Smoke Hollow 30162E Electric Smoker at a Glance
This is a great little smoker. Its small sized but it still has enough interior room to cook enough to feed all the people you can fit in a small apartment. Seems very well built, and it has removable parts making for easy clean-up.
Size
While this smoker is a little smaller than many others, thats the whole idea here. And it still has enough interior room to handle most cooks.
Price
Good quality for the price. This is an entry level unit, both in terms of price and what you get. Low priced and very servicable
Performance
We were able to cook 4 racks of ribs with no issues and delivered a delcious product
Use
It takes a little work to put together and the only real drawbacks were the thin outer wall and a poor drip catching system in the bottom of the unit.
The Good
Low priced, good beginner level smoker. Small in size with enough interior space to cook for a group. Easy set up and easy to clean.
The Bad
We didn't like the quality of metal for the exterior, although its to be expected on a low cost model. The flat bottom also can make a mess with fat drainage.
How We Chose This Smoker
My cousin Jesse has been talking about getting and electric smoker for a while but the problem is that he lives in an apartment and only has so much storage and a small concrete deck to work with. Since he knows I am a self-proclaimed pit master he asked for my advice in picking out a rig for his situation. Not a responsibility I could take lightly! After a little research we settled on this Smoke Hollow model and picked it up at Lowes.
My cousin has decided he wants to run this smoker primarily for ribs so after we picked it up we stopped into his local butcher for a few racks of baby-backs and some sauce and I brought some of my rib rub to take this baby for a test run.
- Height: 38"
- Width: 21.5"
- Depth 18"
- Weight 45lb
- Number of cook racks: 3
- Watts: 1500
- Temperature Gauge: Yes
- Built in wood chip box
- Includes water pan
Other features: Double walled construction helps to hold in heat and maintain temperature. The heat indicator is built right into the door. Two of the cooking racks are moveable, one is fixed. total of 504" of cooking surface.
As I said before this thing is relatively small, standing about 38" and its 21 1/2" wide. It fit comfortably on his small deck. It took us about 25 minutes to assemble and the directions were very clear. When tightening the screws don't use a power driver since the metal is very thin and I would worry about stripping or busting right through. Once we were done putting it together we ran it for an hour to get rid of any manufacturing grease. The legs are very study and we felt good about running it on the deck. Then it was time to cook. We used my classic rib recipe with some hickory chips in the box.
Performance:
In all I'd say this little rig performed terrific. It held between 225-250 degrees with no problems (it was about 45 degrees outside when we were cooking). The ribs came out great after about 3 hours. The ability to move the racks around inside the smoker seems like it will definitely come in handy if we were cooking something larger, but we got 4 racks of ribs in, and could have easily done 6. The metal housing seems a little thin and was hot to the touch during the entire cook. The wood chip box was accessible and we added more hickory after about 1 1/2 hours.
Things I don't like:
There are a couple minor issues I noticed with the Smoke Hollow 30162E. The main one being that the exterior box is rather thin. While it didn't seem to affect the cooking temp, or the quality of the ribs it is definitely giving off a lot of heat during the cook. I think it could also make the smoker less durable over its lifetime. For the price, though, the material quality should be expected. Another minor issue is that the bottom of the interior is flat, and if you've ever smoked before you know this can result in a messy situation with dripping grease. I'm not sure what can be done in terms of a home hack, and it might just be easier to run this thing over a piece of scrap ply wood to save your deck/patio. I also noticed when we were assembling that the interior joints could have a tighter fit, and while we were using it there wasn't significant heat loss, I've told my cousin he should go back in with some high temp, food grade silicon adhesive and seal those joints.
Summary:
I think this is a great starter smoker, or good for someone with limited space. While there are a couple small drawbacks the low price and cook quality more than makes up for them.
Those are some good looking ribs!
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