BARBECUE EQUIPMENT FACTS
Or, How to Choose a Smoker for
Genuine Pit Barbecue
Fresh Gourmet Natural Wood Smoked Foods
How This Book Will Help You Make the Right Choice
As the popularity of barbecue and smoked foods continues to grow, the marketplace makes room for more smokers and “smoking contraptions”. It is difficult to know whose claims to believe.
Cookshack prepared this booklet as a common sense guide for people looking for a smoker to use in a foodservice operation.
Excellent quality smoked foods are surprisingly easy to prepare. If you have the right smoker the job can be as routine as ordinary oven cooking.
Almost everyone likes that smoky taste combined with juicy, slow-cooked meats, poultry, seafood, and game. Old-fashioned pit-smoked beef, pork, ribs … chicken … turkey … ham … prime rib … fish … jerky … fruits … vegetables … sauces, and oils are just some of the items that you may want to smoke.
You deserve value for your money. Look for these features.
Quality of performance based on sound design and construction
Versatility of use for greater profitability
Support from the manufacturer to help you use the product to increase your profits and please your customers
Use the following information to make an informed decision about what will work best for you.
(If you are thinking of building your own pit, see #39 and #40.)
40 FEATURES TO LOOK FOR IN A SMOKER
1 -- AUTOMATIC OPERATION
Gone are the days of the big pits that had to be stoked by hand and watched like a hawk. Load the smoker, set the temperature & time, latch the door, and leave it alone. That's all you should have to do.
2 – EASY TO OPERATE
To produce great barbecue you should be able to select, at the beginning of the cook cycle, a cook/smoke temperature, time, and holding temperature.
3 -- CONSISTENT RESULTS
You should get the same excellent quality product each time you cook. A low, even temperature produces the richest smoke flavor, the juiciest meat, the tenderest product. Thermostatically-controlled heat is a must.
4 -- LOW PRODUCT SHRINKAGE
Your smoker should cook and smoke the meat with minimum shrinkage. Consider the Clothes Dryer Theory
Hot combustion gases moving through a clothes dryer pull the moisture from the fabrics. Those hot gases moving through your smoker's chamber will pull the moisture from the product.
As the hot, dry, wood & gas combustion exhaust moves out the smoker's vent, it carries with it the juices that hold the flavor and make the product succulent and tender. The result is:
Less product to sell
Less profit
Dry, tough meat
Look for a smoker that has no hot, dry combustion exhaust gas moving through it, and a cooking process that leaves valuable juices in the meat. You get the lowest shrink with electric heat!
5 – FOOD IS CONSTANTLY BEING EXPOSED TO FRESH SMOKE
Smoke must escape from the chamber during cooking or food will have an unappealing gray color and a bitter “off” taste from sitting in stale smoke for hours. Look for a smoker that allows smoke to escape and is constantly exposing product to fresh smoke.
6 -- VENTING IS NOT AN INSTALLATION AGGRAVATION
Choose a smoker that can be used under your existing hood or with an attached vent hood custom-made for the smoker.
7 -- COOKING PROCESS IS SIMPLE
If you have to do more than load the smoker, set the temperature/time control, and turn it on, there are too many steps! Busy kitchen employees do not have time to remember elaborate procedures.
8 -- LOW ENERGY COSTS
A well-insulated chamber, low cooking temperatures, no air moving through the chamber, each of these contributes to low energy cost.
Remember, gas is not necessarily a less expensive fuel source for a smoker if the heat it produces goes straight up a big chimney. Gas requires air for combustion and that air will shrink your product.
9 – FUEL IS EASY TO STORE
Gas smokers usually burn wood, and a lot of it! They are Wood Hogs! Do you want to buy, ship, store, and handle those big logs? Then clean up ashes and charred remains? Look for a smoker that uses wood chunks or wood pellets. They are small and don’t take up much space. The health department inspector won’t complain about them.
10 -- SMOKER HAS HOLDING OVEN CAPABILITY
Be certain that you can set your smoker to a low, accurate holding temperature. Sometimes you will need a holding oven and this feature is mighty handy.
11 -- ADEQUATE SMOKE PRODUCTION
Beware of tiny "smoke boxes" added to conventional ovens. They just can't put out enough smoke to flavor the product well. At best you'll get a slight smoke taste on the outside of the product, and no smoke flavor inside, where it counts.
12 -- INSIDE OF SMOKER CLEANS EASILY
Parts and inner chamber of smoker should be easily accessible and easy to clean. Complicated configurations of parts will collect grease and smoke resins...almost impossible to clean. Motor drives, fixed shelves, nooks and crannies are bad news!
