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BBQ Smoker Reviews: Cookshack Smokette Elite Electric BBQ Smoker

BBQ Smoker — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 19:53:42 +0000

This little electric BBQ Smoker is a strong favorite among backyard BBQ cooks who rave about its ability to handle full racks of ribs and whole briskets as well as produce knock out smoked fish, cheeses, and more.

Able to hold up to 25 lbs. of meat, the temperature range of the Cookshack Smokette Elite ranges from 140-300 degrees F. It’s stainless steel body is insulated with 850ºF Spin-Glas®, which keeps the cooker cool the to touch even as its 750w heating element powers through long cooking sessions.

Cookshack Customer Support and Service is Great

One of the hallmarks of the Cookshack corporation is that they’ve been building smokers for commercial and home use for a long time. They also understand the value of keeping customers happy and take the time to guide those who are new to using BBQ Smokers through the process of creating great ‘cue.

Cookshack Smokette Elite Electric BBQ Smoker. SM025. Stainless Steel Smokers. The Cookshack Smokette Elite Series Electric Smoker is Cookshacks most popular model for back yard barbecuers! Anyone can make professional quality old-fashioned smoked barbecue in their own backyard. This Smokette electric smoker features stainless steel construction, 850 degree Spin-Glass insulation keeping it safe and cool on the outside, and digital technology that allows you to smoke-cook your meat at a temperature and time that you set. The Elite Smokette electronic controller allows smoke cooking by setting the desired cooking temperature and monitoring the internal meat temperature with its commercial quality meat temperature probe. The LED panel displays the cooking temperature as well as the internal meat temperature. Your electric smoker will arrive with everything you need to start smoking immediately including a meat probe for accurate internal temperature, two 18 x 14 inch nickel-plated shelves big enough to hold full slabs of ribs or whole briskets, five pounds of hickory wood, stainless steel wood box, four 3 inch locking casters, Smoking At Home cookbook with tried and true recipes, and an operators manual to get you up to speed fast. This Elite Smokette electric smoker has a 20 - 25 lb capacity and maximum smoking temperature range of 140 - 300 degrees. Smoker requires 7 amps/120V/750W. ETL listed. All Cookshack smokers are proudly made in the USA and include a 2 year limited residential warranty. Dimensions (in inches) 20 1/2 W x 19 1/2 D x 31 3/4 H.

Get Smokin’ Right When Your Cookshack Elite Arrives

True to their customer service philosophy, the good folks at Cookshack want you up and smoking as soon as possible. Your Smokette Elite will arrive with everything you need to start smoking immediately: 5 lbs. hickory smoking wood, ‘Smoking at Home’ cookbook, and operator’s manual.

If you want to expand upon your BBQ Smoking Skills, there are also a couple of good BBQ books put out by Cookshack you might want to check out:

Get Smokin': 190 Award Winning Smoker Oven Recipes : Cookshack
Average Rating:
11 total customer reviews...

Want to add some versatility to your Cookshack Elite Electric BBQ Smoker? No problem!

Cover, Cold-Smoke Baffle, and Seafood Grills. You may find yourself smoking fish, cheese, and other items you have not even thought of yet! When you place your order you will see a complete list of accessories to choose from.

BBQ Smoker Reviews: The Smokenator 1000

BBQ Smoker — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:13:48 +0000

As part of the BBQ Smoker Reviews posted on this site, I wanted to take a turn at highlighting a pretty easy way some folks have found to turn a Weber Grill into a consistent and reliable smoked BBQ cooking machine.

I’ve written a lot about the history of Weber Grills in the US and abroad, from the basic Weber Kettle to grills like the Weber Performer and Weber Ranch Kettle.

As I talk with BBQers ranging from the best backyard BBQ grillers to BBQ Professions of the caliber of Myron Mixon and Johnny Trigg, there’s no mistaking the flavor profile you get when you add to your special spice and rub mixtures the true blue smoke from charcoal and some wood.

