Turn Your Roadtrip Grill Into An Anywhere Smoker

Adding smoked flavors to your favorite grilling recipes can turn a good barbecue into a truly great experience. You can spend lots of money getting a specialty smoker or with the tips we tell you about here you can turn your Colman road trip grill into a backyard smoker that you can also use on camping trips or for a family day at the beach.

Which wood should you use for smoking?

Most stores that carry grills and barbecue supplies also stock a variety of woods that you can use for smoking. These commercially available products come either as small, thin slices (“chips”) or as larger “chunks” of wood. You may also see hardwood logs or bags of hardwood sawdust but we recommend you avoid these choices because using them requires additional tools. Chips and chunks work great and are easy to use.

Chips are ready to use right out of the bag. Hardwood chunks may still have bark attached. Until you have had the opportunity to experiment with bark you may want to avoid using chunks with bark. Depending on the amount of bark on the chunks you could be adding some unexpected bitter flavors. Chunks are still a good choice because they are much larger than the chips, they burn and smoke longer, and require less of your attention.

You do not have to use commercially prepared chips if you have some hardwood sources available to you. There are three kinds of woods that you do want to avoid completely, however:

• Softwood from evergreen trees. Pine and other evergreens contain lots of resins and other volatile substances that can impart some nasty off-flavors.
• Green wood of any kind. Undried wood when burned can create creosote and other potentially harmful toxins.
• Chemically treated wood of any kind. That includes most lumber used for construction even if it is not specifically labeled as treated wood.

How should you for prepare the wood chips?

With a charcoal grill you could just toss the chips on the hot coals and be done with it. You may not want to do that, however. The chips will ignite and burn hot and fast creating a lot of smoke at first but then fading out almost as quickly.

You will get better results if you soak the wood chips or chunks in clean water for 20 to 30 minutes. Drain them well and toss them on the coals. They will burn much longer and give off more smoke.

Follow the same soaking and draining procedure for your gas Roadtrip Grill. Wrap the damp chips in heavy duty foil, punch some holes on the top, and place the bundle directly on the burner. You can also use a soup can with the paper label removed and some ventilation holes punched toward the bottom side of the can. You can also buy a metal smoker box made especially for gas grills.

You will have to experiment to determine how much smoke flavor you want to add to your different grilling recipes. If you like lots of smoke flavor then you will have to tend the grill and replace the burned-out chips on a regular basis.

Here is a list of recommended hardwoods, the kind of a flavor you can expect from their smoke, and the best food matches for each hardwood variety.