Char-Broil’s Big Easy Electric Infrared Smoker and Roaster has a clever, innovative design looks better on paper than in practice. It is also offered in a gas model.
It is barrel shaped and opens from the top. There is a stainless steel inner liner that is separated from the outer shell by an air gap. Electric heating elements turn the liner into a radiant heater. Calling it infrared is a bit of a stretch since it never gets really hot. To generate smoke you fill a stainless steel device (it looks like a whiskey hip flask) with wood and hang it on the inner liner lip. There is a rack that can sit over the top of the cooking chamber to grill. The meat goes on a flimsy wire rack that can be fitted with up to four shelves for the food.
As innovative as it is, we are not won over. The food wires do not hold more than two large chickens or medium pork shoulders, and rib slabs must be cut in half to fit. If you want to baste or mop or look at or poke the food on a lower rack, you have to lift out the whole insert, or remove the meat above it. The grill never gets hot enough to really darken a steak, and the smoke box doesn’t produce much BBQ smoke.
That said, it does make a decent roaster if you don’t need smoke in the food. The advantage here is that heat can surround the meat as opposed to an indoor oven when the meat usually sits in a roasting pan and the bottom does not cook properly unless you flip the bird or roast. We made a wonderful turkey in it, but you cannot fit more than one good sized bird in there.
It takes up only a small footprint, but the same can be said of the other cabinet style, front loading propane smokers, and they all work better including the one by Char-Broil.
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