Understandably, many of these BBQ Smokers and pit masters use honest to goodness smokers including Green Mountain Grills, Stump’s Smokers, Backwoods Smokers, and Jambo Pits to name a few.

But what do you do when you want to create mouth watering BBQ Brisket, Pulled Pork, Chicken and Ribs and you’re cooking on a Weber Kettle?

Well, as many of you might guess, you set up half your Weber for direct cooking, with hot coals on one side and a drip pan or pans on the other. Add your favorite wood chips or chunks to your charcoal, moderate the temp, and you’re smoking.

But… what about keeping water over the coals and wood chips to keep moisture in the picture? Smoked food without ample moister will dry out, and no one likes dry BBQ.

Introducing… the Smokenator 1000

One answer to this situation may just be the Smokenator 1000, which according to the manufacturer turns a typical Weber kettle grill into an incredible meat smoker, allowing easy and full control over both moisture and temperature. Reports so far say that the Smokenator frees up space on your Weber Grill, delivers true indirect cooking, and will hold enough fuel for 6 hours.

Check out the amount of potential BBQ Smoker space you have using this tool!

The ability to smoke BBQ on multiple levels in your Weber Kettle sets the Smokenator 1000 above the rest. It definitely beats out the standard charcoal basket setup where you often have a lot of carry over direct heat despite setting your food over the indirectly heated part of your Weber grill.

Photo credit: http://smokenator.com

The Smokenator 1000 provides you with an average surface area of 300 square inches.

Photo credit: http://smokenator.com

The placement of the Smokenator lets a 25-pound turkey sit comfortably in the Weber, without worrying about getting ash on the turkey when one stirs the coals. There is no worry about the foil moving and the turkey getting dried out. The Smokenator partition blocks the majority of direct radiation while turning the kettle into a highly moisturized cooking environment.

Great – but how exactly does the Smokenator 1000 work?

A good solution for BBQ Smoker newbies who own a 22.5” or 26.75″ Weber kettle and want to avoid many months of trial and error and disappointing result, the Smokenator 1000 takes a lot of the guess work out of BBQ smoker cooking.

Maximized Burn Times with Minimal Burned Food!

What I think is one of the coolest things about the Smokenator 1000 is the fact that you can chock it full of as much charcoal and wood chunks as two separate baskets of coal and wood. You can see this in the following photo:

Photo credit: http://smokenator.com

According to the manufacturer’s website, the Smokenator 1000 contains the hot coals channeling heat upward and shields food from direct heat. Food is cooked by convection and gentle radiation that is diffused through the 18 gage stainless steel metal of the Smokenator itself.

Photo credit: http://smokenator.com

A built in water pan is situated directly over the coals, which is the most efficient way to fill the kettle with high humidity. This humidity does three things: Keeps food moist (assuring deep smoke ring penetration), keeps temperature lower which gives you more control over temperature. By the way – it is very difficult to nearly impossible to achieve this water over the coals effect in your Weber grill without a tool like the Smokenator 1000.

Introducing the Smokenator 1000, an innovative BBQ accessory that transforms, your Weber Kettle into a water smoker. It converts your existing 22" Weber kettle into a smoker that is more efficient, easier to use and easier to clean up than the traditional vertical water smoker. No hassle with charcoal baskets, rails and aluminum foil and figuring out how to keep water over the coals to add moisture. The Smokenator is an industrial strength product, made out of 18-gage brushed sheet stainless, which won't rust. The whole idea of this product is to provide you with a means and a method to let you control your Weber, to obtain superlative results, while not having to buy a water smoker or other higher priced smoking device. Best of all, because the water pan is located extremely close to the coals, the cooking environment is kept moist. Evaporation tests how 45% less evaporation versus 22% by traditional pan methods, this means food will not dry out, unless you want it to by not keeping water in the pan. This takes much of the fussiness out of smoking. This accessory works with all meats, but especially chicken and turkey by keeping it moist. Pork ribs and red meats are very moist. The Smokenator is versatile; you can even cook a 25-pound turkey. The Smokenator is shipped with complete instructions, on how to regulate the Weber to produce excellent smoked food in the classic way. The instructions show you how to set up your Weber Kettle's, lower and upper vents and gives you clear concise instructions on how to regulate the air needed to smoke your food when you use Kingsford charcoal. These instructions represent over 40 hours of research and effort, putting you ahead. If you are looking for a way to stretch the versatility of your Weber and save space, the Smokenator 1000 is for you. Do you want a Smokenator and expand your smoking capacity? Double Deck your Weber with Smokenator 1000 & Hovergrill Kit.

