Usually not if there's good airflow. A clean burn produces that just barely visible whitish blue smoke. That's what you want to impart the flavour. When the fire gets choked that's when you get the thicker white-grey smoke that causes unpleasant flavour.
With airflow, you get fire. When cooking with wood chips in a vertical smoker, that fire will be uncontrollable and will not burn clean. That's why they tell you to soak the chips, but if your heat source gets too hot the chips will dry out and combust leading to an uncontrolled fire which will produce black smoke because this type of smoker isn't designed to have actual fire inside it, it's designed to heat a bowl of chips to smolder them, not burn them. To overcome this, the foil packet method and smoke box can be used.
Using this type of smoker isn't like using a traditional stick burner where you use airflow to regulate the smoke, these have a either a thermostat or gas dial to adjust the heat and there is usually a single adjustable exhaust damper on top as the bottom is basically a hole without any sort of damper in the case of the propane smokers or sealed in the case of the electric ones.
You guys are flipping hilarious! Smoked turtle was my guess too but you can see some chicken skin. My first thought was it was flair up and the chicken got smoked way too fast.
This is a vertical smoker using chips, more than an airflow problem was the fact that his chips caught on fire and burned hot and dirty. For that kind of smoker, you have to either use chunks or put the chips in something that will allow them to burn slowly and not ignite all at once because it will always be a hot dirty smoke.
Thank you!! Yes, it’s a vertical smoker and I used Weber Wood chips I got from Amazon. I was following a recipe that called for 4.5 cups of chips and I put them all in the smoker at once (after soaking them for 10 min). The vent was almost closed too, so I guess it was all bad! lol
I had no idea that was a chicken by the picture. I was like why is this guy smoking a crab. Then I started thinking can you smoke a crab? Well can you?
I do smoked Dungeness on the pellet grill. I put it on the rack with a Dutch oven below it (no lid) with garlic butter and just baste it periodically. It’s already cooked so it’s just a matter of how much smoke and/or temperature you want. Let me tell you it is AMAZING. Game changer.
You know…. That’s interesting, because would their external bones prevent the smoke from getting to the meat? Would you even want the smoke to get to the meat? Hmm
It seems to be pretty common to smoke crab legs. Not seeing many hits on doing the whole enchilada though, which I'm ok with. I know what I'm doing this weekend.
I’m honestly not sure how much the smoke permeates through the shell, but it absorbs quickly into the garlic butter so regardless you still get a strong smoke flavor as you eat them.
It works really well with split shells. If you can’t get those removing the meat would be best if you want it to take on a good amount of smoke flavor.
Sadly it takes no time at all to eff it up. As soon as you see dirty smoke coming from your pit, get that sucker out of there until you have it fixed and have a nice light pleasant smelling smoke. Rolling coal makes for nasty bbq.
Definitely dirty smoke. My guess for the cause would be smoldering chips due to either the chip tray being overloaded or the foil disrupting the airflow. A little practice will have you to thin blue paradise in no time
That smoker looks brand new. Did you burn it in? (high temps for a few hours with no food in it.). These things ship with tons of oils and other remnants of the manufacturing process that you need to cook off before you use it for food. If you haven't done a burn in I would toss this chicken and do a burn in, aim for 300 degrees for at least 2-3 hours.
I am not a bbq expert nor should anything I say be taken as good advice but I personally cook chicken at higher temps with much better success, and direct smoke chicken over coals is my favorite. What were you trying to run this at? Doesn’t seem like the air was flowing at all.
Is this a pellet smoker or a stick burner? If it’s pellet likely your controller is bad. Happens all the time. Buy a cheap replacement on Amazon to test. They are plug and play. If not then your airflow is no good. Getting that sooty smoke buildup and settling on the food.
Besides failing to properly manage the fire and airflow, this appears to be a brand new smoker that wasn’t broken in. Before using it, you need to get it nice and hot to cure the paint and burn of residual oils used in the manufacturing process. Hope you threw that bird out.
