Meat smokers are used to cook and flavor meat with smoke. They differ from grills in that they produce more smoke. Electric and gas smokers are available, and accessories can be added to grills to turn them into smokers. The process of smoking meat involves placing the meat on a rack with wood and allowing the heat and smoke to cook and flavor the meat. Homemade smokers can be made from grills or metal drums, but commercial options are also available.
Meat smokers are devices that are used to cook raw meat while imbuing the meat with a flavor produced by the smoke generated in the process. In the past a meat smoker was often laid out as a small building where fires generated heat and smoke to cure the meat hanging from hooks strategically placed throughout the space. Throughout the 20th century, small meat smokers were created and sold to many homeowners who wanted to cook and smoke meat for social events in the home. Today, you can buy a small electric smoker or a gas smoker along with the traditional wood-fired meat smoker.
It is important to distinguish between a barbecue grill and a meat smoker. While barbecue grills may use charcoal, gas, or electricity to grill meat, these types of grills don’t produce much smoke. A true meat smoker will not only generate heat to cook the meat, but it will also generate smoke which envelops the meat and allows the flavor of the burning wood to penetrate the meat during the cooking process. Fortunately, there are accessories that can be added to a standard barbecue grill that will allow the device to be used as a meat smoker. The accessories can be removed easily after smoking your meat and stored for use at a later time.
Both the electric meat smoker and the gas meat smoker use a medium other than wood to start the fire and produce the heat needed to cook the meat. However, they also often include a shelf where aromatic wood can be placed to help create enough smoke to flavor the meat. These handy outdoor meat smoker options resemble a covered grill in many ways, tend to be easy to clean, and can be stored with relative ease.
The actual process of smoking the meat is simple. The meat is placed on a rack in the smoker, while the wood is also placed in place. Once the flames are lit and the meat smoker produces an adequate amount of heat and smoke, the unit is shut down. This allows the heat to begin cooking the meat and the smoke to begin seasoning the outside of the meat. As the cooking process continues, the seasoning deposited on the outside of the meat begins to absorb into the meat. This creates a smoky flavor in all cuts of meat which provides the distinctive taste.
Tips and plans on how to make a homemade meat smoker can be found in many DIY resources. Sometimes they require the adaptation of a grill or the use of metal drums to create a body for a wood-fired meat smoker. However, there are a number of commercially manufactured smokers on the market today that can be purchased for a modest sum, making it just as affordable to buy a meat smoker as it is to build one from scratch.
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