Should You Buy A Gas Or Charcoal Smoker?
It was about five or six years ago now that I first got really into smoking and I have to say that that was primarily down to my purchase of a Big Green Egg. Not something that's readily supplied in the UK but after a few attempts at searching I managed to acquire one. The Big Green Egg has turned out to be a wonderful piece of kit, I love playing with charcoal and the results of my cooking (if I do say so myself) have been pretty good.
From there I started reading a lot more around the subject and I always wanted to try a gas smoker and understand the differences in the cooking techniques but buying a gas smoker really didn't appeal to me.
I bought a couple of books about smoking and they included some pretty basic diagrams about how to build and use a smoker. The diagrams weren't great and certainly not something that I would have been able to follow but the principle of a gas smoker was explained.
In order to distinguish between charcoal and gas let me first explain how the charcoal (Big Green Egg) smoker works. In the base of the unit is a firebox where the charcoal is placed and underneath is a vent to allow the air in to support combustion. The cooking grid sits in the upper area of the Egg and the two are separated by what the Green Egg manufacturers call the "plate setter" - in essence a piece of ceramic plate that ensures that no direct heat is applied to the food.
During the smoking process, wood chips are sprinkled onto the charcoal to create the smoke. This is the one disadvantage to the Big Green Egg in that in order to add more wood chips to your fire, you have to lift out the food rack and the plate setter to gain access. Funny enough, I've only ever had to add more wood chips and never charcoal because the fuel efficiency of the unit is magnificent.
A gas smoker actually in principle isn't that different in that the heat source is at the bottom, it's just simply about a different method of generating heat and smoke. The heat is generated by a gas burner and sitting on top of the burner is a sheet or tray of metal and into this tray is where you place the wood chips. Usually there's a door close to this tray to allow adjustment for the burner and the addition of fresh wood, this really is a lot more convenient than the Big Green Egg.
Technically speaking, between the food chamber in the top and where the burner is there should be a smoke spreader. This does a similar job to the plate setter in the Big Green Egg in that it disperses both heat and smoke to ensure that it spreads evenly around the food chamber. In some small gas smokers this really isn't that necessary but it is required in the larger models.
Both charcoal and gas smokers vent top and bottom to ensure that there is a continuous draft and this serves two purposes. Firstly the draft supports combustion and spreads the heat upwards into the food chamber and secondly it keeps the smoke moving – a closed environment won't produce as good a smoky flavor as one where the smoke is continually passed over the food.
So technically the differences are marginal and if you like playing with fire then there really is only one way to go. If however you're looking for practicality the gas is definitely an option worth considering.
In order to write this article, I have now built my own gas smoker but that's going to have to be a story for another day.
Questions and Answers
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