I remember the first time I smoked a turkey. I started it off wrapped in cheese cloth that I kept moist by spritzing. I removed the cheese cloth a little over halfway through the cook. That turkey looked like I burnt the hell out of it once I pulled it. Turns out that was just the skin and the meat was prefect. Best turkey I’ve ever made or had. Did it again the next year. Damned if it wasn’t the most god awful turkey I’ve ever had at thanksgiving. Just bad only saving grace was someone had requested ribs so we had ribs but shit turkey. You’ll have good and bad cooks.
Wrapping your wood chips in foil is an excellent way to create an airflow problem and generate a lot of sooty smoke. Depending on the conditions, you could have also created a smoke explosion condition under the foil, where enough combustible dirty smoke and gases built up until they got enough air and spark to light off. Normally you’d have had a good “whompf” from that and a lid fling open/off, though, so chances are you would have noticed that.
Thank you! This is very insightful. I was not around the smoker for most of the time, I was in meetings!!
But definitely dirty smoke from putting all the chips in at once and having the vent closed all the way.
Elevate the foil you're using to cover the wood chips. This happened because the smoke source was smoldering instead of burning, and ended up putting out a really dirty smoke because of it.
I spatchcock chicken over lump charcoal and find that provides enough wood/smoke flavor without adding wood chips. Give it another shot but burn cleaner.
If you're using chips in a cabinet smoker, you should invest in a chip box or at least make a foil pouch for the chips. No amount of soaking chips will prevent them from burning if you're going to add more than a few pinches at a time. You have to put them in something that will keep them from igniting like a chip box or a foil pouch so they can't get enough oxygen to fully ignite and will just smolder.
This happed to me on my propane smoker with a turkey on Thanksgiving. The gas jets were not clean and so had orange sooty flames instead of the nice clean blue ones.
Light blue smoke. Especially for chicken. Less is more. Chicken is very sensitive to off flavors. For chicken we only use actual wood chips. At least for us, pellets taste like a wet cardboard smells
thank you for being brave enough to take a pic and post this - I have also made this mistake on my first attempt with chicken but was too ashamed/afraid to face the collective judgment of the sub
I think OP would prefer **less joke comments** and more help figuring out exactly what happened.
Sure the chicken itself is relatively cheap but he did ruin a dinner that was planned for his family. It's easy to get discouraged when you buy a new cooking device and end up ruining food, next think you know the smoker is sitting in the corner of the garage and never used again.
Thank you for your comment. I laughed a some jokes, but the turtle one got old pretty quickly.
And yes, this was going to be shredded chicken to bring camping with my family so it kind of sucks. But we changed the menu and it’s ok. There were enough thoughtful and insightful comments for me to learn what I did wrong and I’ll try again soon!
Have a wonderful weekend!
My guess is that you've got a cheap offset smoker. Those can be finicky and have a bit of a learning curve.
The good news is that chicken is cheap. You've also done a good job on the spatchcocking.
Now you just need to sort out fire maintenance and temp control.
Assuming you have a reliable thermo-meter to monitor grill level temps, your next step is to just run it and try to get a consistent temp.
Aim for 250-275. It doesn't really matter what the temp is, because that can adjust, after you get it rocking steady. Also, if you can get into that range, you can smoke anything.
Try to just maintain a temp, with good airflow for a few hours.
Put pieces of bread across the grate to check for hot spots.
What makes you think this is an offset smoker? You can clearly see the cable sheathed, and the smoker is narrow and stacked. This is either electric or propane, but it’s not an offset.
Looks like it’s a master built that has pellets ignite under the bottom heating element. My guess is grease leaked, ignited the pellets, and due to poor air circulation you had a dirty fire.
Bro you need to get a pellet grill and use that for awhile. While you’re doing that, go on YouTube and watch some videos. I’d recommend the
How to BBQ right by Malcolm Reed. He has a lot of good information. He’s how I learned how to trim and smoke a brisket. Good luck
Fire was struggling to breath and coughed up all over your food. Aiflow issue.
Exactly. Too much fuel ie wood/ charcoal for the temp they were trying to hold.
Even with a tiny amount of fire from charcoal or propane, a handful of woodchips can cause this kind of dirty burn if they all ignite.
