Nothing cooks ribs, salmon, bacon or smash burgers (the latest craze) quite like a smoker. They range from simple stand-alone charcoal, wood, gas or electric smokers to more traditional offset smokers to all-in-one Kamado style smokers and firing into the 21stcentury with the increasingly popular bullet-shaped smoke
Ceramic grills
The “Kamado style” grills (above) are incredibly versatile. You can cook “low and slow” (a joint of beef brisket for instance) for anything between 4-16 hours with no need to top up on charcoal, giving you that “melt in the mouth” texture to meats that we all love. Firing it up to higher temperatures creates a pizza oven to keep the kids happy. Oh, and you could BBQ or roast too!
Bullet shaped smokers
Dried out meat is a thing of the past, now the increasingly popular water-smokers have made their entrance into the BBQ world. They are becoming more and more popular for that reason; capable of cooking large joints of meat and fish at low temperatures for long periods without losing any of their succulent taste. Friends cooked their Christmas turkey on one last year with amazing results!
They usually have 3 compartments. At the bottom is the heat source, where the charcoal goes. Above that is the water pan, which stores and regulates the heat, deflecting the direct heat and providing a moist cooking environment to cook. Finally you have the smoking chamber above that where you cook your meats.
Offset smokers
Offset smokers are more traditional smokers; in human form they'd wear a velvet jacket and frequent gentlemen's clubs!
The main cooking chamber is usually a long metal barrel with a door at one end and a smoke stack (a kind of chimney). Attached to one end is typically a firebox where you burn charcoal and cooking woods. Heat and smoke produced in there enters the cooking chamber through a small hole, barbecuing and flavouring the meats as they pass through before exiting through the stack at the top.
Electric Smoker
Electric smokers are very popular with the professionals in the catering industry because it's really easy to set them up to produce the same results over and over again. Even if you are beginner, electric smokers are hassle free. To smoke you simply turn on the heating element to your required temperature and let the temperatures rise.