The Plans

So now that I had decided I would have to build my own smoker, the natural question was how? Would I actually design and fabricate one from scratch or could I accomplish my goals equally well by taking an existing piece of equipment and modifying it to suit my new purposes?

I did yet more reading and research online and found that many people had converted household items like ovens, fridges, barrels and even file cabinets into great smokers. I looked at each of these, weighing pros and cons before making my final choice.

Each of these is an ingenious way to re-use an old piece of equipment for an entirely new purpose and with enough modifications, each would have turned out to be a good smoker. However, in the end, I decided on a fridge for several reasons.

1 - it offered the volume of cooking space I was looking for.

2 - racks and thus food would be easily accessible. After all, that's what a fridge was designed for!

3 - insulation. This was the real kicker in the deal. The insulation would definitely help with keeping the heat inside, thus promoting faster cooking and smoking while making the smoker safer to be around. The outside would remain cool to the touch while the inside was hot enough to slow smoke whatever was inside.

Great! All I had to do was find the right fridge now!