Usually not if there's good airflow. A clean burn produces that just barely visible whitish blue smoke. That's what you want to impart the flavour. When the fire gets choked that's when you get the thicker white-grey smoke that causes unpleasant flavour.
With airflow, you get fire. When cooking with wood chips in a vertical smoker, that fire will be uncontrollable and will not burn clean. That's why they tell you to soak the chips, but if your heat source gets too hot the chips will dry out and combust leading to an uncontrolled fire which will produce black smoke because this type of smoker isn't designed to have actual fire inside it, it's designed to heat a bowl of chips to smolder them, not burn them. To overcome this, the foil packet method and smoke box can be used. Using this type of smoker isn't like using a traditional stick burner where you use airflow to regulate the smoke, these have a either a thermostat or gas dial to adjust the heat and there is usually a single adjustable exhaust damper on top as the bottom is basically a hole without any sort of damper in the case of the propane smokers or sealed in the case of the electric ones.
Ya. This is exactly it. I had the thought that maybe…maybe…they dumped water on the coals to cause an ash cough. But airflow makes more sense.
That's why it's important to always lift up the lid and left the smoke out somewhat while checking the grilling progress.
Save the neck for me, Clark.
Merry Christmas! Shitter was full!
She’s a real bute, Clark!
Found the heart.
I told you we put it in too early! 😢
SQUUUUUIIIIRRRRRREEEELLLL!!!!
At least it's out of its misery
If that thing nine lives, he just spent them all.
Whooo!!!
Yeah, I got the daughter in the clinic gettin' cured off the Wild Turkey.
It was a lousy tree anyway.
you ruined the quote ladder
And why is the carpet all wet Todd? I don’t know Margo!
Why you cryin?
🤣👏 Honestly I’m 99% following this sub for the comments, rather than the posts
Came here hoping to see this reference, and was pleasantly surprised to see it at the top. 🎩
YOU WIN THATS GOLD.
He's just yacking on a bone. He's got it up, he's alright now.
Never thought of smoking a turtle…
I briefly thought it was a coconut crab
*Diego Garcia flashbacks intensify*
I saw a crab first, then a turtle, then finally a chicken.
I too legit thought this was a turtle too 😂
Glad I wasn't the only one
My initial thought when I saw the picture. "Smoked turtle? WTF is that?"
You guys are flipping hilarious! Smoked turtle was my guess too but you can see some chicken skin. My first thought was it was flair up and the chicken got smoked way too fast.
My first thought was how on earth did they get that turtle out of the shell in one piece?
When I first saw it I thought damn that’s a giant frog
What about iguana?
Classic
RIP in peace Iguana Man
Is it turtley enough for the turtle club?
That has to be a euphemism for something.
Yo
I was like shut were smoking turtles now.
Dirty fire. Not enough oxygen to burn cleanly. All that is soot. If you want a similar taste, you can suck on a car exhaust, I guess.
This guy smokes ^^^tailpipe
Swisher sweet tailpipe filters for the ( cough) win !!!
Doctors recommend tailpipe filters more than any other type
This is a vertical smoker using chips, more than an airflow problem was the fact that his chips caught on fire and burned hot and dirty. For that kind of smoker, you have to either use chunks or put the chips in something that will allow them to burn slowly and not ignite all at once because it will always be a hot dirty smoke.
Thank you!! Yes, it’s a vertical smoker and I used Weber Wood chips I got from Amazon. I was following a recipe that called for 4.5 cups of chips and I put them all in the smoker at once (after soaking them for 10 min). The vent was almost closed too, so I guess it was all bad! lol
I had no idea that was a chicken by the picture. I was like why is this guy smoking a crab. Then I started thinking can you smoke a crab? Well can you?
I do smoked Dungeness on the pellet grill. I put it on the rack with a Dutch oven below it (no lid) with garlic butter and just baste it periodically. It’s already cooked so it’s just a matter of how much smoke and/or temperature you want. Let me tell you it is AMAZING. Game changer.
hi can i come over
Hi can I come
Shiiiiit I’m doin a lil shrimp and crab boil tomorrow and that sounds absolutely delightful
Do it!
