What Size Smoker Do I Need?
By Nicola Lando
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June 1st, 2022
For slow cooked food with authentic flavours, nothing beats cooking with a smoker. Smokers, alongside barbecues, add a unique dimension to meats, cheeses, veg and fish whether cooked inside or outdoors.
Smokers have grown in popularity over the past few decades as more and more chefs are going back to basics. Food smokers represent that corner of cookery that focuses on traditional methods, introducing exciting flavours using the most simple of components.
From smoke-infused racks of meat to aromatic fish – even cheese and vegetables can benefit from time in a smoker.
So, if you’re researching what is the best smoker to buy, it’s important to work out the necessary specification. Smokers come in a huge range of shapes and sizes – from table-top smokers to restaurant-friendly food smokers.
What size kit you need depends on a few factors: whether it’s for business or pleasure, how much food you intend to cook at any one time, the various functions available and the fuel type.
Is the smoker for commercial or domestic use?
When it comes to the range of smokers on the market, both professional and novice chefs are spoilt for choice. While there is a huge range of features and sizes, most smokers are easy to use – making setting up and running straightforward.
Despite this, a casual smoker chef will have simple requirements compared to a restaurant’s needs, therefore striking the right balance for your particular circumstances is important.
If you’re looking for a commercial smoker…
If you’re running a catering business, own a restaurant or want to start producing smoked foods for a crowd, you’ll need to think fairly big. Not only this, but when catering an event, you don’t have as much time to monitor a domestic smoker which is a little more hands on. It's for this reason that digital smokers are very popular – you load up the racks and, using the digital display, can set the oven and smoke generator to do all the hard work for you.
If you’re looking for a domestic smoker…
The domestic chef can afford to be a little more hands on. When you have family and friends over, a hot coal smoker makes a big impression. The ProQ Ranger Elite BBQ Smoker is the perfect piece of kit for the garden to produce moist, flavoursome meat, fish and vegetables for parties and gatherings.
Consider what fuel type you want to use
Choosing your ideal smoker also involves picking what type of fuel you want to use. Different smokers have different types of fuel, from electricity to charcoal, pellets to wood chips. Each fuel will have its own benefits, depending on your requirements.
Electric smokers: These are really easy to use, with controls that allow you to set timers for the food to cook. These are perfect for catering businesses and restaurants.The Bradley Digital 4-Rack Smoker is a good example of an electric pellet smoker.
Pellet smokers: These are popular, as they are electrically powered, so carry the benefits of an electric smoker, but use wood pellets to provide the heat and flavour of a traditional smoker.
Propane smokers: These are good for quick and easy heating, and are simple to use.
Charcoal and wood smokers: Regarded as the most traditional smoker, using these is straightforward, making them ideal for home use. And because these deliver incredible flavour, many commercial setups have expensive charcoal and wood-fuelled smokers which can come in at the far end of the price scale. However, there are a lot of affordable domestic wood and charcoal smokers. The ProQ BBQ Smokers are charcoal and wood smokers.
Our recommendations
Smoking food is a really easy way to impress your guests and diners. Which is why a smoker is the perfect tool for any chef. Whether it’s a domestic smoker perfect for parties and outdoor eating or a large scale smoker for businesses, if you’re looking to invest in a food smoker, we have some recommendations based on our best sellers.
If you're a food smoking beginner, sharpen your smoking skills with the Camerons Stovetop Smoker. It can be used on a stovetop or barbecue to produce hot smoked fish, meat and even vegetables easily. Larger items can also be smoked using a foil hood, so your choice of smoked food is unlimited. This machine washable device comes with a recipe booklet to inspire your next smoked creation.
Fuel Type: Wood Chips
For parties of six or over, you’d struggle to get a more comprehensive and easy-to-use smoker than the ProQ Frontier 3-in-1 Elite. This all-rounder allows you to experiment with cold smoking as well as hot smoking. This smoker delivers the classic American BBQ flavour to your bacon, salmon, brisket and cheeses.
Fuel Type: Charcoal and Wood Smoker
The Bradley Digital Smoker 6 Rack is one of our bestselling smokers for restaurants and catering companies – and is also a favourite with home-smokers. The reason chefs love the Bradley Smoker so much, is because of its unrivalled consistency. The smoke levels are carefully controlled, so you get reliable, top-quality results every time. The six 11”x13” racks allow a large amount of food to be smoked at once, with the digital timer and smoke generator doing all the hard work for you. Check out the Bradley Smoker range here.
Fuel Type: Electric pellet smoker
How much should I spend on my smoker?
There are smokers to suit all budgets, and it helps to figure out how much use you will get from your smoker. If you’re simply curious about trying out a smoker, the Camerons Gourmet Mini Smoker is a good place to start – affordable, easy to use and suitable for indoor and outdoor use. Pro-smokers will know the value of a good smoker, so may be willing to spend more on a machine.
Click through to see our huge range of smokers, wood chips, bisquettes and smoking equipment.
About the author
Nicola is co-founder and CEO at Sous Chef. She has worked in food for over ten years.
Nicola first explored cooking as a career when training at Leiths, before spending the next decade in Finance. However... after a stage as a chef at a London Michelin-starred restaurant, Nicola saw the incredible ingredients available only to chefs. And wanted access to them herself. So Sous Chef was born.
Today, Nicola is ingredients buyer and a recipe writer at Sous Chef. She frequently travels internationally to food fairs, and to meet producers. Her cookbook library is vast, and her knowledge of the storecupboard is unrivalled. She tastes thousands of ingredients every year, to select only the best to stock at Sous Chef.
Nicola shares her knowledge of ingredients and writes recipes to showcase those products. Learning from Sous Chef's suppliers and her travels, Nicola writes many of the recipes on the Sous Chef website. Nicola's recipes are big on flavour, where the ingredients truly shine (although that's from someone who cooks for hours each day - so they're rarely tray-bakes!).
