How To Use The Napoleon Stainless Steel Smoker Box On Your Gas BBQ

Using your gas barbecue is convenient and produces delightful meals that the whole family will love. However, sometimes you want that little bit of extra smoky flavor. To do that try using the Napoleon Stainless Steel Smoker Box. Knowing how to effectively use the smoker box is integral to creating the most satisfying meals.

How To Use The Napoleon Smoker Box

1. Choose your favorite flavor of Napoleon wood chips.

2. *Optional* soak the chips for at least 30 minutes.

3. Fill the Napoleon Smoker Box full of wood chips.

4. Remove the cooking grids and place the Napoleon Smoker Box onto the sear plate directly above a burner, then replace the cooking grids.

5. Light the grill, setting the burner below the smoker box to low.

6. Once the grill is heated to the correct temperature, cook your food.

7. When done, allow the whole grill to cool before removing the smoker box.

8. Pour the wood chips into a bowl or bucket of water before draining and disposing.

Why You Should Soak Wood Chips In This Case?

For the most part, you don’t need to soak your wood chips and chunks when adding smoke to your meals – we have an article all about that here. However, in this case, it is beneficial to soak your chips. The reason for this is because you need to and should preheat your grill, even if you are using a lower temperature technique to cook. By soaking the chips the heat from the burner will evaporate the water on the outside of the chips while the grill is warming. This allows for a little extra time before the wood chips are consumed.

What Food / Techniques Are Ideal?

Foods that take longer to cook, roasts, reverse-seared steaks, chops, etc. and anything on the rotisserie will be enchanting after adding a little smoke. Basically, as long as your meal is being grilled for longer than 20 minutes, using the Smoker Box to add a hint of smoke flavor will be ideal.

What Flavor Should You Choose?

Aside from deciding what you want to cook on the barbecue, pairing the perfect flavor of wood chips with it is going to be the biggest decision of your meal.

Bold, Southern-Style Flavors

Hickory, mesquite, and cedar are the big players here. Known for their Southern-Style taste, hickory and mesquite are often used when you want to make it known you’ve been smoking. They pair well with red meats, game, pork, and bacon. Cedar is a little milder, although still very distinctive and pairs well with seafood.

Sweet Smoky Goodness

Most fruit woods and maple will produce a mild and sweet smoke that evokes a comfort and cottage vibe in your food. The smoke from everything from apple to cherry, apricot to plum, and everything in between is great when you are aiming to delicately enhance your meal, not create a distinct holy-smokes flavor like with hickory. Pair sweet-smoke producing woods with pork, poultry, and fruit and vegetables.

Subtle Layers of Character

Nut woods like pecan, unique woods like beech, and flavored woods like whisky barrel and brandy cask are a fantastic way to add layered flavors to your meals when smoking. Pair pecan and beech with bold flavored wood to tone things down, or with fruit woods to create a layered effect in your smoke flavoring. Whisky barrel and brandy cask are made from oak which has a lovely and mild flavor combined with the remaining flavor of the alcohol they stored. This creates a lovely and subtle layer of flavor when you smoke. These types of woods are great for smoking just about everything you could imagine.

Now that you know how to use the Stainless Steel Smoker Box that fits on your sear plates will you be smoking on your gas grill more often? Share your favorite wood flavor, smoking on the grill stories and recipes on our social pages like Facebook and Instagram, using the hashtags #GasGrillSmoking and #NapoleonGrills.

Happy Grilling!