What have you smoked lately? Q-view...

Just before Thanksgiving, wanted to smoke some snacks to take to my Mom's....did a Spiral ham, couple pound of mixed nuts, and I usually throw on some red taters just because. I rub a little EVOO on the taters, some seasoning, and pull them out when the main course is done. Sometimes they're not cooked all the way through, but can always be finished off when you decide how you want to cook them. I either chop and fry up, or finish off as a baked tater...red taters cook quicker... Good stuff.

Edge, my Bradley is a six rack digital. It has a 500 watt electric element which is undersized. Smoke is generated by using Bradley’s wood pucks. The smoke generator unit auto feeds the pucks every 20 minutes. They smolder on a puck burner hot plate. When the fresh puck advances it pushes the spent puck off into a water bowl to snuff it out. It does a really good job of getting smoke flavor just not so good at getting product to a proper finish temperature. Many people have upgraded their Bradley with a 900 watt element and it now does what is expected.

Eyesman, is your Bradely a pellet smoker? Didn't know it would struggle at higher temps. That's a head scratcher.

Edge, I thought I knew a lot about the smoking process until I started reading the Bradley Smoker forums. There are three approaches to smoking, cold smoking like you would do for cheese and such at 90°F or less, smoke curing like you would do for fish, sausages, bacon and hams at 190°F or less and smoke cooking like you would do for brisket, pork butts for pulled pork, beef chuck for shredded beef and all kinds of fowl where you need temperature in the 250-280°F range. My Bradley struggles with achieving and maintaining temperature necessary to finish product like pulled pork or brisket. I use the Bradley to get the smoke flavor I want and then move the product to the house oven to finish.  

Thanks eyesman. I have a webber bullet so fish might be out of my low temp range. I'm thinking about pulling the pin on a new smoker that I can smoke at lower temps and can regulate a little better. I do love my webber for meat. Kind of old school 

Edge, I had a homemade barrel smoker for 40 years and didn’t have any cross contamination when going from fish to meat. Most all my meat was sausage products like summer sausage, ring bologna, kielbasa, hotdogs and hot sticks. I also did venison bacon in the loaf form, some turkey breast and whole chickens without a flavor problem. I now have a Bradley brand smoker and have made most all the meat products I’ve done before, haven’t had the chance to do fish yet. Smoked fish should be done at temperatures less than 180°F. Any hotter than that and you are just baking the fish in the presence of smoke. With any temperature that is too high you will cook out the fat and oils from the fish and make a mess in your smoker. That mess if allowed to get too hot could transfer some fish flavor. I have read many Bradley Smoker forums and the cross contamination question comes up a lot. Virtually all the answers are a no to the cross contamination. Those forums also mentioned the too high of heat on fish and cooking out the fat and oils. 

For those who smoke fish in the same smoker as meat. Do you notice any smells that would effect meat after smoking fish? I'm afraid of trying to smoke fish.

Catman, definitely a plus to bleed the fish asap. When I catch Lake Michigan fish, browns, bows, or Salmon, the first thing I do when I decide to keep them, is instantly pull a gill or 2. They bleed out quickly, and also less messy in the cleaning process! Bleeding fish helps in keeping Fish palatable!
JD

Smoked a chunk of meat yesterday.

Cat man JJ, sounds like you did a good job of preparing and brining your fish. When I take fish out of the brine I air dry them on racks with a fan or in the smoker at the lowest possible temperature without smoke. After the surface of the fish is dry and the pellicile has formed I will put them in the smoker and/or increase the temperature to 160°F with smoke for 4-6 hours, then increase temperature to 180°F with smoke and hold until you get 150°F internal. 

Carp Jerky, I'll go through the whole process and the outcome.
Fished Tuesday evening and got two on the the stringer and cut them and bled them out in the lake.
When i got home i cleaned them right away and i don't know if bleeding them help the meat at all but it made filleting them cleaner, only thing on the board was slime and scales..
There's a lot of red meat on a Carp and if you tried to trim it all off you wouldn't have much meat left and there's not as much meat on them as i thought there would be.
Soaked the meat in ice water overnight and the next day did the last bit of trimming and put it in a strong brine for 24 hours.
Put it on the racks and gave them a dusting of ground red pepper before i started the smoker.
I haven't had this smoker very long and i'm still getting a feel for temp and smoke time, but i did about 250* to 275* for about two hours.
My smoker goes about an hour and the chips are pretty much done but i was afraid another round of chips may be too much.
The smoke and the red pepper help but it's still a pretty strong fish taste and even filleted and smoke with the skin off there is still a fair amount of oil in it.
I'll give it a rating somewhere in between spectacular and Gordon Ramsey spit it in a napkin.