10 Steps – How to Season Electric Smoker?

How to Season Electric Smoker

Now that you have your electric smoker, it’s not all just about plugging it in and turning it on.

You should know how to season electric smoker products first, before you start smoking the meat.

If you’re not too knowledgeable how the process, don’t worry, we’ll help guide you through it.

Why Do It?

In case you’re tempted to just skip this part, take note that electric smokers aren’t always sanitized properly so they’re not ready for immediate use once you’ve bought them.

The inner chamber of your electric smoker can have oil, paint, or even industrial waste, and these things can seriously screw up the taste of your meat. In fact, they can seriously screw up your health as well.

The 10 Steps to Take:

Now that you’ve realized the importance of this process, here’s how you do it:

  1. Unpack your electric smoker and check for anything that’s irregular. Best do this outdoors, since you’re dealing with smoke. You have to make sure there are no malfunction parts.
  2. If everything’s ok, plug it in and then turn it on. Wait for it to start working.
  3. The smoker should be heating up, and that’s good. You need to preheat your smoker to 275 degrees F.
  4. At that point, you have to let it stay at that temperature for about 3 hours. That’s enough time for the high heat to evaporate the dust, oils, and other nasty things from the inner chamber of your electric smoker.
  5. However, you need to return to the smoker about 2 hours into the preheating period. At this point, you should put in some of your wood chips during the last hour of the preheating.
  6. It doesn’t really matter what wood chips you use. It only matters for smoking BBQ, as the type of wood chips will add a specific flavor for the meat. But for preheating, you can put in maple or mesquite, or whatever cheap wood chips you may have. You don’t need a lot either.
  7. Check the manual to know how to open the wood chip tray of the electric smoker. It’s not really hard to find though. You just need to look for the lever or knob on the side. Pull this knob or lever, and you open the tray.
  8. Now after 3 hours and you’ve used up all the chips in the last hour, you can turn off your electric smoker. Just take care when you open the inner chamber. It will be filled with smoke.
  9. Once that chamber is open, use a clean cloth to wipe the bars inside.
  10. Now you’re done.

Doing It Again:

You really don’t need to do this a second time, when the point is to get rid of the nasty stuff in the inner chamber.

However, you still may want to do it again if you’re smoking a different type of meat from the last time you used the smoker. The taste of the previous meat may mix with your new meat otherwise.

June Brandt
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