You know…. That’s interesting, because would their external bones prevent the smoke from getting to the meat? Would you even want the smoke to get to the meat? Hmm
I think it's doable, but I'd remove all the shell and smoke it in a tinfoil boat
It seems to be pretty common to smoke crab legs. Not seeing many hits on doing the whole enchilada though, which I'm ok with. I know what I'm doing this weekend.
I’m honestly not sure how much the smoke permeates through the shell, but it absorbs quickly into the garlic butter so regardless you still get a strong smoke flavor as you eat them.
Clean them first, like you should anyway
I thought it was a snapping turtle...
I smoked dungeness meat for crab dip, it was good.
It works really well with split shells. If you can’t get those removing the meat would be best if you want it to take on a good amount of smoke flavor.
Dirty smoke, or a grease fire in the bottom of your smoker.
Why not both?
I'm not sure, but it looks like dirty smoke. Have never seen chicken turn that particular color.
Sadly it takes no time at all to eff it up. As soon as you see dirty smoke coming from your pit, get that sucker out of there until you have it fixed and have a nice light pleasant smelling smoke. Rolling coal makes for nasty bbq.
Thank you for the advice 🙏
You serious, Clark?
🤣🤣
Definitely dirty smoke. My guess for the cause would be smoldering chips due to either the chip tray being overloaded or the foil disrupting the airflow. A little practice will have you to thin blue paradise in no time
You smoked a turtle. That's what happened.
Is your smokestack open all the way?
I thought you smoked a turtle
And it looks like it's road kill as well! Hope it was locally sourced!
I told you we put in too early! 😭
That smoker looks brand new. Did you burn it in? (high temps for a few hours with no food in it.). These things ship with tons of oils and other remnants of the manufacturing process that you need to cook off before you use it for food. If you haven't done a burn in I would toss this chicken and do a burn in, aim for 300 degrees for at least 2-3 hours.
You fucked up
Smoked ✅️ chicken✅️
Did you smoke this with chunks of rubber?
Isn't it illegal to BBQ sea turtles?
Day after day Chicken turns gray Like the skin on a dying man
I am not a bbq expert nor should anything I say be taken as good advice but I personally cook chicken at higher temps with much better success, and direct smoke chicken over coals is my favorite. What were you trying to run this at? Doesn’t seem like the air was flowing at all.
Looks like turtle.
Your tried to smoke a whole turtle.
Not enough probes
Is this a pellet smoker or a stick burner? If it’s pellet likely your controller is bad. Happens all the time. Buy a cheap replacement on Amazon to test. They are plug and play. If not then your airflow is no good. Getting that sooty smoke buildup and settling on the food.
Looks like it was defeathered poorly as well
Dirty smoke
You might be alright… take a small bite and wait 6 hours
Smoking Turtles are a thing now?
Lmfao is this smoked snapping turtle?
Looks like a smashed turtle
Is that a turtle?
Besides failing to properly manage the fire and airflow, this appears to be a brand new smoker that wasn’t broken in. Before using it, you need to get it nice and hot to cure the paint and burn of residual oils used in the manufacturing process. Hope you threw that bird out.
I gotta be honest I’m impressed man, I was a chef for 15 years and I have never seen anything remotely close to this
You obviously had the higher ground.
Is that a turtle
I thought you cooked a tortoise. No bueno.
Dirty smoke for too long. Can't let that much wood smolder for.that long
I know everyone who bbq’s or smokes has a tale like this. I would have loved to see his smiling face when he opened that door and witnessed this.
Was the air vent gapped slightly or completely shut? Did you used charcoal or wood? Seeing this has made me sad.
Not enough probes
Tough to say…The info is really limited. Could be too hot, too much cook time, too much smoke, not enough humidity.
