I have never smoked food before but I’m an addict for my Weber kettle and my outdoor patio is under construction as I type this. Never seen this before in my 12 years living in the island so I was tempted to just grab this while I could. In peso that is about $1000 usd. Is that an okay price for a 22 inch Weber Smoker? Given I’m in Mexico with a 16% importer tax and an island ferry to get it to us that is probably equivalent to $800 USD mainland.
Next stupid question… does that burn normal charcoal or do I need to buy specialty smoking wood? I live on an island so shipping to us is not cheap.
by Sloeber3
16 Comments
Crazy expensive
In my opinion…..it’s WAY over priced. That Weber goes for about $600 in the states. Also, you can use normal charcoal, or a mixture of wood and charcoal.
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You can use your weber kettle to smoke. Check out some YouTube videos to start before pulling the trigger on this $$$ purchase in my opinion.
Dude, don’t you have Craigslist or anything on that island? This is ridiculously overpriced
That is called a weber smoky mountain or WSM for short. They have a few different sizes available that range in price in the US from $289 to about $600. They are made of same metal as a kettle. But the design and height separation allow you to use the whole grate surface when smoking unlike a kettle. The bottom vent control is also a bit more precise.
It certainly makes it easier to smoke, but the kettle is really sufficient for most things. If you’ve never smoked food before, use the kettle, follow the “snake method” and cook a pork shoulder / butt. If you get addicted to smoking (something we know will happen from research) then you can look to add a WSM to your collection.
You can smoke on your Weber kettle. On YouTube look up smoking on the Weber Kettle. Weber Kettle Snake and minion methods etc. no reason to invest in a large dedicated smoker if you can do it on the kettle.
I’m in Campeche, on the other side of the Yucatan peninsula. I own both a Kettle and WSM. I use either “Campirano” brickets (get them at Wallmart or Soriana) or Kingsford either original or mezquite-flavored (get them at Wallmart or Sam’s Club). The only significant difference other than the price is that left over Campirano are very brittle and complicated to move around for your next cook.
Yes, your kettle is a great smoker but I finde the WSM far superior. Also, smoking on the WSM frees up the kettle to grill and rotisserie entrées and/or side dishes.
The WSM is not a wood cooker, you’d need an off-set smoker for that. Get a hold of mango chunks to smoke to smoke with natural brickets.
If you have the space to keep both, go ahead. To give you an idea if the foot print of the set, I keep mine under under two kitchen extractors (I don’t have a current picture, sorry)
Anything can be a smoker if you can get meat away from direct heat. I would start with buying probes for ambient and internal and play around with different set-up. Start with a big chunk of meat, not sure what you all have available but we usually say start with a pork butt. Very forgiving for heat swings and can always go into the oven after about 5 hours of smoking.
Have fun with your journey and the best advice I can give is patience, patience, rest your meat, and very importantly more patience.
You seem to know your pricing better than the rest of us, and to you it seems to make sense.
The question then becomes whether it’s worth it to you at that price which only you can answer.
Technically, it’s a little bit nicer than a kettle for smoking because it just uses regular charcoal or lump charcoal along with wood chunks for the actual smoke. Small wood trucks shouldn’t be too expensive to get and then you’ll be using regular charcoal for the heat portion.
These are nice because you can set them up to run easily for 8+ hours at 250°F. You also get a little bit more space to cook with because you can use the entire surface.
However, you can get pretty good results with a cheap Weber kettle by utilizing something called the snake method with charcoal briquettes. If you set it up properly, you can get 8+ hours of smoke.
I’d say if you wanna smoke and you can afford it it’s not a bad option. Yes is expensive but realistically, you can buy them for around $500 in a normal US state so given the the high import and transportation cost to get it to an island that’s probably not an unreasonable amount of money.
As others have said, try using your kettle before plunking down a chunk of change on a dedicated smoker. I had a 22” Smokey Mtn that I modified to do grilling more easily. My preference is grilling over smoking. At the time I didn’t have a kettle and was just switching from a gasser to lump coal. The WSM worked but as a part time grill the WSM was just ok.
Once I added the kettle, and found that it a did really good job of smoking and an outstanding job grilling I sold the WSM.
I have since sold all but one kettle and use a Summit Charcoal Komodo for both grilling and smoking. Never really felt a need to reengage the WSM.
Must be a reaction to Trump’s tariffs. 🥵
Affirm even go that high??🤣🧐
I have the standard Weber and I am able to smoke meat just fine with it.
It’s clearly not in USD.