I was thinking of trying out a hot plate in my wsm for long, cool smokes (like jerky). I was hoping to find one with all metal construction, but I'm not sure where to look. Amazon lists a few different ones, but its hard to tell from the pic if they're plastic or not. Anybody have a suggestion for me?

All metal was hard to find for me. The dial and the feet tend to be plastic.

For my homemade smoker (old converted freezer) I bought this one. It works pretty well. You can find it at a better price somewhere other than SausageMaker. It's mostly metal.

thanks. I thought sausage maker had one but I couldn't find it on their website. Their showroom is in town and they usually give me 10-15% off when I go there, so maybe I'll go with it if you know it works.

any idea of the temps it'll hold?

Well not exactly. It gets to red hot and it turns down pretty low, but I've never put a therm to it.

It'll keep my full-size freezer-smoker at anything from 80 F - 160 F.

I experimented, making an electrice trash can smoker a few years ago. I tried using various hot plates, but they all had plastic (or bakelite) parts which at best turned brown, and at worst melted and gave off noxious fumes. They also have the therostat built into the the body, so thay don't regulate the temperature very well.

In the end I used one of these:



It's a heating element for lighting charcoal. It has a long shaft, so the plastic handle can remain outside the smoker where it won't get hot and melt. I had the heating element resting on a brick in the bottom of the trash can with a separate thermostat to regulate the temperature. It worked quite well, but I consider it heresy, and I back to using the WSM with charcoal

-Mark.

I just picked up one of these

http://www.smokepistol.com/

Haven't tried it yet though, waiting for the weather to get a little cooler.

quote:

I just picked up one of these

oh cool. I saw that some time ago and was wondering about it. Please report back.

I'm not sure if I like the proprietary wood cartridge, and I do still want some heat too.

quote:

Originally posted by John Solak:
I just picked up one of these

http://www.smokepistol.com/

Haven't tried it yet though, waiting for the weather to get a little cooler.

Williams-Sonoma now sells a similar product:

http://www.williams-sonoma.com...un%7C%7C0&cm_src=SCH

Jim, the smoke pistol is not intended for continuous operation. Its primary use is for creating small puffs of smoke that can be added to a enclosed container so meat can marinate in smoke before sous vide.

They've been sold on and off, as they've had technical problems, but that was some time ago, so I imagine they ironed out the bugs by now.