Brilliant BBQ Food Smokers - Superbly tasty!

BBQ food smokers are one of the year’s best-sellers, an exciting way to cook smoked foods to perfection. The flavours are wonderful, everything from fragrant and mild to powerfully tasty. You can go the whole hog with enormous BBQ food smokers capable of cooking for a party-size gathering, or pick a small smoker that’s small, neat and simple. Either way the results will light up your taste-buds and inspire the people you love.

Let’s take a look at the three BBQ smokers making a big impact this season; large, medium and small, plus some handy tips about creating smoked treats to remember.

Three exceptional BBQ food smokers for 2023

The Tepro Indianapolis BBQ food smoker

When cooking BIG is the name of the game, at home or commercially, the Tepro Indianapolis Heavy Duty Offset BBQ Pit Smoker makes easy work of creating smoked flavours to delight. A top quality build, a tough steel body and a highly effective design typify this BBQ smoker, a great choice for years of service. It also happens to look pretty cool, like something you’d see rusting away on the prairie in a Wild West movie. Not that it rusts – it doesn’t as long as you keep it clean, dry and well-maintained.

Integrated thermometers mean you can check the cooking temperatures at a glance. You get controlled ventilation in the small cooking chamber via an adjustable top lid, which also works as a cooking space for a pot.

Wheels make it easy to move. The removable ash pots keep cleaning to a minimum. The big grill surface measures around 97.5 x 44cm with a fire chamber measuring around 103.8 x 45.4cm and three separate charcoal grids, each 32.5 x 37cm. The four enamelled cast iron cooking grids are 24 x 43cm each and the overall size is D88 x W184 x H153cm.

A built in bottle opener completes the picture, along with a rugged heat resistant finish good to up to 600 °C and fast self-assembly. One, two, three…. smoke!

The Chimenea, fire pit and BBQ smoker

At the other end of the scale we have the brilliant Chiminea, Firepit and BBQ Food Smoker, the simplest way to achieve tasty smoked cuisine in the garden. Because it’s portable you can take it away with you, cooking alfresco on a camping trip or taking it to someone else’s place.

A hard-working removable smoker and BBQ made from tough steel, it has a long-lasting Teflon coat. All you do is balance it on top of the chimney part of your chimenea. It comes with a woodchip smoking pan and chromed steel BBQ grill, a pleasure to experiment with. It also works great on a fire pit or BBQ.

The Tepro Biloxi BBQ barrel smoker

Third, something in the middle. Not too big, not too small, just perfect for everyday dining in the garden. Meet the Tepro Biloxi Offset BBQ Pit Barrel Smoker, a lower-cost relative of the massive Tepro Indianapolis with the same cool styling and high performance. Here it is.

Tepro Biloxi Offset BBQ Pit Barrel Smoker

Live everything from Tepro, it’s nice and easy to use with its family-size main grill and generous warming rack, and side chamber for smoked foods. You can use different types of wood chips to create unique flavours for fish, meats and vegetables.

The grill area is around 58 x 40cm and the warming rack is around 58 x 21cm. There’s an air vent on the lid, a storage shelf and bottom storage rack, and two wheels to move it easily.

You can cook a variety of different foods at the same time. With the main grill the lid down you get extra flavour, and an air vent to releases the steam. The results are reliably delicious, totally tasty, and surprisingly simple to achieve

BBQ food smokers – Fab food ideas

Smoked food isn’t for the impatient. It’s a process that can’t be rushed. This means it’s ideal for leisurely garden fun, when there’s time to do it long and slow
Every type of wood has its own flavour. You can experiment, blending different wood chips to create your own own unique recipes – it’s an exciting journey
You can smoke fish, seafood, vegetables, game, meat, fowl, nuts and cheese
You can smoke fruit too, and it’s a fresh foodie trend – as a rule, a lighter smoke flavour suits fruit best
Smoked fries? There’s no reason why not – smoked chip are fabulous with herb or garlic mayo
Hickory, apple and oak give you a rich, deep smokiness, perfect with beef, pork and game
Softer wood like beech come with a milder flavour
Woodchips work great when you’re recipes demand short smoking times
Go for chunks of hardwood when you need to smoke food for longer
Whatever wood you’re using, soak it for half an hour so it just smokes, not sets on fire
Smoking makes meat so much more tender
Smoking tenderises meat by drying out the collagen it contains, usually stringy and tough. The trick to succulent smoked meat is to cook it at very low temperatures for a long time so the collagen dissolves and it becomes juicy and soft
The ‘bark’ is the gorgeous dark crust that develops on food that’s been smoked to perfection, and it’s exactly what every keen garden chef aims for