How to make a cold Smoker out of a Refrigerator
When you are a barbecue enthusiast, you always hunt for the innovative ways to satisfy your hobby. You may end up trying every market smoker whether they are the best electric smokers or the top pellet grills for your food but you are not having any kick for cold smoking in them. Here I will share you the ways to carve a cold smoker out of your old refrigerator.
Sometimes you need to step out of your hot smoking to do some cold smoking. Before we know the tricks and tips on how to convert an old refrigerator into a cold smoker, we need to know what is cold smoker.
What is a cold smoker?
Cold smokers are usually for the people who like to cook their food on lower temperatures for long time. There can be a different way to convert an old refrigerator into a cold smoker/pellet smoker. But here i will share two methods to do that.
Making Cold Smoker out of a Refrigerator
To me there are two best methods to do the same. Lets discuss one by one.
Method 1
I will surely walk you through how i built this cold smoker.
Step 1
First thing we are going to do is find yourself an old refrigerator we are going to take out compressor and freezer box. This one has a porcelain metal inside. What we did, we removed all the plastic that was on there. There was plastic on the door which we removed and we put a sheet of stainless on here. You don’t have to have a stainless regular sheet, a 13-gauge steel would work well.
Step 2
Now I will tell you how we made this vent and go through the steps. We are running a twin exhaust side. So, the first thing you want to determine is how much room you have in here from the ceiling down, because you know there is going to be probably about 4-inch space. we came down and made a mark. Then what we do is, we normally like to use this 3 and 5/8 hole saw that works good for the type of exhaust pipes.
This is Where your drill bits going to go through so I marked this as my Center and then where I set up my hole saw to drill it and went all the way through. So, you have two holes actually.
That is going to take care of us on both sides. Now why are we doing both sides, well we experimented and figured that for equal distribution of the heat if we ran one hole on each side, that’s going to make the air flow better and release the heat a little more evenly than putting it through the center. Because this is a bigger refrigerator.
Step 3
We made a full cut on the back side. That’s going to have an adjustable vent and an option to put a fan on, if we get into the testing phase where we are just not getting it down to low enough temperature. Then what we will probably do is, we might add an additional third stack which we would do the same thing.
Step 4
Next up, we are going to put gasketing on the door so insulation remains intact and we can avoid any loss of temperature due to leaking heat.
Step 5
Next, we are to put racks in there and pellet smoking machine on the outside down on one side. We reused the old racks so what I did was I went with some 1-inch angle iron and I cut the pieces to fit.
Method 2
Following are the steps in involved in carving out a cold smoker out of a refrigerator.
Step 1
First, we are going to take out compressor and freezer box.
Step 2
We need cutting torches and welders to make holes on both sides of it, to provide air intake.
Step 3
Next, we are going to make an exhaust on top of it with an inch and a half ABS pipe. An inch and a half pipe will be enough area for exhaust.
Step 4
Next is the draft control. We will make a slider that will work across those holes, this little air slide near the air damper control slides back and forth.
Step 5
Next, we are mount this double burner stove in the bottom by cutting holes down there.
Step 6
Now of course we are going to need some racks, and you are all done.
Is Cold Smoking dangerous?
Cold smoking creates perfect conditions for harmful bacteria to grow. The meat is not cooked, which would normally kill off any bacteria.
If you cure your meat before smoking it (which you most definitely should) the salt will inhibit the growth of bacteria, but will not kill it off completely. To top it off, the temperature at which the meat is kept while cold smoking can encourage bacteria growth if it is not monitored closely.
