Using Wood Chips to Add Smoke Flavor in a Gas Grill


 
OK, I have a bit of time on my hands. So I'll document what I test-grilled last night using a 12 inch smoker tube with pellets on a gas grill.

The grilled part of dinner for 2 last night consisted of turkey drumsticks, a whole zucchini, a whole tomato, and a whole red pepper.

The grill is a Weber 435, with GrillGates. I filled up about 3 inches of the tube with Lumber Jack apple pellets and lit with a butane torch. I placed the tube under the GrillGrates in the center of the grill, resting between the flavorizor bars. I placed the food on the grates directly above the tube, with no fire lit, for 45 minutes - cover closed, of course.

Afterwards I lit at max flame the far left and far right burners only. I moved the veggies directly above one of the burner areas and kept the drumsticks at the center of the grates, still above the tube, for slow cooking.

The hood thermometer read a maximum of 350F during the cook. After turning the drumsticks over earlier, when the probe showed 173F, I shut off the burners and served dinner.

The veggies had barely any smoke taste - super mild. However, the outer skin of the turkey and the layer of meat below it absorbed enough smoke to give a nice taste overall to the turkey meat. My wife gave it 2 greasy thumbs up.
 
Darren Lebner said:
OK, I have a bit of time on my hands. So I'll document what I test-grilled last night using a 12 inch smoker tube with pellets on a gas grill.

The grilled part of dinner for 2 last night consisted of turkey drumsticks, a whole zucchini, a whole tomato, and a whole red pepper.

The grill is a Weber 435, with GrillGates. I filled up about 3 inches of the tube with Lumber Jack apple pellets and lit with a butane torch. I placed the tube under the GrillGrates in the center of the grill, resting between the flavorizor bars. I placed the food on the grates directly above the tube, with no fire lit, for 45 minutes - cover closed, of course.

Afterwards I lit at max flame the far left and far right burners only. I moved the veggies directly above one of the burner areas and kept the drumsticks at the center of the grates, still above the tube, for slow cooking.

The hood thermometer read a maximum of 350F during the cook. After turning the drumsticks over earlier, when the probe showed 173F, I shut off the burners and served dinner.

The veggies had barely any smoke taste - super mild. However, the outer skin of the turkey and the layer of meat below it absorbed enough smoke to give a nice taste overall to the turkey meat. My wife gave it 2 greasy thumbs up.
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question, did you make the pellets smolder by blowing out the flame or did you leave them lit, on fire?
 
Brett-EDH said:
question, did you make the pellets smolder by blowing out the flame or did you leave them lit, on fire?
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At first I left them lit. However, the flame died down on its own. The pellets were still burning about 2H45M after I first lit them. Again, I only filled up about 3 inches of the tubes. When I rested the tube flat along the flavorizor bars, I'm sure that some of the pellets shifted down lengthwise in the tube.
 
Darren Lebner said:
At first I left them lit. However, the flame died down on its own. The pellets were still burning about 2H45M after I first lit them. Again, I only filled up about 3 inches of the tubes. When I rested the tube flat along the flavorizor bars, I'm sure that some of the pellets shifted down lengthwise in the tube.
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from my experience, the only way to get smoke out of the pellets is to get the pellets lit, let the pellets burn for 5 minutes, then blow out the flame and let the pellets smolder. that smolder will produce maximum smoke using pellets and with lowest heat output.

i've let the pellets burn when i first started using the tube and the smoke that was produced was garbage and the pellets burned too quickly. the smolder method was the only way i found to get quality, clean smoke out of the pellets.

this method works for fish, cheese and salt as that's all i've done using this "cold smoke" method. and yes, the pellets migrate when you place the tub down. that's very common. the trick is to keep them as compact as possible, if possible.
 
In my minimal pellet experience I've found that keeping pellets dry in an air-tight box can make a major difference in how they light and produce smoke. I also refer back to the YT vids link I posted here earlier. There are pellets of different quality, which can also make the difference in both burn and flavor.

The smoke produced last night was just fine. As I said, the 3 inches of pellets were still burning almost 3 hours later.

My next question is how long can you cold smoke raw beef and poultry before a health concern kicks in?
 
Darren Lebner said:
Need to highlight this question again:

How long can you cold smoke raw beef and poultry before a health concern kicks in?
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Found this quote from "The Dough Doctor", Tom Lehmann (RIP 12/2020), on another site:

There is the 4-hour food safety rule which basically states that a product cannot be allowed to be at a temperature that will support microbial growth (lower than 140F and greater than 40F)) for an accumulated time not to exceed 4-hours.
 
There is also quite a bit of info available about time/temperature and bacterial growth, especially as it pertains to cooking sous vide. For instance:

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Ahh but the key words I got there from Cooks is "we believe". Key words for me? "I don't believe". After having to be hospitalized a few years back for a truly serious case of food poisoning, I try not to go by "we believe". I was VERY sick for over 2 weeks. Not gonna do that again. It was from Avocados but still not taking chances
 
LMichaels said:
Ahh but the key words I got there from Cooks is "we believe". Key words for me? "I don't believe". After having to be hospitalized a few years back for a truly serious case of food poisoning, I try not to go by "we believe". I was VERY sick for over 2 weeks. Not gonna do that again. It was from Avocados but still not taking chances
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I've been poisoned from tap water. Still drinking it, though.
 
Back to topic.

So this time I fired up a tube with pellets on the 435 and cold smoked whole chicken thighs for 1.5 hours. Outside temperature was 84F/29C. Then lit 4 main burners and kept all on low flame till cooked.

Wow! Super nice smoke flavor to the chicken through and through. Family and guests really enjoyed the flavor.

Next time, will try this with whole beef. Won't try with ground meat because of the health hazard warnings.

Also want to try this out with a charcoal grill.
 
Not to belabor the "off" subject, but be aware that the 4 hours is cumulative since butchered. So every stop outside the safe range including transports counts towards the 4 hours. We can't know how much time meat spent in the danger zone, so @LMichaels is right to be suspicious.

This was thoroughly covered by on TVWB some years ago. I'll see if I can find the relevant posts/info. I happened on it a few weeks ago.
 
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