How to Smoke Food Without a Smoker | The Tool Shed

Using a smoking gun is a much quicker and more convenient alternative to using a smoker that doesn’t require heat or long smoking times.

Because the woodchips are contained within a smoking chamber, the smoke that is released is cool, which is great as it means that you can smoke more delicate foods like cheese and butter too, without changing their texture, while still giving an intense and clean smoke.

Smoking guns use a tiny fan to literally blow smoke into the food and while they may seem like the thing you’re more used to seeing in Michelin-starred restaurants, they’re actually remarkably simple to use in everyday cooking at home.

And while smoking guns are great for use on meat, remember that you can also use them in all kinds of situation, including fish, cheese and even cocktails too!

And above all else, there’s just something exciting and fun about using a smoking gun which is sure to impress your dinner guests with that ‘wow’ factor.

How to Use a Smoking Gun

First things first, you need to make sure that the room is well ventilated! Obviously, if you have an overhead fan, make sure that it’s turned on, but if not, just make sure that the windows are open so that you don’t end up with a kitchen full of smoke!

You’ll then need to fill the smoking gun with your choice of smoking chips. We have a range of different chips such as whisky, Applewood, hickory wood and more, each of which will help to bring out different flavours in your ingredients.

Once you fire the smoking gun up, the fan will whirr into action and you can start to ignite the woodchips.

Leave the chips to smoulder for about thirty seconds you can then start to apply the smoke to your ingredients, which you should do for around two to three minutes, depending on the ingredient.

Just make sure that once the gun has cooled down that you remove any residual woodchips and regularly clean out the smoking chamber to make sure that it doesn’t taint the next flavour that you want to achieve.

Alternative Methods

Of course, while we believe the smoking gun is the easiest and quickest ways to achieve a smoky flavour, there are other methods which don’t involve using a smoker.

For example, you could try using your oven to smoke your ingredients. To do this, line a pan with aluminium foil and spread your choice of wood chips over the top.

You’ll then need to place a raised grill in the pan to place your meat on and allow the juices to drip down into the pan.

Then, just cover the meat with a sheet of foil and cook for around five hours on a fairly low temperature, to ensure that you don’t overcook the meat (much slower than using a smoking gun!).

You could also take a similar approach on the grill, where you’d need to wrap up your wood chips in foil with some holes for the smoke to escape, or you can also even try to create your own stovetop smoker if you’re feeling resourceful!

An even quicker and simpler way to add a bit of smoke to the ingredients is by using a spice rub such as smoked paprika and smoked salt before cooking, which will lock in the juices and smoky flavour.

Now that you’ve seen how easy it can be to create great smoky dishes at home without a smoker, be sure to check out some of our favourite smoking gun recipes.