What equipment do I need to add smoke when I use my gas grill?

Question: What equipment do I need to add smoke when I use my gas grill?

Answer: Over the past few years it has become much more popular to try and add smoke flavor to grilled foods. The problem with gas grills is that the only smoke you get is from burning grease. Try selling your next cookout with that slogan, “with the flavor of grease smoke”. Yeah, everyone will line up for that. However if you have hickory, mesquite or some other wood smoke flavor, well that’s barbecue. Well, actually it isn’t but I’m not going into that again here.

The first thing to know about smoke flavor is that it takes time. If you are grilling up some burgers or a quick steak you probably don’t have enough time to really get much smoke flavor in to it. If on the other hand the dish you are preparing is going to spend more than 30 minutes on the grill with the lid down, then you can consider adding smoke to your grilling. You may notice it. So how to you do it? First you need wood, real hard, dry wood like hickory, oak, mesquite, cherry, etc. Now you need to soak it in water until it is damp. Drain so it isn’t dripping and put it on the grill.

No, don’t just throw wood chips or chunks on your gas grill. It doesn’t make good smoke that way and it doesn’t do any good for your grill. What you need is something to hold the wood in so that it can smolder and produce smoke while not dropping ashes every where. You can do either of two things. You can go out and buy a smoker box for your grill (these can cost as much as $20) or you can wrap the chips loosely in aluminum foil and punch a couple of holes in the top. This lets the smoke out. You can decide which is more economical.