Smoking when the temperature drops

[DonOtt]

Hi folks....well, the Ottawa temps are dropping rapidly but I still want to do some smoking. The last time I smoked and the outside temperature dropped, I had a helluva time trying to get the temperature up after adding the meat.

Any suggestions?

Don

[Saber 4]

Have you tried the foil covered bricks or boiling water in the puck bowl?

[tskeeter]

Don, Saber is on track with the foil covered brick and boiling water.  To smoke a turkey breast on a cold, blustery day last November, I heated 4 of my smoking bricks to 400 degrees in the house oven.  Then transferred the bricks to the smoker when I put the turkey in.  Two on a rack above the turkey, two on a rack below the turkey.  This technique worked rather well for me.

Another thing forum members fairly routinely report doing is to preheat their smoker to a higher temperature than the temp they intend to smoke/cook at.  Preheat to 250F, smoke at 220F or 225F.

And, many folks will set the meat they are going to smoke out on the counter for an hour or two to take the chill off before they put it in the smoker.  Not sure I'd do this with ground meats, but it's pretty safe with whole muscle meats because the quick heating of the surface of the meat, where bacteria may exist on whole muscle meats, as soon as you put the meat in the smoker keeps the meat within the 4 hours between 40F and 140F rule of thumb for safe food handling.  People generally don't use this practice with ground meat because the grinding process distributes any bacteria that might be on the surface of the meat throughout the meat.  This increases the risk that meat containing bacteria may be between 40F and 140F (the ideal temp for bacteria to multiply) for longer than 4 hours, which can allow bacteria to multiply to unacceptable levels.

A final technique is to do your smoking in the smoker and your cooking in the oven.  A few hours in the smoker to create the smoke flavor, then transfer the meat to the oven to complete the cooking part of the process.  The greater heating capacity of the oven moves things along more quickly and, obviously, isn't affected by outside temperature, wind, etc.

[devo]

Do the element mod and buy a small shack for it if you want to smoke all winter long. I'm in northern Ontario and smoke even when its 30 below.

[ragweed]

As long as it's not windy, I do fine with my unmodified OBS with a brick and hot water in temps below freezing F.  If it ever gets to 30 below here in Nebraska, I won't go outside!

[TedEbear]

I had a helluva time trying to get the temperature up after adding the meat.

Any suggestions?

Some people have insulated their smoker by wrapping things like hot water tank insulation or other material around them. Others have added a second 500W element or replaced it with a 900W finned element.  If you do either of those you'll need a PID controller, too.

Here are a few links to the insulation ideas:

My smoker just got a new home

Insulating an Original BS in Cold Country

When/if it gets cold out...

[DonOtt]

I had intended to build a Cedar shack for mine this summer but my woodworking biz just kept getting busier and busier to the point....well, here comes the cold weather!

Might still be time after I come back from our vacay in 2 weeks.

[beefmann]

might  consider a second element or 900 watt element

[KyNola]

My amateur opinion is that cold air is not nearly as big of an enemy as the wind.  The wind blowing across the top of the cabinet with the vent open(and you need that vent open) will suck the heat right out of your tower.  Block the wind and you should be good to go.   

[Dano]

All great suggestions but I agree with everyone who said to block the wind.  I'm in Southern Ontario and have hot smoked out chicken with a negative temp windchill with great success.  Haven't tried cold smoke yet but I'd imagine it won't be hard with our winters. 

What I did was set up the smoker inside, out of the wind, on a table towards the garage door.  I then took a generic 5" to 3" dryer vent converter and attached a flexible dryer vent pipe to the top of the converter with duct tape to completely cover the crack between damper and converter.  I pencil marked 'closed', 1/2 and full up top so I would know what it was set at and vented the smoke outside through my $20 homemade chimney.  If I'm aiming for 220F for a hot smoke I actually turn the oven on first for about 90 minutes and let the temp get up to 250F or so, then I turn the wood burner on and give it the 20 min wait like the manual says.  This way when you add your meat the temp will drop down to say, 180F but it'll come back up relatively quickly.  No heater mod required.  Remember that the digital reading isn't exact so best use a thermometer inside or a PID if you need to be specific.

Good luck!