Move on from the Smokenator 1000 Stand Alone for Even More Cooking Capacity

There are some useful iterations of this tool as well. For instance, the Smokenator 1000 plus Hover Kit really increases the total area you have inside your Weber kettle grill.

The whole idea of the Smokenator-Hovergrill kit is to provide you with a means and a method to let you control your Weber and provide extra grill capacity. The existing Weber food support grill and Hovergrill provide 550 square inches of surface to smoke over 15 pounds of ribs or 7 chicken halves. This combination has more area than a Weber Smokey Mountain.

Then of course, you may want to keep the standard model of Smokenator and go with Weber’s Rib Rack to add a little more smoking capacity.

Smokenator 1000 & Hovergrill Kit
Average Rating:
26 total customer reviews...

This Weber rib rack gets top reviews from many users. One user stated that it fits on one shelf of his smoker, holds four half racks of ribs between the uprights and two more half racks by leaning them up against the ends. “Since we get our baby back ribs packed three full racks to a package this works out great. I have to cut the racks of ribs into two to fit them into the smoker so this wire rack accommodates them all. Price is right for the problem it solves.”

Weber 6406 Rib Rack
Average Rating:
32 total customer reviews...

Last but not least is the trusty Weber chimney starter. Really, there is no better way to get your coals burning. Just fill it with your favorite natural lump charcoal, put a piece of paper towel soaked in cooking oil in the bottom, and let it rip!

Weber 7416 Rapidfire Chimney Starter
Average Rating:
380 total customer reviews...

Popular BBQ Smokers and Gear for June 2011

BBQ Smoker — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 21:45:52 +0000

It’s that time again, where I take an inventory of the BBQ Smokers, BBQ Gear, and BBQ Accessories our readers here at the BBQ Smoker Site find most useful over a given quarter.

There are so many different BBQ Smokers and related BBQ tools out there on the market today. Thing is, how do you decide which BBQ products are most useful? Well, aside from the reviews you read online, it’s helpful to see what folks who share your common interests think of these items.

The following is a collection of the most purchased BBQ smokers and gear purchased by our readers on Amazon for April through June, 2011.

Popular BBQ Items Archive

Popular BBQ Smokers and Gear – September 2011
Popular BBQ Smokers and Gear - June 2011
Popular BBQ Smokers and Gear - March 2011

Popular BBQ Books

With it’s recent release, Myron Mixon’s Smokin’ with Myron Mixon book ran away with the pack. Readers really love it, and Mixon has done a ton of work on TV and at regional and national BBQ Competitions to market himself over the years. To my knowledge, this is Myron’s first book of this type, so it’s about time he released one.

The rest of the BBQ books in this quarterly update are familiar to many of our readers, as they have shown up on our other Popular BBQ Smokers and Gear releases. America’s Best BBQ and Backyard BBQ are books to really consider adding to your library if you do not presently have them. And of course, Big Bob Gibson’s BBQ Book and the Weber text are keepers for sure.

Popular BBQ Smokers

I started The BBQ Smoker Site blog because I love learning, reading, and writing about BBQ Smokers. As such, this category is always a favorite for me. Aside from maybe the Masterbuilt Electric Smokehouse Smoker, which did not make this list, the Bradley electric smokers are a clear favorite among home cooks and backyard BBQ enthusiasts. This fact is echoed by the number of Bradley bisquettes that are represented in the accessories category below.

