AmazingRibs.com is supported by our Pitmaster Club. Also, when you buy with links on our site we may earn a finder’s fee. Click to see how we test and review products.

Best Stovetop Smokers

Share on:
Cameron's Original Stovetop Smoker

Click Here To Search Our Reviews And Ratings Of Stovetop Smokers

Stovetop smokers are great for people who can’t cook outdoors, or who can cook outdoors but are cooking small quantities and don’t want to use a larger grill or smoker.

Stovetop smokers are great for camping trips because they can be used on campfires or small gas burners. And they are especially good for fish and fowl. You place a small amount of food grade sawdust in the bottom, place a drip pan on top of the sawdust, a rack on top of the drip pan, and the food on the rack. The unit is then closed so only a small amount of smoke can escape.

The finished food is extremely moist, flavorful, delicate and complex, and you can control time and temp fairly easily.

There are a few caveats:

  1. You need a good exhaust system or your kitchen will fill with smoke and your smoke alarm will drive you nuts.
  2. They take practice (but so do almost all other smoke cooking methods).
  3. They may not work on some flat top stoves.
  4. The flavor and texture are significantly different from other smoking methods. Most stovetop smokers use smoldering sawdust in a pretty tightly closed environment. The flavor is a LOT different from logs, wood chips, chunks, or pellets burning and exhaling combustion gases. The flavor is not bad, it’s just different. The texture is also different. Moisture is trapped in the cooking unit, so you get very moist food. This can be good, but if you love the skin-like crust called “bark” you will be disappointed.

Click here to see all the stovetop smokers currently in our database.

Related articles

Published On: 2/15/2017 Last Modified: 2/13/2024

Share on:
  • Meathead, BBQ Hall of Famer - Founder and publisher of AmazingRibs.com, Meathead is known as the site's Hedonism Evangelist and BBQ Whisperer. He is also the author of the New York Times Best Seller "Meathead, The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling", named one of the "100 Best Cookbooks of All Time" by Southern Living.

 

High quality websites are expensive to run. If you help us, we’ll pay you back bigtime with an ad-free experience and a lot of freebies!

Millions come to AmazingRibs.com every month for high quality tested recipes, tips on technique, science, mythbusting, product reviews, and inspiration. But it is expensive to run a website with more than 2,000 pages and we don’t have a big corporate partner to subsidize us.

Our most important source of sustenance is people who join our Pitmaster Club. But please don’t think of it as a donation. Members get MANY great benefits. We block all third-party ads, we give members free ebooks, magazines, interviews, webinars, more recipes, a monthly sweepstakes with prizes worth up to $2,000, discounts on products, and best of all a community of like-minded cooks free of flame wars. Click below to see all the benefits, take a free 30 day trial, and help keep this site alive.


Post comments and questions below

grouchy?

1) Please try the search box at the top of every page before you ask for help.

2) Try to post your question to the appropriate page.

3) Tell us everything we need to know to help such as the type of cooker and thermometer. Dial thermometers are often off by as much as 50°F so if you are not using a good digital thermometer we probably can’t help you with time and temp questions. Please read this article about thermometers.

4) If you are a member of the Pitmaster Club, your comments login is probably different.

5) Posts with links in them may not appear immediately.

Moderators

  Max

Click to comment or ask a question...

Spotlight

These are not paid ads, they are a curated selection of products we love.

All of the products below have been tested and are highly recommended. Click here to read more about our review process.

Use Our Links To Help Keep Us Alive

Many merchants pay us a small referral fee when you click our “buy now” links. This has zero impact on the price you pay but helps support the site.