ottawa foodies

I'm just wondering if anyone has a smoker recommendations they can give me? My uncle had one when I was growing up, and oh the mouthwatering food that came out of there. Please let me know your thoughts!

Depends what you want. Set it and forget it ease of use. Cost. Cost of running it. How large or small(space considerations). Bradley and Traegar make a good product. You can smoke on a charcoal BBQ with some work and attention.

I ended up using a bradley smoke generator from amazon and a 45 gallon drum for the smoking chamber. PIDs are cheap and i use a hotplate as a heat source. I can cold and hot smoke with it. The appeal in using a barrel was the ability to hang sausages in it for smoking which i fould the bradley chamber not tall enough for. While the bradley pucks are not cheap i can run it for 8 hours without having to check on it.

I think for value for money, I would go with a Weber Smokey Mountain. A Big Green Egg style is a little better, but is it $700 better? Depends on how often you use it.

I have a cheap cheap water smoker, but I smoke 3X per year, so it does me fine, particularly as I have learned its limitations and what I need to do to correct them

I have a weber smokey mountain (18.5") and I love it. It doesn't use sawdust, or compressed pellets for smoke. It uses charcoal and wood chunks. A smokey mountain with a BBQ guru controller will cost you less than a BGE and you can do some pretty cool stuff with it...like cook briskest and pulled pork for 18 hours on one load of fuel. I'm not knocking the BGE, it's a great setup, but I started with a weber kettle and never looked back.

All the set ups have their pros and cons. The Weber Smokey Mountain is a great set up. The Big Green Egg will last forever. My Bradley smoker has had some recurring electrical issues but, being electric, I can use it on my wooden deck and leave it for hours.

Depending on your requirements and budget...

Bradley for electric - simple to use, inexpensive, but uses pucks which drives up the cost a bit, unless you get creative, no smoke ring (if that's important to you).

Traeger for pellet smoker - simple to use, a step up in price from Bradley, but will last far longer IMO. Not insulated.

Weber Smokey Mountain - the classic. Decent pricing, Weber quality, and it just plain works. No proprietary pucks or pellets. Not insulated.

Weber one touch kettle - very inexpensive, great flexibility. Can sear, smoke (although not as long as true smokers). Not insulated.

Kamado style - perhaps the best of all worlds, but at a very high initial cost. Can be used year round in any conditions to boot. While others can be used year round as well, they won't be as capable in winter as the BGE/Keg/etc. far less transportable than the above options, if that's important to you. Very well insulated.

I think you have all your options listed here - excellent summary by Bobby Fillet.

Great advice everyone, thanks a bunch!! We have a decent sized backyard (for Ottawa that is), so space isn't an issue. Great post Bobby Fillet, thanks again!

I'll just add, if I may, that I have a Large Big Green Egg and a Weber Performer for sale so if you are interested in either one, send me a PM. Also have for free Weber gas griller and a Bradley smoker to give away. The Weber is older but works perfectly and the Bradley needs a bit of tinkering. The BGE comes with a few extras such as a BBQ Guru.

I've sent you a message, felinefan!

I am getting quite a few message for the BBQ equipment and I am dealing with them in the order they came in. It is the only way I can be fair to those responding, but I will answer all messages.

If someone does not claim the bradley box let me know. Also for the person that claims it you can get a new smoke generator for them for around 130 from amazon.

The Weber gasser has been spoken for. Krusty, I will keep you in mind.

Be sure to check this old thread

Forum - Bradley Smoker

+1 for the Big Green Egg. I can justify the cost when considering its life-time warranty. It's extremely versatile in that its temp range is from 100F to 1000F. Best way to make a pizza. I've used it to smoke salmon, chicken, pulled pork, almonds, and cheesecake.

"My Bradley smoker has had some recurring electrical issues but, being electric, I can use it on my wooden deck and leave it for hours."

I use my performer and my WSM on my deck, both for hours at a time. The performer has a built in ash catcher and the WSM uses a BBQ Guru so there's nearly zero chance of my deck catching on fire.

I've got a Big Green Egg and a Bradley, and I'm glad to have them both. The BGE is really difficult to do lower-heat no-cook smoking, so it is great to have the Bradley for that.

I've also had several Brinkmann vertical smokers similar to the Weber Smokey Mountain. The WSM is definitely a much better unit than the Brinkmann in several ways, but the Brinkmann still produced lots of good food for me including a trophy-winning batch of bacon (best bacon in Halifax).

Really depends on what you want to do.

I am another big green egg fan yet there is a cost involved. Zym does raise a good point about cold smoking as an egg is going, you won't be able to go much lower than 225. However, there is a $40 solution to that little problem. It is called the A-Maz-In Pellet smoker, which really is a form of a smoker box that you fill with pellets. You light it and get it going and then place in the cooker. I have used it to cold smoke cheese, almonds and bacon.

www.bbqing.com

I bought a weber smokey joe last weekend for $25 on kijiji. Useful as a portable BBQ, plus I can use it to generate smoke to pump into my WSM using metal laundry venting....I'm setup for cold smoking now too :)