Food Smoking Equipment: What You Actually Need to Smoke Food at Home

Three ways to start, from simplest upwards

A barbecue and a smoker box is the cheapest way in if you already own a barbecue with a lid, gas or charcoal. A smoker box is a small perforated steel box that sits over the heat and holds the wood chips. The BBQ Smoker Box Gift Set has a stainless steel box with coarse oak and cherry chips, and the Deluxe set has six woods and firelighters. Our smoker box guide shows where it goes and how much wood to use.

A dedicated hot smoker cooks and smokes food at the same time, in a small enclosed space where the smoke stays close to the food. The Complete Hot Smoking Kit is a portable stainless steel smoker with two burners for methylated spirit or a similar fuel (not included, because it cannot be posted), six bags of wood chips, brining salt and a flavour guide. It is a good choice if fish is the main attraction. Read how to hot-smoke fish to see what is involved.

A cold smoke generator adds smoke flavour without adding heat. The ProQ Cold Smoke Generator is a small steel maze that holds a trail of wood dust and smoulders for around 10 hours on one fill. You put it in the bottom of a lidded barbecue or a suitable metal smoking cabinet, and the Cold Smoking Starter Kit bundles it with four woods and tealights. Cold smoking is a flavouring step, not a way of cooking, so it asks for more care with food safety. See our guides to using a cold smoke generator and hot versus cold smoking.

Which wood goes with which equipment

This is where most beginners go wrong, because the size of the wood has to suit the equipment. Coarse chips are chunky, at around 8mm, and are made for smoker boxes, barbecues and sprinkling on charcoal. Fine chips suit hot smoking ovens, stovetop smokers and smoking guns. Wood dust is what a cold smoke generator needs, because it smoulders slowly along the maze. Our dust versus chips guide goes into more detail.

For flavour, oak is a dependable all-rounder, apple and cherry are gentle and suit fish and poultry, and hickory is bold and better with pork. If you do not know what you like, a selection saves guesswork: the 12-flavour Sampler Pack has enough of each for about four smokes, and the Wood Dust Variety Pack does the same job for a cold smoker. Our guide to the best wood chips for smoking has more on matching wood to food.

The extras worth having

A food thermometer with a probe comes first, and any good kitchen one will do. The time on the clock and the temperature inside the smoker do not tell you whether food is cooked. The Food Standards Agency gives 70°C for 2 minutes in the centre of the food, or an equivalent such as 75°C for 30 seconds.

After that you only need a few simple things: long tongs, heatproof gloves, a tray or dish to carry the food, and a sealed tin or jar to keep your wood dry, because damp wood smokes badly. If you are smoking fish, fish bone tweezers make a neat job of the pin bones, and a plastic or glass tub in the fridge is all you need for brining.

What equipment do you need for smoking fish?

For hot-smoked fish such as mackerel, trout or salmon fillets, a smoker box on a barbecue will do, though a hot smoker gives you more control and works well for small batches. You will also want fine or coarse chips to suit your equipment, a rack, and a tub for a short brine. Our guides to brining fish, the best wood for smoking fish and fish smoking temperatures cover the method, and our hot-smoked mackerel recipe is a good first project.

Cold-smoked fish is different. Cold smoke adds flavour without cooking, and curing, salting and smoking alone do not establish that fish is suitable to eat uncooked. Treat home cold-smoked fish as raw and cook it before eating, unless you are following a validated process. Our cold-smoked salmon guide explains the risks and who should take extra care.

Can you use smoking equipment indoors?

Only if the manufacturer of that exact equipment says you can, and then only by following its instructions on fuel, heat source and ventilation. Outdoor smokers and charcoal equipment must stay outdoors, and not in a shed, garage or other enclosed space, because of the risks of fire and carbon monoxide. If you have no suitable outdoor space, read our guide to smoking food without a smoker, which is frank about what does and does not work.

What should you buy first?

If you own a lidded barbecue and want to try smoking for the first time, buy the BBQ Smoker Box Gift Set. If you know you mainly want to smoke fish, go for the Complete Hot Smoking Kit. If smoked cheese, salt and garlic are what you are after, the Cold Smoking Starter Kit is the place to begin.

Buy small bags of wood to begin with, then move up to a 500g bag or a 5 litre tub of the wood you like most. If this is a present, see our gifts for food smoking fans. You can browse everything in food smoking, and if you are not sure what you can smoke, try our beginner's list of foods to smoke.