- Nov 28, 2016
- 56
- 37
Hi everyone,
I am pretty new to smoking, but I'm having a great time so far (mostly). One problem I keep having though is that nasty ash trey flavor on my food. I am using a Masterbuilt electric smoker, but not with the chip trey. I have a knock off of the amazin smoke tube, but I buy the genuine hardwood pellets (Hickory and Mesquite).
I have kept the pellets dry, and they seem to light/smoke ok. I keep the vent on the top wide open for the entire smoke. I read here your supposed to get thin blue smoke out the top and I think I am. It seems thin, and the pellets burn from one end to the other. I think the smoke has a slight blue tinge to it but I'm not 100% sure.
When smoking I noticed if the smoke goes directly up and hits the food I get creosote build up so I put a piece of foil below the first bit of food to prevent that and it seems to help. I can get a descent smoke on some salmon, I do it for only about 4 hours, and with the hardwood chips it comes out good. I do still taste the creosote a little in that but it's tolerable. I have noticed that where the racks touch the salmon I get black stripes of creosote though. The racks are sticky from it.
The real kicker was when I tried smoking some seasonings. I did a box of kosher salt, some pepper corns and paprika. This I did for longer. Starting out cold and then moving to 200 degree heat toward the end (12 hours total). When they were done it all looked about perfect, medium brown on the salt, paprika was slightly darkened. When I tasted the salt it was really bad creosote flavor, and the paprika was worse. I thought maybe I was just going crazy, but the next day with fresh eyes and tasted buds I tried it again. The paprika was so bad it was like eating a spoon full of cigarette butts :( After about a week of re-tasting it, I threw it all out.
Is there something I am missing?
I am pretty new to smoking, but I'm having a great time so far (mostly). One problem I keep having though is that nasty ash trey flavor on my food. I am using a Masterbuilt electric smoker, but not with the chip trey. I have a knock off of the amazin smoke tube, but I buy the genuine hardwood pellets (Hickory and Mesquite).
I have kept the pellets dry, and they seem to light/smoke ok. I keep the vent on the top wide open for the entire smoke. I read here your supposed to get thin blue smoke out the top and I think I am. It seems thin, and the pellets burn from one end to the other. I think the smoke has a slight blue tinge to it but I'm not 100% sure.
When smoking I noticed if the smoke goes directly up and hits the food I get creosote build up so I put a piece of foil below the first bit of food to prevent that and it seems to help. I can get a descent smoke on some salmon, I do it for only about 4 hours, and with the hardwood chips it comes out good. I do still taste the creosote a little in that but it's tolerable. I have noticed that where the racks touch the salmon I get black stripes of creosote though. The racks are sticky from it.
The real kicker was when I tried smoking some seasonings. I did a box of kosher salt, some pepper corns and paprika. This I did for longer. Starting out cold and then moving to 200 degree heat toward the end (12 hours total). When they were done it all looked about perfect, medium brown on the salt, paprika was slightly darkened. When I tasted the salt it was really bad creosote flavor, and the paprika was worse. I thought maybe I was just going crazy, but the next day with fresh eyes and tasted buds I tried it again. The paprika was so bad it was like eating a spoon full of cigarette butts :( After about a week of re-tasting it, I threw it all out.
Is there something I am missing?