Better smoking on a gas grill

a.k.a I want moaaarrr smoke

I started smoking on the gas grill and wanted to evaluate how much (or not) I’d need either a real smoker of some sort or if smoking on the gas grill was sufficient for me. As most gas-grill-smoker efforts do I started with a smoke pipe and it worked.

But it either gave me a bit of smoke for 30-45 minutes or somewhat more smoke for maybe 10 minutes to then be burned out. Also I found it hard to regulate the flames to neither fall under the temperature that I wanted but on the other hand not to burn the wood in the smoke pipe too fast. Eventually I decided that it was time to do better …

Airflow optimization

First of all I checked where smoke was lost. On most gas grills you’d set up an indirect zone with heat on one and meat on the other side. The smoke pipe would be in the hot zone to get the right heat that makes the wood got hot enough to generate smoke. But at the same time those grills usually have a small slit in their cover allowing a skewer to go through.

So smoke is generated at the other side than the meat and right above it is a potential air vent. Guess what happens, per my non scientific check about 3/4 of the smoke leave the grill without passing along my meat. That is nonsense, so step #1 has to be to optimize that airflow. Thankfully my father was so kind to create a custom cover that I can just stick into the slit whenever I smoke.

With that in place I have about 15% smoke loss through the lower openings in the back that all gas grills have, but the vast majority of smoke now passes my meat.

Go Bigger than a smoke pipe

As I mentioned above I wasn’t satisfied with the amount and duration of smoke that I was able to get out of a smoke pipe. But for some gas/charcoal experiments I also had a charcoal tray. A great product of its own for some recipes that just need charcoal taste this particular one also had a smoking feature. One corner of the cast iron tray had no holes in is at the bottom. You could add wood in there and due to the lack of airflow from below it would rather smoke than burn. This worked well, with a slightly longer duration than the pipe.

I wondered what I could do, and the solution was eventually very simple. I bought a second charcoal tray to use it as a cover. Further I got the cheapest cast iron plate that I could get and cut it to cover the holes in the bottom of the tray. With that I now can fill the full size of the tray with my wood (thanks to my father here by the way for cutting, drying and shredding that cherry tree that I use most of the time)

You see the lower cast iron plate at the bottom left. And with that much wood I get a much more intense smoke than any smoke pipe could generate. All the cast iron needs a while to heat up, but after ~10 - 15 minutes of full heat under the tray to have it start smoking.

After that started I can go as low as ~80 °C and still generate smoke, but I usually go with 110-120 °C for most of my smoking.

With all that in place I can get about 1-2 hours of massive smoke depending on the heat that I put in. And due to the airflow optimization most of it passes my meat. And since meat takes the most smoke flavor in the first 1-2 hours that is all I needed. I’m a usually a user of the Texas crutch technique later in the process of most low-and-slow recipes anyway.

So while I could refill this much more easily than any smoke pipe (have you ever tried to open these things while they are hot?) I rarely do so. But if you nee you just lift the covering cast iron try - I use the same I use to lift my dutch ovens cover - and throw some more wood in.

Depending on how long I go I have either just a small handful of white dust left - or - if I have not let it “run dry” I have a bit of charcoal. That makes great fertilizer for my wine grapes, so that is where I throw that to after it cooled down a bit.

Smoke is nothing without meat

Obviously I had to put this to a test, so I got some ribs and prepped them with some magic dust and a fermented garlic liquid marinade for a few hours.

Then I lit up the grill with the smoke as you see above. You remember when I said above that a normal smoke pipe is just enough for a few sausages - here I had enough excess heat to smoke some “on top”.

And after 2h smoke, 2h of tenderizing over some apple juice and some glacing to finalize things I ended up with some awesome ribs. Well smoked despite of “only” being a gas grill. Sorry Traeger, while I still admire your tech I think I won’t need you for a while.

Maybe a few of you out there want more smoke on a gas grill as well and this idea might help you as well.