Smoking Meats

[Jerald Powell]

Does anyone know anything about somking meats in a pizza oven. I met a smoking enthusiast that said it would be a perfect environment for smoking meats and wanted to try it out. I'm making a pork roast and thought I'd smoke it in my pizza oven for a couple of hours before slow roasting it in my gas oven or croc pot. I was going to use hardwood charcoal to burn some soaked masquite chunks.

[ColonelCorn76]

I've cooked long & slow overnight for roasts just from the retained heat but haven't tried smoking yet. However, I do smoke a bit (lots less now that the oven's up). Since I only add the "flavoring" wood to the fire for a portion of the cooking process it would be easy to throw a few chunks in the oven on the coals when adding the meat. Then I would expect closing off the door to allow the wood to smolder rather than burn (oxygen deprivation) should be sufficient. I usually wait for the heat to dissipate a bit (or a bunch) down into the 250-275 range, I expect building a small fire in the oven when it reaches that temp, adding the soaked wood chunks and then retarding the fire with the mostly closed doorway should do. After about an hour, just close the door all the way (which will kill the coals) and slow cook it the rest of the time just from the retained heat.

Using bricks to brick up the front to experiment with how much to close the doorway would give you the info you need to make a change to your oven door where you provide for some sort of opening -- either a swinging section or some method of creating the small opening you need to permit the smolder but that can be fully closed for normal use.

Let us know what you find works.

Jim

[Jerald P]

Great results

I got some great smoked flavor with the method I described. I then used my croc pot to finish the roast. It was a hit!

[ColonelCorn76]

Cool. My wife wants me to do some turkey (brined in the oven is the best we've had) with an applewood smoke. I'll report back on the results.

[Jerald P]

How about fish

I am getting the Idea to do some mahi mahi. I think turkey is a great idea. I'm getting hungry. So I actually grilled some on my grill in my oven using hardwood charcoal and misquite chunks (some soaked ) to get a good smoked flavor. I find that I can grill better in my oven with a fish/vegtable cage. I also smoke/grilled some onion slices and whole jalapenos.