Thermometer holder adapter for smoker hood

[Paul Jones]

PJs,

Just keep on trying different smoking techniques (but no experimenting if this is for a party - fall back to your tried and true recipes) and you will figure it out. There are some excellent books on the subject. One my favorite books from the mid-90's is "Where There's Smoke, There's Flavor" by Richard Langer because each recipe is accompanied by the smoking technique for the recipe and makes a novice into a good smoke cook.

We live in Southern California where i can use the barbecue almost every night for cooking the meats (we use the electric double ovens in the kitchen mostly for baking) and on some weekends with more time I use the smoker. The built-in barbecues use natural gas. I also converted a propane portable barbecue into using natural gas and it has a 12' quick connect hose to the natural gas outlet. You can buy the natural gas hoses complete with quick connect fittings at your local home improvement stores. This way I never run out of propane.

Here is something I highly recommend. I made a modification to the barbecues for adding natural wood smoking. Near the lower right-hand corner of the barbecue grills I removed a 3"x2" section of the metal grill to create a small opening. This allows me to add small chunks of wood directly over the gas burner for adding smoke to the conventional barbecue. Using a 32 oz squeeze handle squirt bottle of water keeps the wood chucks from igniting (an empty Windex squeeze bottle works) . Every few weeks you have to use a shop vac to remove the cooled white ash from the burned-up wood chucks. This way I can get the taste of natural wood cooking while using the natural gas for fuel.

I hope this helps,

Paul