I have used this style of smoker for many things, these little devices are superb:
- Cold Smoking – salami, bacon, cheese, dairy (cream!), even salt
- Indirect Smoke on Gas Grill for low & slow smoking
- Take the smoker to friends and smoke in their smokehouses or any makeshift box with some workflow, easy (for a party, easy to smoke some cheese for instance)
- Easy to add extra smoker to an electric or pellet grill to give it a smoke flavored boost
Apart from a pellet grill, any enclosure can be used for cold smoking.
On my other site all about dry cured meat and cold smoking, check out this guide to cold smoking I wrote, it covers off alot of the ins and outs.
Chambers you could use for a pellet tube, smoke generator or maze smoker:
- Traditional smoking box
- Grill barbecue
- Cardboard box
- Smokehouse
- Wine barrel (hang stuff)
- Old Fridge
- So many options can be had for these!
Pellet Tube Smokers
You need a decent flame to get it going, once it starts to glow – 5-7 mins burning vertically, then you just place it in your smoke area – so easy!
Even though it says pellet, I mix wood chips in with the pellets and it burns fine for 3-5 hours (12-inch tube)
A few times I haven’t had a decent torch burner light, so I used a camp burner (got to be a bit careful using a camp cooker!) or one of the burners on the gas BBQ.
Because I will often be doing cold smoked bacon for 2 to 3, 4-5 hour sessions, I don’t want too much smoke.
So if I feel there is too much smoke happening, I just offset the pellet tube to not let all the smoke go up through the smoking area or open the lid up a little with a peice of wood.
Even though the design is super simple, here are some tips I have learned.
- Get one with a flat side so
it sits firm and doesn’t roll around - 12″ length, 6
” may only give 2 maybe 3 hours of smoke or less go for cheeses, dairy and vege smoking more so
I heard a perforated baffle for a motorbike exhaust can be re-engineered, all I could find locally was car baffles, which were very hard strong metal. A bit of an overkill compared to 304 stainless I think.
So here are a few links to Amazon pellet tubes worth getting. (Note I get a small commission on purchases, it doesn’t cost you anything – but supports the site)
- Polygon 12 inch Pellet Tube(what I have)
- Square 12 inch Pellet Tube (classic)
Maze Smokers (Same Same but Different)
Really cool devices also, they just burn through either pellet or sawdust. Can mix them up too.
- Burns for a long time up to 8 hours
- small and portable
- When you get it burning nicely, another set & forget smoker
- Use it on a gas grill as a supplement smoker or for indirect low & slow
You will get longer smoking sessions, so these are great for cold smoking for Central & Eastern European strong smokey cured meat or classic cold smoked dry-cured bacon.
These guys have been the standard for a long time, check out the huge amount of positive reviews for the A-MAZE-N Maze smoker here.
If you want a bit more detail on the pellet tube smoking, I wrote a bit more about them in this post below.
Here is a rundown on my other site about how pellet tube smokers work and how to get them going…