I had some great pulled pork sandwiches at my friends house the other weekend, and it finally got me thinking about getting my own smoker. He uses a charcoal smoker, but I'm just too lazy to mess with that so I did some looking at electric smokers. I ended up going with a Royal Oak electric smoker from Walmart. It seemed to be pretty sturdy and had a thermometer as well as an adjustable power dial.
So I got the smoker home and "seasoned" it by turning it to high and adding a few handfulls of hickory (soaked in water for 30 minutes) and let it go for 60 minutes. After that, I added about 4 bone-in chicken breasts as well as a whole 3.5 lb chicken. I inserted a probe thermometer and pulled the chicken when the breast registered 165 degrees.
The chicken was very moist and juicy, but there wasn't any smoke flavor. The hickory chips I used were smoking a little bit, but not nearly as much as I thought they would.
Here's a link a smoking page I've added to my website: http://www.mikeserve.com/smoking/smo...09_chicken.htm
I did some searching online about people using my smoker and only find a couple posts. These posts also mentioned people not getting any smoke flavor but no one posted a response. After searching a few forums, I found that some people who use electric smokers are adding a couple charcoal briquettes to their wood tray to get some extra smoke. I'm thinking about giving this a try the next time I smoke something.
Any ideas on how to get a better smoke flavor in my electric smoker? Should I not soak the chips prior to adding them to the smoke pan? I'm pretty much clueless as far as smoking food goes, so any help you could give me would be great.
So I got the smoker home and "seasoned" it by turning it to high and adding a few handfulls of hickory (soaked in water for 30 minutes) and let it go for 60 minutes. After that, I added about 4 bone-in chicken breasts as well as a whole 3.5 lb chicken. I inserted a probe thermometer and pulled the chicken when the breast registered 165 degrees.
The chicken was very moist and juicy, but there wasn't any smoke flavor. The hickory chips I used were smoking a little bit, but not nearly as much as I thought they would.
Here's a link a smoking page I've added to my website: http://www.mikeserve.com/smoking/smo...09_chicken.htm
I did some searching online about people using my smoker and only find a couple posts. These posts also mentioned people not getting any smoke flavor but no one posted a response. After searching a few forums, I found that some people who use electric smokers are adding a couple charcoal briquettes to their wood tray to get some extra smoke. I'm thinking about giving this a try the next time I smoke something.
Any ideas on how to get a better smoke flavor in my electric smoker? Should I not soak the chips prior to adding them to the smoke pan? I'm pretty much clueless as far as smoking food goes, so any help you could give me would be great.