smoking and smoke boxes

Hi all. I am building a woodfired oven and hot plate inside the house both of which have separate metal flues going through the wall. Outside there is a pizza oven also with its own flue. I want to feed all 3 flues into a smoke box. Any advice for design ideas or potential pit falls please? Many thanks.

Kay del Vallecito wrote:Hi all. I am building a woodfired oven and hot plate inside the house both of which have separate metal flues going through the wall. Outside there is a pizza oven also with its own flue. I want to feed all 3 flues into a smoke box. Any advice for design ideas or potential pit falls please? Many thanks.

Hi Kay - great idea.  I have a few questions.

Do you want to hot smoke or cold smoke or both? Where I am in NJ, I can cold smoke when it's cold enough by running a long pipe along the frozen ground into a smoke chamber. I have a thermometer and make sure the air is never above 10'C. (I mostly smoke raw fish, which is why I'm super cautious.) That's easy on a day like today when it's -10'C. I've read about smokers who bury long pipes in the ground to cool the smoke. You still want the smoke to be well below 30'C for food that you're going to cook.

I'm guessing you want to hook up all three flues so you can use either one, not all three at once? You'll need someway of blocking of the other two when not in use, otherwise the smoke won't draw. You'll want the smoke chamber to be in the 50'C to 90'C range and draw, or you'll potentially have a house full of smoke, under or over cooked meat. Have you built or worked with a stand alone smoker?

Tbh i am a total newbie to this. I think it has to be hot smoke because the box will be where the flues are rising from the 3 appliances. There isnt relly space to put enough pipe in for cooling.
I hadnt thought about using the flues separately but a damper on each one looks like a necessity and would also give that option.
Obviously i need to look at temperatures now!
Thank you so much for your reply its very helpful. 🙏

The first step is to determine whether you want to hot smoke or cold smoke your fish. Traditionally they were always cold smoked. The easiest way to cold smoke these days is to buy pellets and a cold smoke generator (basically a perforated pipe) and just put it in your grill or a simple box.

I have a cold smoker set up which has a small fire and the smoke travels to a very drafty wooden box which is the smoker.

I learned to smoke sausages, cheese, and small fish in a cardboard box. We built a small fire. Then added green branches until the fire went out but the branches were still smoking. We covered it with a cardboard box that had a green branch attached to the top of the box and hung the sausage, cheese and fish from strings attached to the box top. We closed the flaps and waited about 4 hours. I'm still here so the fish didn't kill us. The sausage went in raw and came out smoked and cooked, as did the fish.  It's a one-day deal though I suppose you could use the box again if you want. We were at an educational camp where we were making and cooking our dinner.

Barbara Manning wrote:I learned to smoke sausages, cheese, and small fish in a cardboard box. We built a small fire. Then added green branches until the fire went out but the branches were still smoking. We covered it with a cardboard box that had a green branch attached to the top of the box and hung the sausage, cheese and fish from strings attached to the box top. We closed the flaps and waited about 4 hours. I'm still here so the fish didn't kill us. The sausage went in raw and came out smoked and cooked, as did the fish.  It's a one-day deal though I suppose you could use the box again if you want. We were at an educational camp where we were making and cooking our dinner.

Barbara, this is a fascinating (and easy) idea! I think I'm picturing it right on how to set it up. Did you stick the green branch through the box sides itself to hang the meat from? Were there any holes in the box for air so it didn't snuff out the fire completely?