Ever dreamed of smoking ribs or brisket right in your own back yard? You may think it's out of your reach — buying a smoker may sound intimidating and pricey. But it's not! Even a cheap smoker can give you great results. Timothy of Charles & Hudson recently modified a cheap smoker for better performance — here's a peek at what he did!
Timothy took a $40 Brinkmann smoker (one of the cheapest you can buy) and with nothing more than a drill, made some mods to get this thing cooking.
Here's a quick recap. He drilled holes and vented the top and bottom better, and installed a thermostat. And he installed feet on the bottom of the smoker. The result? That fabulously smoked meat up there. Ugly, but delicious — see all that bark? Yum!
Read more: How To Modify Your Brinkmann Smoker for Peak Performance
Do you have a smoker? Did you build it yourself, or modify it from a cheap model like Timothy? Any advice to share?
Related: Outside Cooking: Build a Smoker
(Images: Timothy Dahl of Charles & Hudson)
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Ugly? Bah! There's not much that can be cooked as a single unit that looks nearly as beautiful as something smoked!
My mouth is watering just looking at it.
I had one of those Brinkmann's. It rusted out in fairly short order. Then I went the ghetto route and did my smoking on an indirect fire in a cheap charcoal grill.
I got a Weber for my birthday last year and have been kicking myself ever since, for trying to be cheap all this time....;-)
Sorry,some errors in your post.
They did not install a thermostat,they installed a thermometer (not the same thing).
The thermometer they installed is nice and pretty but totally ineffective. It will only measure the temperature at the top of the dome of the smoker,which is not where your meat rests (much lower),so installing those types of thermometers are known useless hacks.
Also,they drilled holes at the bottom of the pan to "give the charcoal more air to breathe which promotes hotter and longer burning". Who wants to promote more heat when the objective of smoking is to keep the temperature as low as possible?
Don't ruin your grills,this hack is a joke made by amateurs that haven't done any research.
Sorry, I don't mean to be a hater,but this post is very misleading.
My bad. I just realized they actually installed the thermometer in a more ideal location,still useless as it has been proven not to be effective in measuring temps. I think it's funny that the picture shows their smoker @ 350 degrees. That isn't smoking,that's cooking.