Is there anything that beats the taste of smoked meats and fish? Smoking your food is a great way to infuse it with a rich, deep flavor that you simply can’t get with any other method of cooking. But what can you do if you don’t have a smoker?
Not everyone has the money or the space for both a traditional gas grill and a smoker. And even if they do, smokers can be hard to learn how to use. It takes a lot of time and patience to stoke your fire just right to get the right balance of heat and smoke depending on the kind of food your are cooking.
But maybe you’ve heard of a smoker box. Smoker boxes are designed to work on normal, gas grills. They are cool little devices to have if you like to grill traditionally but want to mix it up here and there with some smokey flavor.
So in the following article we are going to be talking all about grills and smoker boxes and how you can use one to achieve that coveted smokey flavor.
Why Can’t you Use a Gas Grill to Smoke?
Firstly, some of you may be wondering why you can’t simply just use your gas grill to smoke food. Maybe some of you have even tried to get your propane grill smoking – to no avail of course. That’s because gas grills are simply not designed to produce smoke.
You will get some smoke in a gas grill, but not enough to cook or impart flavor. In order to smoke food effectively there has to be a tight seal in the cooking or smoking chamber. When the smoke is able to seep out through seams and vents, the food won’t get smoked.
That’s not to say that smokers don’t have vents. They absolutely do but you use them in different ways. With smoke vents, you are supposed to release them periodically to control the amount of smoke in the cooking chamber.
The problem with gas grills for smoking is that there are vents in the back of the grill that are always open so you can’t get a good, effective smoke going. To sum up, you really can’t use your traditional gas grill to smoke foods. But, there is a solution…
What is a Smoker Box?
There really is not much to a smoker box. A smoker box is simply a metal, grated container that you can place on your normal gas grills and fill with your fuel source of choice (wood pellets or chips etc.). A smoker box will allow you to use your normal gas grill to smoke your food.
They can look like a metal skillet with a grill grate on top or more like actual boxes but the idea is generally the same no matter which one you get: you use the open fire heat source of your gas grill to heat up wood chips or pellets to smoke inside your grill.
How do you Use a Smoker Box on a Gas Grill?
The process of using a smoke box on a traditional gas grill to smoke your food is pretty simple in theory but it can take some practice.
Overall though, it’s much easier than using an actual smoker because with a gas grill, you can control the temperature with the turn of a dial as opposed to loading your fuel source into a tray and watching the temperature gauge with bated breath to see if the heat cooperates with you.
Before you use a smoke box on your gas grill, you will need to make sure that you have an ample fuel source to complete the cook. But once you have your wood chips or pellets, your smoker box, your prepared food and plenty of propane, the steps will be:
- Grill Prep – You will need to preheat your gas grill before you start smoking. To do this, set all your burners on high for about 15 minutes.
- Smoker Prep – While your gas grill is heating up, you should prepare your smoker box on the side. You simply load the bottom shelf up with your wood chips or pellets and set the food you want to smoke on the upper grates.
- Place the Smoke Box – After your gas grill has heated up for about 15 minutes, it’s time to get smoking. Place the smoker box directly over one of the grill’s burners. Maintain this burner configuration until your fuel source has started smoking. You should see a fairly thick white plume of smoke in about 5 minutes.
- Configure Burners for Indirect Cooking – Once you get a good amount of smoke going, turn off the burner that your smoke box is actually over, leaving on all surrounding burners. The idea is to set your grill up as you would for indirect cooking. So the burners that are directly under your smoke box should be off while all the others remain burning.
- Maintain Temperature – Now you can close up your grill but you aren’t done yet. This last step is very important. In most cases you want to maintain an internal cooking temperature of about 225-250 degrees Fahrenheit. The idea behind smoking is slow and low: cooking at low temperatures for longer periods of time.
Some Final Advice
Using a smoke box can take a lot of the harder work out of smoking food. But make no mistake about it, the process still takes some practice and trial and error. For instance, you may be wondering what kind of wood chips to use.
In general, hickory chips are good for red meat while mesquite imparts a lighter flavor which makes them a go-to choice for fish. But you may want to go with alder or apple chips for a more specific flavor once you have your smoking footing so to speak.
At any rate, be mindful, be patient and refer to our guide for using a smoke box on a gas grill and you are sure to end up with great tasting food.
