I have one of these and have a manual somewhere. The manual is just a skinny
booklet with a few recipes as well as simple operating instructions. I used
to use it for smoking fish, pork chops and whole chickens. The smoker is a
hot cooker, when the wood changes to charcoal and starts to glow, the
temperature inside can rise considerably. I have never measured the
temperature, not having the means to do it. I don't think it would be
suitable for cheese, unless you like smoked melted cheese :-)

I brine the meat, adding plentiful amounts of garlic and onion powder, dried
basil and a touch of chili pepper. Place the meat in a container (Pyrex
baking dishes work well). Do not use metal pans unless they are stainless
steel. Add enough cold water to just cover the meat. Pour off the water into
a mixing bowl and add enough PLAIN salt to make a raw egg just float. Use an
electric mixer to help dissolve the salt. It's difficult to tell you the
quantities of the garlic and onion powder, I never measure then. Just add
equal and generous amounts of both and mix them in with the mixer. Sprinkle
in the dried basil and a touch of the red pepper. When it is all mixed well,
pour the brine mix back into the Pyrex dishes to just cover the meat. Cover
the dishes with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator to soak. Never
use aluminum foil or pans, the salt will eat it up.

The soaking time depends on the type of meat:

pork chops, overnight if thick, 4 hours if thin ( I used thin ones)

Fish, 3 hours

Whole chicken, all day, smoke all night.


Fish fillets should have the skin left on and filleted from the belly of the
fish up to the dorsal fins so that the two sides are connected by the skin
at the top of the fish. This allows you to hang the fish from the bars on
the racks, meat side out. Smoking the fish this way enables you to pack a
lot more fish onto the smoker and the fish drains well this way too. This
smoking method is used to make kippers back in my home land.

After soaking is done, remove the meat and dump the brine (unless you have
another batch to do). rinse the meat and pat dry with paper towels. Place
the meat in the smoker

The smoking is finished when the wood has turned into charcoal then ash.
Use big chunks of wood, as big as you can pack into the pan, I use hickory.
You can pack in taller wood if you place the pan on the heating element then
fit the front panel on the smoker so that the handle of the pan pokes out
the little flap door.

You may want to adjust the spice quantities to suit your taste. Do not
change the salt amount, the raw egg acts as a hydrometer, vary the soak time
if it is too salty for your taste, consume lots of beer if too salty ;-)
That's about enough info to get you started, email me at
jmcgauch_AT_ev1_dot_net if you need additional help (adjust the email
address so that it will work-spammers suck)

John
"Tank" > wrote in message
...
> I have inherited an Outers brand electric smoker. It is about
> 2ft high x 1ft x 1ft. All aluminum construction. One whole
> side is a flip-up door. There are several racks inside. It has
> a single electric element at the bottom. Directly above the
> element is a rack which holds a small frying-pan type container,
> with a wooden handle. There is a small trap door at the base of
> the flip-up to allow removal of this pan. The pan has a wooden
> handle, and the handle protrudes through a hole in the trap
> door.
>
> I did not get any instructions with this unit. The box says it can
> be used for "smoking and curing". Is this more of a cold-smoker
> than a cooker? Is this smoking for preservation and flavor, rather
> than cooking and flavor as in larger smokers such as an ECB?
> I am hoping to use this for deep smoking of fish and cheeese,
> as well as perhaps slices of beef tongue, etc. Christmas being
> right around the corner, I am thinking of home-made treats as
> gifts.
>
> Any ideas as to where I can get a user manual, or some guidance
> on using this? I did a Google search, but did not find any real
> references to Outers. Have they gone out of business?
>
> Thanks!
>
> --
> Tank
>
> Welcome to the "Q" Zone!
>
>