Preheating an Electric Smoker-Good or Bad?
Do you need to preheat your one of the best electric smokers? A very confusing statement runs in the minds of smoking community. Some says it is good thing while other are not in favor. Here we will try to resolve the dilemma whether preheating an electric smoker is good or bad.
Preheating is the process of settling down completely the electric smoker for cooking anything in it. Especially when it is cold outside. Most people think that adding the food in a smoker while it is not preheated ruin the results. While other believes otherwise.
Anyhow I will not get into this discussion. The either ways puts results differently, so you can go on any of the way depending on the required results.
There will be various questions running into your mind that How much time does preheat takes? Is it better to use wood chips while preheating or not? Are soaked wood chips produce better results than dry wood chips?
How to Preheat an Electric Smoker?
- On average, an electric smoker takes 40-45 minutes for a sound preheating from cold. Set the temperature of your smoker to the required temperature of the food under cooked. For example, if you are cooking a brisket, the internal temperature should be 190F at least. So to attain this, you can set the temperature of your smoker at its highest temperature settings. For instance, the highest temperature of your smoker is 245F. Set it and run your Electric Smoker.
- After 40-45 minutes, the electric smoker will reach the internal temperature of 190F. At this point, you can fill the smoker up with the food you want to cook, brisket in the present case.
Benefits of Preheating
When it is cold, the heating element made up of metal also cools down. The cold up electric smoker takes time to transmit the required heat into the smoker. While with a preheated electric smoker, the process of doing food starts instantly.
Secondly, the water in the pan requires a high temperature to be converted into the stream. Suppose you are not preheating your electric smoker. The food will get instant heat, and the wood chips will start producing the smoke after 5-6 minutes. On the other hand, water will not convert into a stream until the streaming temperature reaches, which will disturb the food smoking combination.
Do smokers without preheating bring good results?
Preheating is not a recommended process for an electric smoker. Many professionals are opting for this, and many are against it. There are two schools of thought in this scenario. However, we have the following findings regarding the query.
- To get a robustly smoky flavor. Some professionals say that preheating is not mandatory. Just put all stuff inside the smoker and dry wood chips. The dry wood chips will start smoking very soon and keep going until the final results come out.
- On the other hand, to get a light smoky flavor, you can preheat your smoker without putting in the wood stuff. You can put all the stuff in when the smoker reaches the required temperature. The heating element will start burning the wood instantly if it is dry, and the food will get the flavor of smoke, not very strong.
Smoky Flavor also depends upon the wood you are using. I mean, whether you are using dry wood or soaked wood.
Dry vs. Soaked Wood
- Wet wood starts smoking out a bit later. Or you can say those soaked woods generate smoke at a pretty slow pace. In that way, you don’t get a strong smoky flavor to your food. The one benefit of using soaked wood is that it will last longer than dry wood. Maybe you don’t need to replace the wood throughout the cooking process if you put in soaked wood wrapped in aluminum foil.
- On the other hand, dry wood instantly starts smoking, leaving a strong impression on the meat. You may need to replace the wood chips several times for that, but yes, if you like a smoky stringer flavor. This will be the right decision.
Cutting short, preheating, or direct smoking has its results and flavors. You can try both options, but you must know the products come out for your experiment.
