How to make a smokehouse from an old gas stove

Smoked products are distinguished by a bright and rich aroma, pronounced taste and a fairly long shelf life, especially when it comes to cold smoky processing.

For lovers of smoked delicacies, it is expensive to regularly buy them in stores. Plus, the quality does not always meet expectations and cost. Therefore, in many respects the most correct decision is made. You are building your own smokehouse, and it is not necessary to build huge brick structures. If somewhere in the country or in a country house there is an old gas stove, it can be turned into a full-fledged smokehouse.

What are the advantages of gas stoves

The stoves have an oven that can be powered by electricity or gas. But they are not eternal. Over time, they stop functioning normally.

They are disposed of, sold for scrap, or simply taken to the countryside until a final decision is made.

But such a device can become an excellent basis for assembling a full-fledged smokehouse. A number of stove elements are already ready to provide smoking, and there is no need to redo them. The improvements are minor. This is much easier than making a smoking unit from scratch, or using an old refrigerator as a base.

The main advantages of gas stoves include the presence of the following structural elements:

Grooves on the side surfaces inside, or telescopic guides. Grates are installed on them, and hooks with food are hung. This simplifies the process of loading and unloading raw materials.
Wire racks and baking trays. If they have not had time to rust, then after simple cleaning you get an excellent basis for laying out products for smoking. Trays are commonly used as surfaces to collect fat and juice.
Thermal insulation materials. If you've ever had to disassemble a gas stove, you've probably seen panels and slabs inside, as well as facing materials with thermal insulation properties. They allow you to maintain and maintain the temperature inside the stove, and this is very important for smoking.
Seals. They create the required degree of tightness.

Another comparison with the same refrigerators. The construction of gas stoves uses materials that are designed to withstand high temperature loads. Therefore, if you follow the smoking rules, the plate will not be deformed and the metal will not crack.

Manufacturers have also provided special coatings that make it easy to clean the stove from dirt. This simplifies the issue of caring for a homemade smokehouse based on a household appliance.

There are no significant shortcomings here as such. Therefore, old gas stoves have become a popular solution for making smokers.

Advantages of an electric smoker

Electric devices for smoking a variety of products have a huge number of advantages. The main ones include the following:

The design is relatively small in size. If we talk about a household electric smoker, then it can be installed even in a small kitchen cabinet. The devices are quite compact and do not take up much space.
They are easy to use. In order to prepare delicious smoked meats, you do not necessarily need to have experience or special skills. You just need to choose the most suitable temperature regime and strictly follow the instructions provided.
Smoked meats cook very quickly. Due to the fact that the lid is rubbed as tightly as possible against the walls of the container, preparing homemade smoked meat will take an average of half an hour. All the heat is retained inside the smokehouse, so you can cook even fairly large pieces of food.
Smoked meats are prepared without temperature changes. The desired mode can be set either manually or the smokehouse can be left to operate in automatic mode.
Electric smokers are completely safe and have a long service life.

Schemes and drawings

To spend a minimum of time making smokehouses from old gas stoves, craftsmen should prepare in advance.

Let's start with the question of whether a stove can become a basis for smoking. Of course, it is only desirable that the structure is not outright rusty. Otherwise, restoring the tightness will be difficult and expensive.

It is not necessary to make drawings from scratch. There are many ready-made projects. It is advisable to print them out and compare them with the dimensions and design features of your old stove.

If everything fits and matches, then this item is considered completed.

Tips for use

A smokehouse from an old gas stove is very easy to make. The advantage of this design is that it already contains grates suitable for smoking products. The smoking cabinet will be completely sealed. There is no need to make additional handles or legs for the device. All this is already in the stove.

It is best to smoke food outdoors. In this case, the smoke, the excess of which will exit through special openings, does not enter the room. If the structure is used in a house, it is worth constructing a separate chimney vent using a pipe or hose. The chimney should be connected to the hood or out of the window.

In order for smoked meats to be tasty, special attention should be paid to the choice of fuel. The ideal option would be wood chips made from deciduous or fruit wood. Processed products will have a pleasant taste and smell, as well as a fairly long shelf life. In order to improve the taste characteristics, you can add a small amount of juniper branches to the prepared wood chips.

