Charcoal Smoker and Grill – A Perfect Combination

Smoking meat is one of the most popular ways to cook outdoors. Unfortunately, many commercial smokers are either too expensive or too large for home use. The charcoal smoker and grill combo is a great compromise. It provide the moist smoky taste you want, without taking up as much room or costing as much money. Plus it can easily be used for a grill when you are wanting burger or a thick juicy steak.

Before getting started, there are a few things you’ll need;

• Charcoal Smoker and Grill combo
• Water Pan
• Charcoal
• Chimney Starter
• Wood Chips
• Meat

Each one of the items above could be a separate article on it’s own, but for now we’ll stick with the basics.

1. Select your meat – You can smoke most types of meat in a charcoal smoker and grill. The majority of small smokers will hold up to 50 lbs of meat, but you probably don’t want to try and cook that much at once. My suggestion is to look for something in the three to five pound range. Popular meats for smoking are pork shoulders, ribs, beef brisket and chicken.
2. Soak your wood chips – Since you are going to be placing the wood chips directly on top of the charcoal, it is a good idea to soak them for a minimum of two hours. If the wood chips aren’t properly soaked, they could burst into flames and potentially ruin your meat.
3. Light your charcoal – My recommendation is to use a chimney starter for this. A chimney starter is a cylinder that can be filled with charcoal. Newspaper is place underneath and lit on fire. This method will produce red hot coals within 15 – 20 minutes. You’ll need to have plenty of charcoal on hand, because you’ll want to add more to the charcoal smoker and grill about every hour.
4. Add liquid to the water pan – On most charcoalsmoker and grill combos, the water pan is located directly above the fire pan. It’s a good idea to add warm water rather than cold. Filling up a water pan with cold water could increase cooking times.
5. Put your meat on the grill and keep the lid closed – Ultimately, it’s all about the meat. As I mentioned, I would recommend smaller pieces of meat (three – five lbs). The good thing is that you can cook multiple pieces
   that are approximately the same size without adding time to the cooking process.

Other important things to remember;

• You will want to keep the temperature on your charcoal smoker and grill between 225 – 250 degrees. If you have an inexpensive smoker, you might want to consider upgrading the thermometer.
• In order to maintain the temperature, you will be adding charcoal throughout the process. Using this type of smoker isn’t something that you can “set it and forget it”.
• Don’t go crazy with the woods chips or the smoky taste of the meat could be too strong. A good rule of thumb is to add woods chips for half of the cooking time.

Smoking meat on a charcoal smoker and grill is an enjoyable process. It takes a little bit of time, but the end result is well worth it. There is nothing better than enjoying BBQ on a beautiful summer day. The fact that you made it yourself will make it even better.

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