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iconomy: A nice stovetop smoker runs about $30 to $40. They are the same basic design as the trashcan except the heating element (the stove) is outside the containment vessel.
Standalone smokers run $100 and up, but their meat capacity is much greater and meant more for recreational hunters who smoke their game. Smoked pheasant and smoked elk are especially good while smoked rabbit and venisons like white-tail deer are okay. I have had smoked bear and buffalo, but for those I prefer regular grilling.
I've made a stovetop smoker from a wok before. But in the summer, it's too hot to use the stove here.
Basically, you put wood chips or tea in the bottom of a wok, put a rack on top, and cover it real tight. Problem is, it sort of smokes up the house. It's fun, though.
I grew up with smoking as my father and grandfather smoked a lot of meat, mostly out of season game. We lived in a very rural, dairy-farming area with forests measured by the square mile. My grandfather's farm was so large that a gunshot at the center could not be heard at the boundary.
Now, my father smokes a lot of turkey (he has heart issues too), and he smokes his own turkey ham, turkey bacon and turkey sausage. The best part of that is he can eliminate the sodium salts and use other nitrates for the curing.
Target has one for 19.99, Walmartianville probably has one too.
What kills is that just last Friday I finally threw out the hot plate that had been sitting in the back of my middle desk drawer since 2002. The woman who used the office before me had left it there and I kept it in case she ever came back for it.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
