Everything taste like a camp fire

[IamJoHo]

I bought a Masterbuilt Electric Smoker Friday and I have used it three times over the weekend. Every time the food has a varying intensity of a camp fire taste. I have cooked jalapeño poppers, chicken wings, pork country ribs and pork loin. Varying in temps between 225-250. The first time I had the vent half closed and then after that I opened it all the way. I have been using a mix of hickory and apple wood chips from Weber. Not sure what I am doing wrong. I was planning on cooking to big racks of baby backs tomorrow morning but don’t want to ruin them. I have been searching but haven’t been able to find any definitive answers. Any tips for a newbie would be greatly appreciated.

 

[noboundaries]

I don't have an electric smoker, but dirty smoke will cause a campfire taste. The wood chips need to be burning clean with blue smoke, not white or grey.

Let the chips burn a little longer before loading the meat.

 

[indaswamp]

Your chip tray is likely starved for oxygen. Which is creating an incomplete burn and sooty, acrid chemicals to be created and they are getting on your food. Ditch the chips and get the A-MAZE-N Pellet smoker. Most members here use a mailbox mod. and the A-MAZE-N Tray to solve the low oxygen issue with MES smokers....

 

[indaswamp]

Oh- and do not soak your chips! If you are, this is likely causing the issue with bad smoke. Causing the fire to smolder at a low temp.

 

[johnmeyer]

The chip soaking is for when you put them over live coals, or in a smoking box in a gas grill; you don't want to soak chips for an MES smoker.

I too had horrible results with my MES and was ready to throw it away. Here is a link to a post which in turn links to my other posts about my foul-tasting ashtray results and how I improved things to the point that I now get great results:

Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness ... But Does It Taste Good?

The short version:

1. Clean the smoker to get rid of the residual buildup of creosote. If you've only done one smoke you can probably skip this step. But if the inside of your smoker is shiny black, and you see lots of smoke coming from your smoker during the preheat, before you add chips, then you need to do this.

2. Use the AMNPS. The fatal flaw with the MES smoker is that it only uses a single heating element. That element does double duty as both the heater for the oven and also the igniter for the smoking chips. As a result, the lower the temperature, the less smoke you get, and the higher the temperature, the more smoke you get.

3. Consider building an external smoke generator. You can also buy one from Masterbuilt. I recommend making one from a popcorn tin instead of a mailbox because it is food-safe, is larger, is cheaper, and you may have one already lying around.

Mailbox (Popcorn) Mod

 

[KrisUpInSmoke]

I use an mes as well. You can try putting in less wood chips than you think you need, about 7 chips an hour. For something that cooks 1 to 3 hours, I only fill the tray once. For ribs at 5 or 6 hours, I fill it 2 or 3 times and decrease a chip or two each time.

You might try using only apple or using mostly apple and only a couple hickory chips, since hickory can be strong.

I also leave the vent mostly open and the smoker is in an open, windy area. If you aren't getting enough air flow, you might want to pull out the chip tray a bit to get air moving. Of course, you may have to compensate for some decrease in temperature.

 

[eman]

As someone who has been using MES smokers since they hit the market i can solve your problem. get you the AMNPS . once you have that . pull the chip loader out of the unit and put it up somewhere. . Use the pellet tray for smoke and the MES for heat . The hole where the chip loader was allows for enough air flow to keep the pellets lit. also, Take a can that soup or vegetables come in. cut both ends out. Open the exhaust completely and set the can on the exhaust. this creates more air flow. The pellet tray can provide 8 - 10 hrs of smoke when filled. so if you are doing short smokes just fill it half way or less.