How to Smoke on a Gas Grill With Chips

At this point, you have all the necessary grilling equipment including your best gas grill and the meat to smoke. All you are waiting for is the procedure to set everything in progress. If you are a beginner, this guide how to smoke on a gas grill to make you a pro in a short while.

First thing to remember, you want traditional smoky flavor, yet you’re using equipment that isn’t best suited for this function. Gas grill is the best designed for both direct and indirect grilling.

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But we can’t miss a way to go if we just have to smoke on a gas grill. So let’s set off our BBQ journey. Navigating the following steps one by one eventually enables us to smoke on a grill.

In order to smoke on a smoker, you should add smoke to it. You can achieve this in two ways: smoker box method and using the tinfoil method.

Method 1: Use of Smoker Box Method

To smoke on a gas grill using the smoker box method, you need the smoker box and wood chips. Most gas grills come with smoker box. If yours doesn’t have and you need the best model with this box for convenient smoking, click here. In detail, follow these steps:

Setting up your grill to smoke:

Place the smoker box over the source of heat, directly above your grill’s burner. Then, add dry wood chips in the smoker box. Are you worried of your wood chips catching fire instead of simply producing smoke? Worry less, for you can start by soaking them in water prior to smoking.

Approximately, 30 minutes are enough for optimal soaking. However, because the smoker box lacks holes at the bottom, thus catching fire isn’t that easy. For this reason, dry wood chips are still convenient.

Close the lid of the smoker box and wait for it to warm up and start generating smoke. To hurry it up and smoke a little bit faster, you can have the burner set to the maximum. You can then reset back the burner to the normal once the smoker box starts to produce the smoke.

Smoking of your meat:

Now, when your smoker box has sufficient smoke, place your meat on the grates. Key point to remember, you can best smoke meat at fixed low temperatures and do it slowly. For this reason, place your meat above the burners that are switched off, not directly over the burner.
Using the knobs of your burner, constantly adjust the temperature to maintain a steady production of smoke. A singer burner located directly under the smoker box would be effective at maintaining low temperature inside your grill.

Note: The metal box works by conducting heat from the grill’s burner to the wood chips to produce smoke. Although its lower part has no holes, the upper part has holes for smoke passage. This in turn improves the flavor of your food. The design of smoker box allows for easy opening, implying that additional wood chips can be added in the course of smoking.

Method 2: The Tinfoil Method

Using tinfoil method is an alternative to the use of smoker box method. This is in case you aren’t in good position to acquire a smoker box. Basically, the tinfoil allows you to come up with a bag-like structure in which you can keep dry wood chips.

Setting it up:

Prepare a sizable sheet of thick and durable tinfoil by folding it into a bag-like structure.
Then you can pour dry wood inside your tinfoil, followed by folding to seal it tight on every side. This prevents the falling out of wood chips and uncontrollable escaping of the smoke.

At this point, you can make a small hole on the upper side of your foil. Place your improvised foil bag full of wood chips directly over the burner. This should be done in such a way that the upper part having the hole remains on the top.

Smoking:

Start with high burner settings to produce sufficient heat and wait until you see the smoke coming out. Watch out for the smoke through the tiny hole you’ve made in the tinfoil bag.
At this point, lower down the heat inside the grill to your most preferred temperature.

The tinfoil method uses temporary foil bags which last for approximately 25-35 minutes. Depending on your needs, you can prepare as many bags as possible. As you can see preparation isn’t hard.

Final words about smoking on a gas grill:

The two methods we have discussed above are both great for smoking on a gas grill. Particularly smoker box method is relatively long-term in nature if you try it out.

However, as already noted, tinfoil method is temporary and is only fit for your temporary or short-term needs. Considering that one single foil bag lasts for approximately 25-35 minutes, you’d rather go for the smoker box method.

With attention to the use of gas grill as a method of smoking, bear in mind a few facts. For one thing, it isn’t the best way to smoke your meat. Compared to directly smoking over wood or charcoal smoker, the flavor of food obtained is not the best we know of.

But it is a relief and an alternative in the absence of perfect smokers. Therefore, if you are in need of smoking and you have no otherwise, don’t be afraid to use it.

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Theresa Lori

Hi, I'm Theresa. My passion for grilling delicacy gradually built during the time I was living with my parents. My family members especially my mother was a great fan of grilled dishes to and from the love of food. I started preparing smoked food with my mom. This bonding helped me to know more and more about to smoke, grill what always I share on SmokeGears.com. So, in two words you can call me a BBQ lover.

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