I then selected the brisket recipe and indicated its weight: three pounds (my only other choices being two pounds or four pounds). I pulled the beef out of the refrigerator, inserted the six-inch temperature probe, placed the meat in the roaster basket, and put the basket inside the cooking chamber. You can hang shelves inside the roasting basket to smoke smaller cuts of meat.Ĭhar-Broil recommends wiping down the wire roaster basket and the removable cooking chamber it fits into with vegetable oil each time you cook to reduce the chances of the food sticking, which I did the next morning. I brought home a three-pound chunk, seasoned it with my favorite dry rub, and put it in the fridge overnight. But then I discovered that my local grocery store doesn’t stock brisket (I’d have to special order it, so the butcher suggested tri-tip as a substitute). I wasn’t about to experiment with something as expensive as a prime rib, so I decided to give brisket a try. I decided beef would be the most foolproof food to start with, since eating a good cut of rare beef is less dangerous than consuming undercooked pork or poultry. In fact, each of the four meat categories that are included has just two subcategories at most: Beef brisket or prime rib a whole chicken or just the wings baby back ribs or pulled pork or a whole turkey.Īs you can see from these three screenshots, Char-Broil’s app looks like an afterthought, even though it’s integral to getting good results from the smoker. There are no settings for vegetables more importantly, there are no setting for any variety of fish. This brings up four categories of meat: Beef, chicken, pork, or turkey. When you’re ready to start cooking, you click on Choose Food in the app.
I don’t like starting a positive review by focusing on the negative-especially when my overall opinion is positive-but the reason I found the app suspect was that it had so few recipes. In that respect, the app is as key to the smoker’s value as its meat probe, but its many shortcomings never resulted in a poorly cooked meal-because aside from the probe readings, I didn’t trust the app from the get-go. If the app worked as advertised, you could start the multi-hour process and walk away, with the app issuing a reminder every 45 minutes to replenish the supply of chips and then informing you when the process is complete. The core of the Simple Smoker’s appeal is its ability to almost automatically slow-cook food while imparting delicious smoke flavor from smoldering wood chips. But the Simple Smoker has one major weakness that Char-Broil should and could easily fix: The smartphone app that controls the smoking process is abysmal.įortunately, the app’s shortcomings don’t prevent me from giving the smoker itself a buy recommendation. This electric cooker has a meat probe and it communicates with your smartphone via your Wi-Fi network, so you get perfect results with zero fuss. If you love smoked meat, but have been intimidated by the prospect of tending the coals in a barbecue pit for hours on end, you’ll want to check out Char-Broil’s Simple Smoker.