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How To Build A Smoker For Under $200

Ever since I was a child is I always enjoyed eating smoked food, whether it was smoked cheese or simply the smell of smoked bacon cooking for breakfast, so I guess that’s where it all started.

 

In my youth however, my father bought our first charcoal barbecue grill and after the novelty of spit roasting my first chicken without the use of a battery motor my enthusiasm faded, only to be rekindled when I left home and started to cook for myself. Ever since then, barbecue has been part of my life and fortunately for me, it now is my life.

 

At university I started out grilling lots of different foods over charcoal for my fellow students. Indeed whenever there was a barbecue party it will always me that took over the cooking to ensure we had good grilled food and not a burnt offering. I was christened ‘BK’ or ‘Barbecue King’. The fame of Manchester student population however did not go to my head!

 

20 years later and I’m finally pursuing the dream, my barbecue website is now my full-time occupation and I have the opportunity to learn more and explore those avenues that I’ve always wanted to do. I started to learn about curing and brining but in order to complete the process I had to have a smoker, my own homemade smoker.

 

Three years ago I bought a Big Green Egg and this has provided me with no end entertainment, lots of delicious hot smoked food but most importantly, an appetite to learn more. Given the cost of buying a big green egg or equivalent I wanted to build my own smoker and see whether I could do it for less than $200. It took quite a lot of thought a couple of days of amateur joinery but I think I found a reasonable starting point.

 

In order to key that costs down it was very important to plan out the materials that were going to be used and what were sensible units in which to purchase. My conclusion was to manufacture from three ply wood and use three-quarter by three-quarter inch batons to fix it all together. The results of this first construction have not been to bad however there is room for improvement.

 

To give you some background I have used what I consider to be the most fundamental of smoker designs in that there is a fire box where I create the smoke and a smoke chamber where I place the food. In between the fire box and the smoke chamber is a smoker spreader designed to ensure that we have even distribution of smoke throughout the smoke chamber. Smoke is generated in the fire box use a gas burner, an old frying pan and wood chips with vents top and bottom to regulate the flow or smoke and the temperature of the food chamber. It works very well however I was expecting there to be more of a similarity in the way that the Big Green Egg works.

 

The Big Green Egg follows exactly the same principle however the draft vents bottom and top serve to control the temperature in a completely different way. Opening the vents increase airflow and therefore raises the temperature, with my homemade smoker, the converse is true.

 

In fact, I have found that one of my biggest challenge is easy to get enough heat into the food chamber so there’s still work to be done. The heat loss is down to the number tiny gaps in the construction and also to some extent a result of the fact that I used the thinnest plywood that is commercially available in my local lumber yard. I’m going to build mark 2 and these are the changes that I will make to the design:

 

 

1. I will use five ply wood.

    

    

2. The plywood and batons will be fixed together not only with screws at way PVA adhesive

    

    

3. The hinge construction of the door will be a little more technical

 

 

I reckon that the total cost of construction materials was about $150 so the below $200 box was ticked but for a little extra money I think I can produce something that will perform significantly better. I will report back following the construction of my new improved design.

 

About the Author

Paul Yates writes Gas Grill Recipes, he researches the best smoked food recipes and is now deeply involved in helping you build your own smoker.