking you want it to be.

I started a biz out of high school-smoking fish. Got an old stripped out Chevy cargo van shell for $300 from a junkyard.Welded a light gauge steel sheet behind where the seats were and built a nice bonfire inside to clean it out. A commercially built "smoker" with that sq. footage would have cost thousands.

All I have now is 3 x 45 gallon steel barrels-two with racks,one for fire.

 

How about eucalypt wood? Wouldn't that tend to make everything taste like koala?

 

Wow!

Thats some outstanding cooking. We might have to have an Iron Chef Galley smack-down competition.

I'm rather good in the kitchen myself.

James.

 

At home, I either smoke in a Brinkman smoker I converted to propane, or just use my gas grill. On my four-burner grill, I put wood chips in aluminum foil and drape it over the far right burner, place the food on the left half of the grill, and close the lid.

At work I have an electric smoker from Kmart/Sears. I spent years avoiding electric anything like the plague, because of the cost of power. Then one day I had an epiphany: "Troy, you're an idiot. You work in a place with four electric generators the size of pickup trucks, and you're worried about how much juice a smoker draws??"

 

The converted Brinkman. I used a side burner off a junk BBQ, and bought a cast iron chip box for the smoke.





I added a bottom to it of plywood covered with aluminum foil, to slow down the airflow somewhat.

To the left of the Brinkman is my large dutch oven, that I use for roasting. it sets on a burner made from a three-ring commercial wok burner. When the gas is low, only the bottom inner ring burns. At medium the second ring also burns, and at full blast all three rings are afire. I also have a commercial-sized wok to use on the burner....

 

Nice. mine doesn't adjust all that nicely. Its got three rings but its a blow torch, so ya gotta adjust it at the tank. I bought it to fire up the wood steamer. Works great if your boiling a 55 gallon drum of something

there's a whole big enough for the feed tube in my smoker, its also a Brinkman, just an older crappier one. I'll just prop everything up straight on a few bricks and ignite it. After that its just a mater of keeping duck grease out of the flames.

 

Sounds like your wok burner needs another regulator, if the one you have isn't adjustable. It's letting too much pressure through.

 

I have a regulator on the tank, reads pressure and is OK at moderating the flame. But its basically a blow torch. I think it was supposed to be hooked up to a big stove top in a restaurant or something. It will work OK, just means I have to baby sit it till it maintains the right temp.

for the Duck I want to cook it takes 375 for 1hr 45 skin up so it can drain. legs and thighs only. Rubbed down with my own special concoction. Folks at the club go nuts when ever I burn up a bird and bring in a few tasters.

Trick is going to be keeping the temp up and enough water in the pan. If you let the pan run dry whatever your cooking can end up smelling like burned metal.

All this talking about it and I'm getting hungry, think I'll go get a piece of that smoked fish from the other day.


I'll snap a picture of the set up once things dry off a bit out there

 

We burn Eucalyptus leaves to keep out the mosquitoes.

 

From what I've heard, nothing to oily or sappy should be used. I buy alder at the local hardwood place as scrap, "you guys got any really bad alder you want to get rid of" works every time. I cut out the knots and use the clear. Mesquite is more of a pain in the *** to get so I end up paying top dollar for smoking chips. But eventually I'll find a tree somewhere and lop off a few years supply. I know pine tastes like crap, I'd think anything sappy would end up tasting like turpentine.

 

The knots are good for kindling.

 

oops did I spell something wrong again

Oh well

I got board waiting for this next faze of my contract to begin, customer is a pain in the ***. So I converted my smoke oven to gas and fired up a few duck legs, kinda a practice run on these first few. I bought about 10lbs of the stuff but wanted to make sure I got it down, lest I wreck it all.

The conversion was about as basic as it gets, stick a burner head in threw the lower air inlet ( just happened to be the perfect size )

You can see it down there at the bottom with the feed pipe coming in from the left hand side



and this is my cheesy regulator arraignment, its off my forge so not really designed for being to accurate.



then we get to the actual food

four legs and thighs of duck with the skin on and up. I rubbed it down with a mixture of paprika fresh ground pepper and fresh ground sea salt, A bunch of minced garlic ( I love garlic what can I say ) and some ground parsley.



this is the basic set up, from top to bottom. A grate to hold the bird, a pan to catch the grease, a pan to block the flame and to smoke some wood chips in, My burner.



when I fired up the oven I shoulda realized that opperating it at above its typical temp would release a lot of smoke set as soot off the inside of the oven. So it smoked like a chimney for about the first 20 minutes or so. I might have wrecked this first batch but oh well thats why I only cooked up a few pieces



Anyway I've got about 25 minutes to go. In the oven I cook this at 375 for 1hr 45. Not sure about this set up tho so I'll just have to run a few batches to figure it out.

cheers
B

 

turned out a little crispy.



OK so next time I think I'll set it on 325. and only leave it in for 1hr 30

 

Boston got bored so he bored a board with a bore bit before the boar bit. Oink.

Nice cook stove.