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The Bradley Smoker Guide

A Unique Smoker With An Affordable Price Tag

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One of the key concepts behind the Bradley Smoker is the belief that both temperature and smoke levels need to remain consistent throughout the cooking process. They stick true to this concept regardless of whether you are curing, drying, cold smoking or hot smoking your food.

When using another type of smoker, you might use wood chunks. These will tend to give off smoke in the early stages. But once they become self-fueling, they put off a lot of heat and little or no smoke. There's really no way to control this in your basic smokers, regardless of what configuration.

Bradley Products and Accessories

Curing - This is the process of injecting salt into the food thru brining, dry curing or injection. This has a transformative effect on meat, reducing the ability for micro-organisms to thrive. While we don't really need to preserve food these days, this also makes the meat easier to accept the smoke. It's all about flavor.

Drying - After the curing process is complete, rinse the meat and allow it to dry. Once it's dry you will see a glossy look develop. This is called the pellicle, and it's just what you want before smoking.

Cold Smoking - This is a process performed at temperatures below 100 F. Most smokers can't do this because the smoke process is inter-woven with heat product. On the Bradley Smoker, the smoke is generated with extreme control directed at the briquette. When the briquette is used up, it's discarded and a new one is introduced.

Hot Smoking - This is probably what most of you are familiar with. Unlike other smokers, the heat and the smoke are generated separately. That way, the smoke can be maintained at a consistent level throughout the process. It can even be turned off since smoke really on takes in the earlier phases. They recommend only smoking for the first half of the cook.

The key to the whole things is the Bradley Smoke Generator. This can actually be used to turn just about anything into a smoke-house. I'll talk more about it in a separate article, but the key to it is it's ability to control the level of smoke. Here's a picture of it.

Bradley Smokers are all basically the same in design. There is a smoker generator which is attached to a smokehouse box. The boxes can be varying sizes. The smoke generators also come in digital models which allow total control over the process before it begins. That way you don't have to fiddle.

The other key to this entire process is the Bradley briquettes. The original engineering of the process determined that the square shape was ideal. These briquettes come in a number of hardwood flavors and are injected, one at a time, into the smoke process. According to the company, it will cost you about $1.00 per hour of cook time.

This is more than you need if you are always hot smoking (barbecue) and don't care about total control over the level of smoke throughout the process. But you should know that it doesn't cost a lot to add one of these to your arsenal; most of them around the $500 mark. And they are lightweight, so moving the around is not a problem.