13 -- DRIPPINGS GO OUTSIDE THE SMOKER
And that's during the cooking process, not after. Both food flavor and safety are affected by grease in the cooking chamber. Hot grease fumes will give an "off" taste to the product. The presence of large quantities of hot grease is a fire hazard.
If drippings stay in the chamber, they burn on to oven walls, grills, racks. This makes clean-up a time-consuming chore.
Fresh juices make tasty gravy, scorched drippings don't.
14 – FUEL SOURCE HAS BEST FLAVORING PROPERTIES
Chips, sawdust, or charcoal just won't do the job. Chips and charcoal quickly release all their flavoring resins, leaving lignite, which does not flavor the meat. Charcoal just puts out fumes. Small logs (2 - 3" x 6 - 10") or food grade wood pellets are just right. Fresh resin is constantly being exposed to the heat source, and released into the cooking chamber as sweet flavoring for your meat.
15 -- FAST TURNAROUND TIME ON RELOADING
If you are on a tight cooking schedule, any of your employees should be able to quickly unload, clean, and reload the smoker for its next batch.
16 -- LOW LABOR INTENSITY
Your smoker should use as little of your time and your employees' time as possible. Look for one which can be efficiently loaded, cleaned, and maintained.
A smoker that needs NO attention while cooking, is easy to load, and cleans up fast is the ideal.
17 -- WELL-INSULATED COOKING CHAMBER
Choose your smoker with good insulation for lower energy costs and safety.
Your smoker will cost less to operate
Your building air-cooling costs will be less with a smoker that stays cool on the outside
Outside of the smoker stays cool, no one gets burned
18 -- EVEN INNER TEMPERATURE
An even cooking temperature inside the smoker eliminates the need for complicated mechanisms for rotating the product as it cooks. A well-insulated smoker will have an even internal temperature.
You don't need a rotisserie; it's just something else to break!
19 -- LOW COOKING TEMPERATURE
Sure, you can cook faster with higher temperatures. But, you'll get a tougher product with less smoke flavor. And, you won't be making genuine, old-fashioned pit barbecue.
It's that slow cooking that gives the meat a chance to tenderize itself, and gives the smoke time to permeate the meat. That's real barbecue, done the right way.
20 -- LOOK FOR SAFETY FEATURES
Ask about National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) listing. Ask about Underwriters' Laboratories (UL) listing. Ask about United States Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) approval. Those credentials mean that the smoker has met high safety, sanitation, and performance standards through rigorous testing. Your health department inspector will notice!
21-- SMOKER SHOULD NOT ADD TO INSURANCE COSTS
Your insurance company will notice credentials like UL, NSF, and USDA, too. A safe smoker can reduce building insurance costs!
22 -- SMOKES A WIDE VARIETY OF FOODS
Use that smoker to add life to your menu!
Your smoker should be able to produce items which require different cooking temperatures and times. Choose a smoker that gives you the flexibility to produce different foods.
These are some of the items you may want to smoke.
Top Round / Turkey / Ham
Pork Butts / Pork Shoulders / Salmon
Shrimp / Hamburgers / Steaks
Oysters / Duck / Oil
Venison / Goose / Lemons
Prime Rib / Jerky / Pineapple
Trout / Meat Loaf / Peaches
Chili Meat / Beef Ribs / Tomatoes
Fish / Quail / Sausage
Pheasant / Game Birds / Salt
Cornish Hens / Apples / Peppers
Sauce / Soup / Mushrooms
Fajitas / Cheese / Mussels
You can probably think of more. (If in doubt, smoke it!)
Times change, don't get stuck with a piece of equipment that will not change with your needs.
23 -- YOUR SMOKER SHOULD BOTH HOT (BARBECUE) AND COLD SMOKE
You may want to hot smoke (or barbecue), and cold smoke. Buy a smoker that will allow you to do both.
24 -- CHOOSE A SMOKER THAT ALLOWS YOU TO CONTROL THE AMOUNT OF SMOKE FLAVOR
You'll want to control the amount of smoke flavor added to various products. Choose a smoker that allows you to portion wood according to the amount of smoke flavor desired.
Remember, it should be as practical to delicately smoke shrimp as it is to put lots of smoke into a load of ribs.
25 -- SMOKER SHOULD DO DOUBLE DUTY IN YOUR KITCHEN, WITHOUT WOOD
You may want to use your smoker as a slow-cooker for meat, without wood. If you can get two pieces of equipment for the price of one, that's good value.
26 -- LOW WOOD COST
If your smoker uses wood as a heat source, you will be faced with finding a supplier for large quantities of wood, transporting it to a site near the smoker, storing and handling big logs.
If you choose a smoker that uses another heat source, and uses wood for smoke only, your expenses and hassles will be considerably reduced.