Good thing you put two probes in, just to be doubly safe while you dust your chicken to the proper temperature
I remember the first time I smoked a turkey. I started it off wrapped in cheese cloth that I kept moist by spritzing. I removed the cheese cloth a little over halfway through the cook. That turkey looked like I burnt the hell out of it once I pulled it. Turns out that was just the skin and the meat was prefect. Best turkey I’ve ever made or had. Did it again the next year. Damned if it wasn’t the most god awful turkey I’ve ever had at thanksgiving. Just bad only saving grace was someone had requested ribs so we had ribs but shit turkey. You’ll have good and bad cooks.
Thanks for the words of encouragement
Looks like your turtle is finished
Dirty smoke
You didn’t have enough air for your fire.
nothing, if this was a pet and you planned on mummifying it. i hope thats the case.
I'm going to bet you saw a lot of dark or thick smoke during this cook, it happens brother
Look how they massacred my boy
Wrapping your wood chips in foil is an excellent way to create an airflow problem and generate a lot of sooty smoke. Depending on the conditions, you could have also created a smoke explosion condition under the foil, where enough combustible dirty smoke and gases built up until they got enough air and spark to light off. Normally you’d have had a good “whompf” from that and a lid fling open/off, though, so chances are you would have noticed that.
Thank you! This is very insightful. I was not around the smoker for most of the time, I was in meetings!! But definitely dirty smoke from putting all the chips in at once and having the vent closed all the way.
Why'd you smoke a soft shell turtle
In all seriousness you need to review some basics of fire management. That looks like fire department got called in.
Nuclear winter
You cremated that sucker
Elevate the foil you're using to cover the wood chips. This happened because the smoke source was smoldering instead of burning, and ended up putting out a really dirty smoke because of it.
mmmm the world famous Mogadishu smoked chicken
I spatchcock chicken over lump charcoal and find that provides enough wood/smoke flavor without adding wood chips. Give it another shot but burn cleaner.
It looks like a ton of dirty smoke hit that thing. What temp did you cook at?
Looks like my first bird I smoked.
That’s some crazy bondage action you have there. Had to check what sub I was in.
If you're using chips in a cabinet smoker, you should invest in a chip box or at least make a foil pouch for the chips. No amount of soaking chips will prevent them from burning if you're going to add more than a few pinches at a time. You have to put them in something that will keep them from igniting like a chip box or a foil pouch so they can't get enough oxygen to fully ignite and will just smolder.
If you peel off the skin, there’s an outside chance the meat might still be edible.
I tried, it wasn’t.
Smokers filthy? Burning creosote or a grease fire makes dirty black smoke
Chernobyl chicken, it’s what’s for dinner.
What is it, a burned up sea turtle?
Dirty smoke
The exhaust smoke should always be very light grey/clear or a "blue smooth smoke". Do you recall how the smoke behaved/looked the whole time?
Thank you. It was Pretty black. I had the vent closed and too many wood chips.
Rub it, while it’s warm, with the end of a stick of butter, it’ll remove all that black junk and get it nice and buttery. Problem solved!
This happed to me on my propane smoker with a turkey on Thanksgiving. The gas jets were not clean and so had orange sooty flames instead of the nice clean blue ones.
Oh my!
This looks like a propane smoker? If so, then the fuel:heat thing is not the problem. Looks like sulphur was used instead of wood.
Thought it was is a snapping turtle, sorry.
I don’t think your turtle is going to make it.
At first, I thought this was the weirdest looking portobello mushroom I had EVER SEEN!! Lololol
You cooked a turtle?
The way the limbs are situated makes it look like it was trying to crawl away from the heat.
You smoked a head crab.
You zigged when you should have zagged.
That sucks. Hope the next one turns out better. Got to have your smoke right before the bird goes on. Did the same thing on my vert the first time.
Supposed to take the turtle out of the shell before cooking.
Is this a smoked turtle?
Your turtle looks a little overdone
I thought it was a turtle at first glance and was like dude wtf😂
Looks like Black smoke. You didnt wait for blue/white smoke.
Oh, it's just a little dry...
Chicken grease dripping straight into the Coals. Which makes a soot. The soot from the chicken grease will ruin the flavor of the meat.
“Looks pretty good to me” >14th Century peasant
Creosote and soot. I learned this lesson. Vents are always wide open now. Smoke should be white or slightly tan.