Weber clearly ran the table for charcoal BBQ Grills and Charcoal BBQ Smokers. Readers of our popular Smokin’ with the Dutchess series get a steady diet of Food Porn cooked on Hanneke’s Weber Kettle Grill, so it’s no surprise to see some of them here.

Popular BBQ Smoker and BBQ Grill Accessories

Thermometers

Maintaining the proper temperatures during a BBQ cook is the only way to ensure the results you are looking for. There’s nothing worse than wrecking a pricey cut of beef brisket because you’ve had your fire burning too hot. For long cooks, the remote control wireless thermometers really cannot be beat. This is especially true if you want to keep an eye on your favorite sports team and you don’t have a TV set up outside.

Though many cooks I talk with prefer the Splash-Proof Super-Fast Thermapen, the Taylor brand took the prize this quarter for instant read thermometers.

BBQ Grill and Smoker Tools

The BBQ Grill and BBQ Smoker Tools category of items is probably the most daunting, as the sheer number of items out there that purport to make our outdoor cooking lives easier and more fun than ever is staggering. The three items I was pleased to see make the list this quarter are the Cast Iron Grate by 4GrillersJoy, the King Kooker Jalapeno Rack, and the Jerky Racks.

The cast iron grate is just awesome, and I recommend anyone with a gas or charcoal grill to invest in cast iron grates of this type as soon as you can. They will change your grilling lives forever. Supply of these grates at Amazon are sometimes limited, so check the site for availability.

The Jalapeno Rack is just cool. They won’t really work for the BBQ Diva’s Atomic Buffalo Turds, but I’d put my money on the grilled tastiness they can offer up nonetheless.

Lastly, we have the Jerky Racks. Who doesn’t like Beef Jerky? I’d like to give these racks a try, as buying good quality beef jerky will put you in the poor house these days!

BBQ Smoker Wood

The wood we use when we cook BBQ is important. For chunk or stick wood, I’m a big fan of Fruita Wood Chunks Company out of Colorado. This quarter, Bradley smokers clearly got stocked up with a solid supply of Pecan, Adler, Hickory, Apple, Cherry, and Maple!

Knives and Choppers

Sharp knives are a must in any kitchen. When you’re loaded up on a trailer, sweating your ass off trying to get your meat cut in time to build your box for turn ins, sharp and reliable knives are just that more important.

Victorinox wins this quarter’s knife purchase battle, as might be expected of the maker of the famed “Swiss Army Knife.” The Victorinox 40520 8-inch Chef’s Knife was rated as “best overall” in Cooks magazine in Fall 2004. Pretty good report card from “the” chefs magazine. It took top honors over several high end ($80 -$100+) Wusthofs and Henckel models.

If you’re looking to update your collection of BBQ Books, BBQ and Grill Accessories, Knives, and the like, I hope this list is helpful. I don’t know about you, but it helps to know that others who share my interests took a look at given products and decided to give them a try.

Should you try out any of these items, consider leaving a comment to let us know how you liked them. You can always submit BBQ related reviews or story ideas to us. We love to share our readers’ views!

What Would I Change About My First BBQ Smoker? – Alli and C-Dub Wilson

BBQ Smoker — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:46:32 +0000

What do you get when you blend BBQ tastes from Vancouver, British Columbia and North Carolina? You get C-Dub’s BBQ Rub that’s what! And man are we glad to have it in our kitchen! After spending tons of time on the road, cooking comps, visiting friends and family back in NC, and oh – yeah – being on site as an official sponsor of the 2011 Las Vegas Smoke on the Water USA Barbecue Championship – Allegra and Charles “C-Dub” Wilson have finally chimed in on our one question interview regarding their first BBQ Smoker experience and what they might do differently if they had to do it all over again.