27 -- INNER ACCESSORIES REMOVE QUICKLY
Grills, racks, inner parts should all pop out in a flash for cleaning.
Any person, male or female, of average size and strength should be able to easily handle accessories and clean your smoker.
28 -- SMOKER IS RELIABLE... REQUIRES LOW MAINTENANCE
Look for reliability! Routine maintenance should be minimal and simple to perform; you should be able to care for the smoker without expensive service calls. The more moving parts it has, the more likely it is that something will wear out and break.
Remember, those big rotisserie smokers have motors to break, rotisseries to go haywire, and many other ways to cost you money!
29 -- LOAD CAPACITY TO FIT YOUR OPERATION
It's expensive to operate your smoker only half full. And an overloaded smoker will not work efficiently. Estimate how much and what kind of smoked foods you will be preparing. Look for a smoker that is slightly larger than your anticipated needs.
You can handle a big increase in your smoked food business one of these two ways.
Add a second smoker because two small smokers give you more flexibility than one larger smoker
Or trade in your original smoker for a larger one.
30 -- YOUR SMOKER SHOULD WORK WHILE YOU SLEEP
Many products require slow cooking at a low temperature for best results. Choose a piece of equipment that will smoke overnight without your attention. Load it the night before and remove the product the next morning. Use it for shorter runs, such as chicken or ribs, during the day.
31 -- INNER ACCESSORIES REARRANGE
Foods to be smoked come in all different sizes and shapes, your smoker should be flexible enough to accommodate many of them. Be sure that you can adjust and rearrange interior shelves.
You may want to hang ribs, slabs of bacon, sausages. Look for a smoker that allows for hanging as well as laying product flat on shelves.
32 -- OPTIONAL ACCESSORIES ALLOW FLEXIBILITY
Your smoker should accommodate a variety of accessories to give you flexibility. For example, will available accessories help you smoke shrimp? Increase capacity of large volume items such as ribs? Hang product?
33 -- OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS
Any smoker that you buy should come to you with an Operator's Manual, including operating instructions and cooking instructions.
34 -- AVOID ELABORATE INSTALLATION
DON'T get caught with big installation expense and problems. Ask lots of questions of your dealer before your smoker is sitting in your kitchen.
DO allow for adequate, and reasonable, space, ventilation, and power requirements. Structural building changes and ventilation other than the usual hood should not be necessary.
35 -- ANYBODY CAN RUN IT
Make sure your smoker can be used by anyone who might have to run it in your kitchen.
36 -- SMALL FLOOR SPACE REQUIRED
DON'T waste valuable kitchen space.
DO get yourself a smoker that will turn out as much product as you need, with as small a footprint as possible.
37 -- STANDARD EQUIPMENT COMPLETE
"Complete" means whatever it takes to use the smoker. Grills, racks, drip pans, it should all be there as part of the standard package.
38 -- SMOKER COMPANY OFFERS SUPPORT
Recipes, spice blends, barbecue sauce, ideas for you, helpful customer newsletters, look for a company that will support your merchandising efforts.
39 – EASILY ACCESSIBLE CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Does the company have a free phone number that provides direct access to a live person? Does the company have a website with useful information?
340 -- SMOKER COMPANY HAS BARBECUE EXPERIENCE
You'll get more back-up from a company with a good barbecue track record. You want to be sure that you get continuing support with service. A company that does not specialize in barbecue, or is very new at it, might not be around when you need them.
THINKING OF BUILDING YOUR OWN PIT?
41 -- DO YOU WANT TO PAY FOR INSURANCE ON A HOME-BUILT PIT?
Whether you add an open-flame, home-built pit to your existing building, or locate it in a separate building, it could increase your insurance costs. Your insurance company does not want the liability for a big, greasy pit which could burst into flames!
42 -- WILL YOUR HEALTH DEPARTMENT APPROVE YOUR PIT?
Requirements for home-built pit smokers and the buildings surrounding them get tighter every day. Health department approved home-built pits are expensive, so are the buildings to house them in.
Surprise, we sneaked in two extra points more than the 40 that we promised you. We think you will agree that giving your customers more than they expect is essential to success. Your customers will appreciate that "something extra" that you give them when you serve them truly great barbecue.
If you have questions that we have not covered in this booklet, call us TOLL FREE at 1-800-423-0698. One of our friendly, knowledgeable staff will be happy to talk with you.
Visit the HYPERLINK " Barbecue Forum 24/7 to learn how our customers like our products and to get answers to your smoker and barbecue questions.
SALES & CUSTOMER SERVICE
TOLL FREE 1-800-423-0698
580/765-3669
FAX 580/765-2223
HYPERLINK "mailto:"
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Cookshack, Inc.
2304 N. Ash St.
Ponca City, OK 74601