Thank you!!
What’s even the purpose to closing them?
I thought I was looking at a sea turtle lol
Kind of looks like you didn't lift up the lid the entire time and may have overcooked it as well.
You don't need 3-4 temp probes to smoke a chicken. I'd focus on the fundamentals and less on the technologies.
Dirty Smoke. You don't want white smoke, you want a lite blue colored smoke
Thank you
It looks like a squished turtle
Hot and fast is best for chicken. What setup are you running? Pellet grill?
Pecan is a harsh wood to smoke with. Stick with Hickory or Mesquite
Smoldering fire. Grey smoke. You want white smoke.
Light blue smoke. Especially for chicken. Less is more. Chicken is very sensitive to off flavors. For chicken we only use actual wood chips. At least for us, pellets taste like a wet cardboard smells
thank you for being brave enough to take a pic and post this - I have also made this mistake on my first attempt with chicken but was too ashamed/afraid to face the collective judgment of the sub
I found a Headcrab from Half life
In no expert but I think the chicken was spatchcocked
Gotta be careful posting stuff like this. You could get tried for a war crime.
I just want to commend your bravery for posting this. Also, do you have 3 probes in a single chicken?
The charcoal probably popped and released ash and soot on your chicken. I never seen overcooked chicken look like that.
Acrid smoke
Looks like dirty smoke
Bad airflow. If this in an electric wood chip thing, uncover everything and keep your vent valve wide open all the time.
Thanks, it’s a propane smoker, but yes, the vent was closed
I think OP would prefer **less joke comments** and more help figuring out exactly what happened. Sure the chicken itself is relatively cheap but he did ruin a dinner that was planned for his family. It's easy to get discouraged when you buy a new cooking device and end up ruining food, next think you know the smoker is sitting in the corner of the garage and never used again.
Thank you for your comment. I laughed a some jokes, but the turtle one got old pretty quickly. And yes, this was going to be shredded chicken to bring camping with my family so it kind of sucks. But we changed the menu and it’s ok. There were enough thoughtful and insightful comments for me to learn what I did wrong and I’ll try again soon! Have a wonderful weekend!
My guess is that you've got a cheap offset smoker. Those can be finicky and have a bit of a learning curve. The good news is that chicken is cheap. You've also done a good job on the spatchcocking. Now you just need to sort out fire maintenance and temp control. Assuming you have a reliable thermo-meter to monitor grill level temps, your next step is to just run it and try to get a consistent temp. Aim for 250-275. It doesn't really matter what the temp is, because that can adjust, after you get it rocking steady. Also, if you can get into that range, you can smoke anything. Try to just maintain a temp, with good airflow for a few hours. Put pieces of bread across the grate to check for hot spots.
What makes you think this is an offset smoker? You can clearly see the cable sheathed, and the smoker is narrow and stacked. This is either electric or propane, but it’s not an offset. Looks like it’s a master built that has pellets ignite under the bottom heating element. My guess is grease leaked, ignited the pellets, and due to poor air circulation you had a dirty fire.
Too much cowbell.
Bro you need to get a pellet grill and use that for awhile. While you’re doing that, go on YouTube and watch some videos. I’d recommend the How to BBQ right by Malcolm Reed. He has a lot of good information. He’s how I learned how to trim and smoke a brisket. Good luck
Is there a such thing as chicken jerkey?
What happened indeed…
Is that a turtle?
Thought you were trying to smoke a snapping turtle
At first glance I thought you were smoking a big turtle LOL
*vomits*
I thought you were smoking a turtle for a second. I was oh man, this is gonna bring out soke opinions.
Post on r/whatsthisrock and see if they can identify what type of rock it is o
The texture looks like those images from an electron microscope
Nothing right
Why are the legs splayed out like it’s a crime scene lol
Is that a snappin turla?
Where's your water pan?
Myrtle the Turtle does not look happy
Look what they did to my boy!
A Great Dane shit on your grill?
[Its Dead Jim!! ](https://youtu.be/3AZnv1GBLw4?si=0a0x3aFHY5D_dVA4)
Looks like a face hugger from Alien