Uncleaned birch sawdust or coniferous wood chips should not be used for smoking. The smoke that will be released as a result of the smoldering of such fuel contains a huge amount of tar and other harmful impurities. They will not only spoil the taste and smell of cooked smoked meats, but can also harm human health.

To prepare smoked meats that will be no different from store-bought ones, you should carefully prepare all the products in advance. It is worth noting that preparation will depend on exactly how the products will be processed. For example, for the hot smoking method, it is enough to salt, for example, the meat and add your favorite spices. The meat can be cooked immediately. For the cold smoking method, the products must be marinated for some time and treated with a large amount of salt. The fish is pre-dried so that the smoked meat is tender and aromatic.

A smokehouse made from an old gas stove is one of the simplest designs with which you can cook smoked meats at any time. They will not differ much from those offered in the store at a fairly high cost.

Preparing the Slab

In order to make a smokehouse out of a gas stove, the equipment must first be brought into the appropriate condition. This will allow you to get a full-fledged smokehouse that will work outdoors.

To begin with, the stove is cleaned of accumulated contaminants. Everything unnecessary must be removed from the design. Old baking sheets and rotten grates are no longer suitable for further use.

Check the stove for leaks. To do this, simply light something that produces a lot of smoke and close the door. If smoke starts coming out from different cracks, there are weak spots. They should be closed by welding, or use metal sheets.

The process of making a smoker largely depends on what smoking method you want to use on a gas stove.

To work, you will need a certain set of tools and consumables. Among them:

welding machine;
drill;
screwdriver;
metal drills;
seal;
hammer;
screwdrivers;
roulette;
marker or pencil.

This set is not complete, since different plates have their own characteristics. Plus, when building a cold or hot smoked smokehouse, there will be some nuances.

Before you make your own smokehouse from a gas stove, you need to decide whether it will be equipment for hot or cold smoky processing.

Option #3. Bucket smokehouse

The algorithm of actions in this case should look like this.

Step one.

Take a bucket and pour a one- or two-centimeter layer of sawdust into its bottom. At the bottom. Approximately ten centimeters from the bottom of the bucket, a grate is placed on which products previously prepared for the smoking procedure are placed.

Step two.

Next, the bucket should be closed with a lid and placed on the fire. The fire is started, and until the smoking is finished, there is no need to open the lid.

Step three.

When steam or smoke begins to seep out from under the lid, this means that the smoking procedure has begun successfully. It is also important that the structure itself does not overheat. At first, when the prepared product is just dried (this takes approximately ? of the total time that the process takes), the temperature inside the case should be about 80-90C, and during the entire remaining time, that is, directly during smoking, 120C.

Step four.

To determine the current temperature in the smokehouse, you need to perform just one simple action - drop water on the lid. And if it does not boil, but only evaporates without any hissing, then everything is in order with the temperature. The meat or fish will be smoked correctly, but ultimately will not be cooked.

Step five.

To regulate the temperature, you need to rake out the coals or add fuel to the smokehouse. As a rule, the smoking procedure takes from 30 to 45 minutes. At first, you will have to remove the smokehouse from the fire a couple of times and, quickly removing the lid, taste the food. When you have sufficiently mastered the process, there will be no need for this manipulation.

Hot smokehouse

Objectively, assembling hot smokehouses from gas stoves with your own hands is much easier. This is due to the principle of cooking food using hot smoke. The process occurs under the influence of high temperature smoke, and therefore there is no need to separate the firebox from the chamber with the products.

If you don’t know how to make a smokehouse from an old gas stove that will allow you to cook using hot smoke, then use the following instructions as a starting point.

Prepare your household appliance and gather the necessary tools and materials.
Remove the oven door and back wall from the stove. This is the section that is located under the oven. Housewives usually use it to store pans.
Remove the gas burner from the oven. If there is an upper heater, it should also be removed.
Heating of wood chips can be achieved using a connected electric stove with 1 burner with a power of 1.5-2 kW. Or build a fireplace where you can build a fire.
The firebox or combustion chamber is made under the bottom of the oven, for which the latter will need to be raised slightly using bricks. The firebox is also organized inside the drying section itself.
2-4 holes should be cut at the bottom of the side walls of the slab. They will provide air suction, which will allow the wood to burn well. You also need 1-2 holes on top. Exhaust smoke will escape through them.
To drill holes, use a drill with a step or cylindrical drill bit. The diameter of the holes should be 10-20 mm.