Here’s what Alli and Charles had to Say:

We were spoiled on our first BBQ Smoker, we were lucky enough to be able to get almost all we wanted as we had it custom made. Since our cooker is new (we only got it in January of this year)…it will take a little longer to REALLY find out what we wished we had. We got ours custom made by Clint Shockley at East Texas Smokers. We purchased the Contender with the following modifications:

LP Log Starter
BBQ Temperature Control System
RV Hot Water Heater
Trailer Plumbed for Propane
Warming Box
Double Basin Sink

Clint also hooked us up with a sweet custom paint job – check it out!

We Did Our BBQ Smoker Trailer Homework…

We did a lot of research and asked questions in different venues to make sure we got it right the first time. We also put questions out to BBQ pages and groups on Facebook and sent out questions to Twitter. Social networking for BBQ Teams really paid off in this case, as we got some excellent feedback from our BBQ brothers and sisters!

One of the things we ALMOST didn’t get was the sinks. Thankfully, we decided to add them in at the last minute, and we’re so glad we did. Perfect at Comps and Vending events.

What We’d Do Differently…

We love our trailer, and it’s going to serve us well long into the future. However, if we could do one thing differently, we’d go ahead and get the deluxe charcoal grill that is recommended for this East Texas Smokers Contender unit.

Since it cost a lot to ship the trailer up to Washington Sate, we decided to not get the grill. After using our “Baby” now for a while, we are REALLY wishing we had just sucked it up and bought the custom charcoal grill. Case in point – this past weekend we entered a BBQ Hamburger Contest. Even though we placed 4th, life would have been a lot easier with that custom added charcoal grill than cooking on the Mini Uniflame Grill we picked up at Wally World for $15 to enter the contest with! LMAO

If you have not tried C-Dub’s BBQ Rub products, you need to. Check out my past posts covering their products, and Brian over at Hot Sauce Daily did a nice review of their rubs as well.

Be sure to check out C-Dub’s BBQ Rub on Twitter, and visit the C-Dub’s BBQ Rub Facebook Page often! You can also buy their stuff directly from the C-Dub’s BBQ Rub website.

UPDATE: See responses we received from those interviewed here.

What Would I Change About My First BBQ Smoker? – George Hensler

BBQ Smoker — Tue, 17 May 2011 03:19:47 +0000

The “Author” has spoken and low… we have our next response to the “What Would I Change About My First BBQ Smoker?” question from Mr. George Hensler. He competes in BBQ with the Who Are Those Guys BBQ Team, he writes books (See our post on his book, Startin’ the Fire – a guide to starting up a competition BBQ team), and now he shares his thoughts with us here at the BBQ Smoker Site.

Here’s George’s response to our one question interview:

My first smoker was a $200 offset from BBQ Galore. If I had it to do over, I would purchase a unit with better temperature control than this unit. For the first two years I had it, I fought to maintain a consistent temperature which, in my humble opinion, is paramount when trying to cook good que. I did very little research before buying the unit (mistake) and went on a “non queing” salesman’s advice, which proved to be a huge mistake.

I still have the smoker, and use it several times a year just for the grilling space, no more fighting the primitive air draft system on that baby for me!

Folks, this is why I maintain this blog. So many folks have jumped into the BBQ Smoker game without performing the most rudimentary step… doing some research! Heck, even talking to a few teams at a local BBQ Competition would have given George better initial feedback than he got from the “non smoking” sales dude. I’m sure George would agree.

George now cooks on a Caldera Tall Boy smoker, Onynex oven and… wait for it…. a Weber Smokey Mountain BBQ Smoker! Man, are those babies popular!

If you want to ask him more about this specific smoker, give him a shout over at the Who Are Those Guys? BBQ Competition Team Facebook Page. You should also check out the Who Are Those Guys? website and check out Georg’es Startin’ the Fire site as well! If you are curious about what it takes to get a competition BBQ team up and running, it’s a great read.

UPDATE: See responses we received from those interviewed here.