Learn

Smokers and how they cook

22 kinds of cooker, from drums and water-pan cabinets to offsets, pellet cookers and kamados, and what each one burns.

Fuel

What they burn

The fuel sets how long a cooker takes to come up to temperature, and what lighting it means.

  • Wood (logs or splits)Comes up in about 90 minutes
  • Charcoal (lump or briquettes)Comes up in about 45 minutes
  • Charcoal and woodComes up in about 50 minutes
  • Wood pelletsComes up in about 30 minutes
  • PropaneComes up in about 25 minutes
  • Natural gasComes up in about 25 minutes
  • ElectricComes up in about 30 minutes

Cookers

Kinds of cooker

The Cook Time Calculator has every one of these, and lets you describe a smoker you built yourself.

Drum smokers

  • Drum smoker: Gateway (GDS), Ugly Drum (UDS), Pit Barrelcharcoal

Water-pan cabinets

  • Weber Smokey Mountain 22.5″ (WSM)charcoal
  • Weber Smokey Mountain 18.5″ (WSM)charcoal
  • Backwoods Chubbycharcoal
  • Backwoods Partycharcoal
  • Backwoods Fatboycharcoal
  • Backwoods Competitorcharcoal

Insulated cabinets

  • 270 Smoker (natural-convection cabinet)charcoal
  • Insulated rotisserie cabinet (Ole Hickory, Southern Pride)wood

Stick burners and offsets

  • Jambo (direct-flow stick burner)wood
  • Outlaw offset stick burnerwood
  • Other offset or reverse flow (Lang, Yoder, Horizon, Franklin, Shirley)wood
  • Heavy trailer pit (Meadow Creek, Lang, Jambo trailers)wood
  • Thin-wall offset (Oklahoma Joe’s, Char-Griller, Brinkmann)charcoal and wood
  • Vertical stick-fed cabinet (Hunsaker Vortex, Lone Star Grillz)wood

Pellet cookers

  • Pellet grill (Yoder, Memphis, Traeger, Pit Boss, Recteq, Green Mountain)pellets
  • Competition pellet cabinet (Fast Eddy’s by Cookshack FEC100, FEC120)pellets

Electric, gas and gravity-fed

  • Gravity-fed charcoal (Masterbuilt Gravity Series)charcoal
  • Electric cabinet (Cookshack, Smokin-it, Bradley, Masterbuilt electric)electric
  • Propane cabinet (Masterbuilt, Char-Broil, Camp Chef)propane

Kamado, kettle and other

  • Kamado (Big Green Egg, Primo, Kamado Joe)charcoal
  • Charcoal kettle (Weber 22″ with a Slow ’N Sear or a snake)charcoal