Today when I was at the store I saw a cast iron smokers box for 6 bucks. I've never smoked anything before but I figured, I do like most of the smoked food I've had and it's only 6 bucks so why not. Anyway, I have some quarter legs and thought I would start out on them. Now the question I have is, how? I have some hickory wood chips and it says on the bag to use dry chips and the smokers pot I have say to use chips that have been soaked. Well which one should I do? Also, do I just salt and pepper it then grill it like I normally do but with some smoke? Do I smoke it until the chicken is done or do I smoke it a little? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I also like to cook a mixture of vegetables (green, yellow and red peppers with squash, green beans and an onion) on the grill, can they be smoked also or would that be a bit too much?
Take a pic of your smoker & post it, so we can help you better. I don't know what a "cast iron smokers box" is. Post a pic of your girl's t*** while you're at it. puff puff *give*, macalu, puff puff *give*
Here's the smokers box. It's about 8x5x1.5 I'll be using a gas grill with 3 burners and will be placing the box on one of the heat distribution plates. puff puff............he he.....................puff puff...............
That box is used so you can get some smoke taste on a gas grill. You will not be smoking the meat. To smoke meat, you need to maintain a temperature around 190 - 240 F. Your grill will be much hotter than that. Just load up your box, I would use some dry and some wet. Start your grill. When the box starts smoking, just grill your chicken as normal. You will have grilled chicken with some smoke taste, not smoked chicken.
You can still smoke meat with it, maybe not big pieces like whole turkeys or chickens but leg quarters should be fine. Soak your chips for at least an hour, I usually do it for several hours, and stuff them in the box. Place the box on top of your briquettes and place your chicken away from the fire and not directly on top. Try to maintain a temperature of 200-250. Leg quarters should not take long, maybe 1.5-2 hours but it really depends on your temperature and yes it will be smoked.
Thank you I'm going to try it tonight. About the vegetables, I usually cook them in cast iron skillet on the grill. Do you think the smoke will overpower them?
Wrap the veggies in aluminum foil with seasons and whatever else you want to flavor them. Place them just to the side of the fire. That should be enough heat to cook them within 30 mins. If you wrap them well enough, the smoke should not leave an overpowering flavor. Good luck.
Well the results are in and I should have taken a picture because it did look good. It was alright. It was good enough for me to tell it was heading in the right direction. I think next time I'm going to try pecan. The vegetables were awesome. I went ahead and cooked them in the skillet because I only had about 2 inches of foil left on the roll.
This has to be one of the strangest thread titles ever. It really could have gone many ways. I don't know if I'm impressed or disappointed at the restraint shown... I'm disappointed. Very disappointed.
Basically Lil pun described the correct method. Soaking the chips will bring out the smoky flavor of the wood chips. You can also try apple flavored wood, which is what I use on my bbq. Simple marinating methods, such as salt and pepper are the basic ways, but you can also spice it up with different dry rubs......
Slamdunk is correct. Here is the wood I use.... Pecan - for smoking large items (turkey, briskey, rack of ribs) Hickory - for smoking chicken Mesquite - for grilling beef or chicken Apple, Cherry - for smoking or grilling fish I smoke with my charcoal smoker and grill with my gas grill that has a wood box on it.
How do you grill with wood on a gas grill? I don't have a box like you say. I tried it once by just heating the wood on one side (I use a foil pouch), and the food on the other (heat turned on on both sides of the grill). I didn't really notice much difference in flavor doing this. I smoke things this way all the time w/indirect heat and they come out great; I'm just wondering about the grilling.
You can use either a throwaway aluminum pan, soak the chips, maybe poke a couple of holes in the bottom, maybe leave a little beer/water in the bottom, let it heat up & start smoking, then grill your stuff with the lid closed...or... take a vegetable can, remove the label & any extra glue stuck to it, take off lid, remove contents & wash, poke a few holes in lid & in the upper part of the outside of the can, replace lid (this works better with one of those newfangled can openers that cuts the outside of the can & not the top), fill can with soaked chips, again leave a little beer/water in the bottom if you want, set can on grill, heat up & grill with lid closed. You need to let it really heat up & maybe cook a little slower than usual. But yeah, if you're comparing this to cooking on a real smoker, the flavor just won't be the same. But it couldn't hurt, right?
TheFreak...use the aluminum pan method that Buck T. listed above. A friend of mine who has a gas grille without a wood box does it this way. Starts the grilling with the lid down, then leaves the lid up to finish it off. It will definitely give it that wood flavor, just not as much as a charcoal smoker.
Thanks guys. I guess what I'm wondering then is just where to put the chips in relation to the meat. Are you saying to put this aluminum pan right under the meat, or somewhere else in the grill? What I normally do when cooking with wood on a gas grill is put a foil pouch w/wood chips on one side of the grill, heat it up til it smokes, and cook the meat on the other side of the grill using indirect heat. This works wonderfully and adds great flavor. I guess you would call this indirect grilling, rather than smoking, I'm not sure. What I'm wondering about is how to do this with steaks, burgers, etc. What I tried a couple of times is doing the same thing as above, but I turned the heat on both sides of the grill, so the meat was over direct heat while the other side was smoking. This didn't seem to add a lot of flavor though. Should I put the meat right over the smoke? I assumed the grease from the meat would drip down onto the pouch/wood and mess with the smoking process; plus I wasn't sure if this would be enough heat. I hope this makes sense.