This is the simplest option for turning a gas stove into a smokehouse.

But the design has several disadvantages:

It is impossible to smoke food with cold smoke in such a device;
it is difficult to distribute smoke in a structure;
for effective operation, you need to select the diameter of the holes, as well as their number;
Inertial heating will not allow you to quickly reduce the temperature, and therefore the food may burn.

To regulate the air flow and the burning intensity of the wood chips, it is recommended to make holes with the possibility of a hermetically sealed closure. Thus, creating a minimum influx of oxygen, the wood chips will smolder and emit smoke rather than ignite.

To minimize the risk of ignition of the fuel for smoke, a container should be placed under the grate with food to collect juices and fat.

Manufacturing options

There are several options for how to make a smokehouse from a gas stove. The design can be additionally equipped with a smoke generator, which will allow you to smoke food at a fairly low temperature. This processing process takes much more time, but the finished smoked meats will be stored several times longer without changing the taste characteristics.

Design with smoke generator

In order to make a structure from an old gas stove that can be used for the cold smoking method, it is worth making a chimney and separately installing a high-quality smoke generator.

A device for producing smoke can be purchased ready-made or made with your own hands from scrap materials.

Converting a stove into a cold smoking device consists of only three simple steps.

The stove body is installed on a special stand so that it is located slightly higher than the smoke generator being used.
Holes are made in the side walls, both on the outside and on the inside, at a height of about 3 centimeters. They will be used to connect the chimney.
Next, the smoke generator is connected to the smoking chamber using a chimney. As a chimney, you can use a regular metal pipe or a special corrugated hose.

Cold smokehouse

There were slightly more fans of cold smoking from a gas stove, although such a smokehouse is more difficult to implement.

To make a full-fledged cold smokehouse for preparing delicacies from an old stove, you will have to make a number of modifications.

There are 2 main components. This is the stove itself, where the food will smoke, as well as the smoke generator. Two nodes are connected to each other. Due to this, the smoke has time to cool down as it travels. This ensures the temperature inside the chamber with products does not exceed 35-40 degrees Celsius.

Another difficulty is that the production of some elements will have to be ordered from specialists. Plus you will need to buy something at building materials stores.

The procedure for assembling a cold smokehouse based on an old gas stove looks like this.

First you need to make a hole in the lower side wall of the gas stove. Its diameter will be 27-28 millimeters. This hole will be needed to connect the smoke supply system.
A 3/4 water pipe is inserted into the resulting hole. You need to insert it on the side where the thread length is longer. To do this, you will need to visit a plumbing store. Fixation is carried out with 2 low nuts.
A similar hole with a connection for the outlet must be made on the other side of the slab. The difference is that the hole will be located at the top of the equipment. Such an element is needed to remove excess smoke, as well as relieve excess pressure inside the chamber. A tap should be screwed onto the other end of the outlet pipe. A ball or plug type valve is suitable. It is used to make adjustments.
To be able to control the temperature, it is recommended to install a thermometer inside the oven.

At this point the smokehouse itself is ready. Additionally, you need to check the condition of the grilles, as well as the tightness of the closing door.

If everything is fine here, then you should start assembling the smoke generator.

Smoke generator

This is an ejector device. It is characterized by high efficiency, as well as relative ease of self-assembly.

To make a smoke generator with your own hands, you will need a kit consisting of:

3/4 pipes;
tubes with an internal diameter of 7 mm;
pipes with a diameter of 90-120 cm and a length of about 70 cm;
necks with a 3/4 type union nut;
fittings of a suitable size;
M6-M10 screws with wing nut;
metal sheet;
air compressor;
connecting hose.

In order not to damage the surface on which the smoke generator will be located, it is recommended to place it on a heat-resistant base. An excellent solution would be a metal sheet about 5 millimeters thick.

