Can You Use A Grill As A Smoker

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Propane grills aren't just for burgers and steaks anymore. With a few tricks, you can mimic the indirect low and dull heat of a traditional smoker and produce quality cuts of tiresome-smoked barbecue. Yous can even use it for a simple turkey smoker.

How to Convert Your Gas Grill Into a Smoker

Get-go past identifying your heat sources, and get your grill setup for a little indirect cooking. When cooking low and deadening (225-250°F [107-121°C]), avert directly exposing your meat to the heat source. That's called grilling! Check out our post, The Divergence Between Grilling and Barbecue for more than information on the temperature differences between direct and indirect oestrus cooking. Or bank check out our BBQ 101 series to learn more than nigh smoker types and how they're used.

Setting up your cooker so your meat is not in the direct path of the heat source volition allow heat to broadcast around the meat, which results in cooking by convection. Heat is transferred to the food by a fluid – in this case, air, and conduction carries the surface heat through to the eye of the cutting.

Set Your Gas Grill for A Two-Zone Fire

Institute hot and cool zones by turning on (or leaving off) the burners. For case, if your propane grill is equipped with four burners, turn on burners one and two, or three and four (meet diagram). This volition create a single heat source assuasive y'all to identify your meat on the libation area of the grill.

Burners

If your propane cooker but has three burners, turn the burner closest to the left (or right) on high, and gear up the eye burner to medium, or low depending on the target temperature you're trying to achieve. Exit the remaining burner off. Over again, this will create a absurd zone allowing y'all to state the meat over the burner that'southward been left in the off position.

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Water Pan

With your heat sources identified, proceed set up up. You lot'll need a dispensable aluminum pan filled with h2o to evangelize moisture in the otherwise dry environment of the grill—and wood chunks to give your meat a sugariness osculation of smoky season. A boiling environment keeps the outside of the meat tacky and better able to absorb smoke.

Outset by removing the grill grates. Become yourself a disposable aluminum pan, fill one-half manner with water and ready on elevation of the protective oestrus deflectors in the hot zone you established before.

Woods Chip Packet

Side by side to the h2o pan, and every bit close to the heat as y'all can get, identify your forest chunks. To avoid flare ups, wrap your chunks, or woods chips in aluminum foil making sure to poke a few holes in the top so the smoke can escape more easily. Depending on the size of the chunks, your best bet is to identify the wood betwixt the oestrus deflectors in your hot zone.

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Temperature Tracking

Once your water pan is in place, and your wood chunks ready, supercede the grill grates and plow on the burners in your hot zone as designated before. Let your grill come to temperature. Depending on your target smoking temperature, betwixt 225-250°F (107-121°C), yous may be looking at 20 to thirty minutes. Arrange your settings as needed to assistance maintain your target temperature.

Any you exercise, don't use the from-the-factory dome thermometer that comes with the cooker to monitor the internal temperature of your grill (now smoker). Instead, for reasons we mention in our Dome Temperature vs Grill Temperature post, use a thermocouple probe thermometer to monitor the temperature at the grill grate level. We advise the Crocodile Clip Oven Probe, which can be clipped anywhere on the grill surface and is congenital to withstand temperatures up to 660°F (349°C).

Crocodile Clip

Proper Probe Placement

The placement of the probe is also important to ensure you're monitoring the temperature correctly. For larger grill surfaces, identify the sensor no more than one inch from the surface of the meat y'all're cooking. This volition allow yous to measure temperatures right at the surface of the meat. For smaller grill surfaces, where the meat takes up the lion share of the cooking expanse, place the probe no less than one inch from the wall of the smoker. Any closer and your readings may be compromised by the surface estrus emitted from the wall.

Monitor the internal temperature of your meat with a leave-in probe thermometer. The Smokehouse Penetration probe is perfect for this because its stainless steel pb is durable enough to withstand the temps of the grill but sparse plenty to close snugly in the lid of the cooker.

For added peace of mind, monitor both ambient and internal temperatures on ane unit with the ThermaQ^{^®} 2-Aqueduct Thermocouple Alarm. This will allow you to know what's happening inside of your smoker without having to open the lid. Y'all won't lose whatsoever valuable smoke and heat, which means dinner will be washed that much sooner.

Or for even more convenience and power, use our brand new ThermaQ WiFi unit that actuallypairs to an app on your phone so you can move on with your twenty-four hours, fifty-fifty drive beyond boondocks, while still keeping a shut middle on your smoker temps and go timely alerts if whatever alarms are triggered.

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