Using Wood Chips to Add Smoke Flavor in a Gas Grill


 
Bruce said:
So, does that smoker just use regular pellets that are normally used in a pellet grill? I would suspect you can use other types of smoker boxes the same way as well or do you need the wide open venting?
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I can only speak of this tube as it’s what I own and use. I use traeger 100% maple pellets for salmon. You can use any pellet and pellets are preferred versus wood chips. Pellets just smoke well. Plain and simple. The airflow is important so you can keep that smoldering airflow.
 
Some regular pellets for a pellet grill can have a high percentage of “fuel” wood (maple) to generate heat, added to “flavour” wood (hickory) to keep flavour milder and probably the price down. For the smoker tubes you want 100% flavour wood, peach, cherry, mesquite etc as you are not using it as a fuel to generate heat. These packages are of course more expensive.
 
I've thought about buying pellets used like on the Smoke Fire. But, often wondered if they would actually give "smoke" used in that manner. My thoughts are being more uniform might be easier to use?
 
Being stuck with the gassers only in the summer due to our charcoal ban I've used my CI smoke box many times and have successfully achieved a level of smoke flavor that I was looking for. My E320 and Gen 2000 both have CI non coated grates, and I haven't experienced any problems with the seasoning.
I recently purchased a pellet smoke tube which I will be trying, seeing that I have lots of different pellets for my camp chef. The fact that Barb and don't like a heavy smoke flavor the smoke box works out great for us.
 
I was given a tube and a bag of pellets recently, it worked great. Definitely need to get a bunch lit so it will stay lit. I have a little micro torch that I ended up using to start it. I filled it to the top, it put out a ton of nice smoke for hours. I imagine it would be great for cold smoking.

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DuaneMac said:
I was given a tube and a bag of pellets recently, it worked great. Definitely need to get a bunch lit so it will stay lit. I have a little micro torch that I ended up using to start it. I filled it to the top, it put out a ton of nice smoke for hours. I imagine it would be great for cold smoking.

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That's the ticket. I see lots of posts about smoke tubes going out. They must be well lit, allowed to burn for ~10 minutes and not put into a pellet grill until the grill is up to temperature.
 
Bob Bailey said:
That's the ticket. I see lots of posts about smoke tubes going out. They must be well lit, allowed to burn for ~10 minutes and not put into a pellet grill until the grill is up to temperature.
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and then blow the fire out! don't leave the pellets burning with flame. when you blow the fire out, the pellets will smoke for around 2 hours+ on a full tube of pellets. BUT, a full tube of pellets will drop pellets out if laid down. so either smoke with the tube vertical or lay it down and only fill 70%, light till on fire, burn for 5 minutes, extinguish flame and then let is smoke.
 
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Pellet tubes work very well.

You can put them down on the flav bars or up on the grate.

The trick (regardless of position) is (i) keeping it lit, but also (ii) not getting it so hot that it bursts into full flame.

While having it below is a better smoke flow, it is just WAY easier to keep it up at the grate level. So you can easily relight, refill, or blow out and move if it bursts into flame.

Many folks use them in pellet grills to amp up the smoke even further.
 
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