Many people have all the necessary components in the garage. They can also be found at any hardware and plumbing store. They are inexpensive. Therefore, the cost of manufacturing the smokehouse is minimal.

As for the compressor, many people take aerators from aquariums. A productivity of 60 liters in 1 hour is enough with a margin.

The smoke generator assembly sequence is as follows:

From a metal sheet, cut a circle to fit the inner diameter of the larger pipe. Make about 20 holes in it. Then weld it inside the pipe, stepping back about 20-30 millimeters from the edge. This will be a sieve that acts as a grate.
Now weld the screw to the inner wall of the pipe. Place a round lid on it. She will be an ash pit.
Just above the grate, make a hole with a diameter of 10-12 millimeters. It will allow you to ignite wood chips or sawdust.
After this, make a couple of holes at a distance of 40-50 millimeters from the top edge of the generator. One hole should be located opposite the second.
Weld the outlet pipe to one of these holes. A thin tube along with a fitting is welded onto the other hole. It is necessary that the first one is inside the structure, and can also enter the second one to a depth of approximately 10-20 millimeters.
A compressor is connected to the fitting through a hose of suitable size. Weld a neck onto the outlet pipe. The entire structure is connected using a union nut.

If you light the fuel and then turn on the compressor, the aerator will pick up a stream of air and begin to transfer smoke through the pipe into the smoking chamber made of a gas stove.

Due to the fact that the smoke generator is located at a distance from the smokehouse, and the smoke travels a certain distance, its temperature manages to drop to the values required for the cold smoking method.

In fact, the second type of smokehouse, focused on cold smoking, is multifunctional. It can be used for hot and cold smoking.

In the first case, the smoke generator is turned off and the holes for its connection are tightly closed. Otherwise, the same modifications to the slab are made as in the case of the first method. A fire is lit under the stove, or a container with wood chips is heated with an electric stove. Due to the tightness of the stove, the smoke rises, envelops the food and exits through a special hole in the upper part of the structure.

Option #2. Hot smoked smokehouse

The easiest way to make a smokehouse of this type is from sheets of metal. But before you start work, you should prepare everything you need (the list is given below).

A pair of metal sheets 2 millimeters thick and dimensions 1565x610 millimeters.
Thin reinforcing rods.
Bulgarian.
Meter.
Carpenter's corner.
Welding machine.

After this, you can proceed directly to production. The algorithm of actions should be as follows.

Step one.

First, the first metal sheet should be cut into four parts. To achieve a square smokehouse, it is important that the dimensions of all elements are the same. To cut the sheet, use a grinder with an appropriate disk.

Step two.

The two sheets are welded together using drip welding, after which, using a carpenter's angle, you should make sure that the planes are connected to each other strictly at right angles. If necessary, their position is adjusted. Then the remaining sides are welded in the same way.

Step three.

In order to achieve tightness, all internal seams of our structure must be carefully welded.

Step four.

The bottom of the future smokehouse is cut out of another metal sheet, after which it should be carefully welded to the box made at the previous stage.

Step five.

After this, you can begin making the cover of the structure. Using a grinder, you should cut out four strips of stainless steel sheet (it is important that the dimensions of these strips are slightly larger than the external dimensions of the finished box). The cover is welded. When all work is completed, the lid should be deep enough so that it can be easily placed on the box.

Step six.

The product is almost ready. But to completely complete all the work, iron handles and a couple of levels of metal rods are welded to the body. Rods should be welded on top of the body to mount a tray in which fats and juices will accumulate. The upper rods are required in order to place hooks with meat or fish.

Video - Making a smokehouse (hot smoking option)

That’s it, after this you can start operating the smokehouse. In this case, the heat will be provided by an electric stove, but to get a higher temperature, it is advisable to light a fire.

Note! If desired, the dimensions of the smokehouse can be changed in one direction or another, but the main requirement must be met - we are talking about the complete tightness of the smoking chamber.

We also note that in order to make a mini smokehouse with your own hands, you should first work on drawings of the future product. In this case, it will be possible to correctly calculate the amount of required consumables.