Made a little modification to my Char-Broil 430 Offset Smoker for better smoking.
It’s small, cheap, and was easy to put together. Has just enough room to smoke a small brisket or a full rack of ribs. And, plenty of room to grill enough steaks or burgers for my family of 4.
It works great as a grill, but when I 1st started to use it as a smoker, I had some problems. It’s made of very thin metal, and has several gaps where the smoke and heat can escape. So I had to experiment a lot with the dampeners to get the airflow right, to get the temps where I wanted them. But, I came up with a way for it to work a little better.
I had a steel company (West Texas Steel) cut me a metal plate (16 gauge thickness I think) to fit over the smoking chamber where the grill grates normally sit (cost about $11). The plate leaves about an inch gap at the end, close to the side where the smoke stack sits over, for the smoke to escape there.
Then I lined the bottom of the smoke chamber and the little coal grates that sit in the bottom, with heavy duty foil. I set my meat directly in there. Then put the plate inside and on top of the rails, where the grill grates normally sit. It fit perfect!
I also drilled a hole and added a extra temp gauge in the bottom half of the smoking chamber, so I could monitor the temp where the meat was.
Worked great! Held in more of the heat and cooked more even. Only problem I have now is, the smoke box does not hold enough coals to keep it going for a long while. So you can’t slow cook all day or night without needing to add more coals a few times.
Anyway! Our little 4th of July brisket turned out pretty good!
