Customer Reviews

Emerilware Cast Iron 4 in 1 Smoker

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Because I agree with many of the observations Michael has already posted in his review, I won't repeat those here. Just about everything I've cooked in this smoker had impressed my friends and family. I may never prepare shrimp any other way! (Use the alder chips.) And veggies, my gosh, the veggies -- try smoking some asparagus and see what I mean.

Since I bought this two months ago, I've been using it once or twice a week. I also purchased Christopher Styler's cookbook "Smokin," which has some useful tips about which wood goes best with different foods. I found the organization of the book a little confusing and annoying, but the recipes are more interesting than the small deck of Emeril's recipes that accompany the smoker.

I'm a big Alton Brown fan, and I try to follow his example of avoiding "Uni-Taskers" in the kitchen -- especially big honking cast-iron gadgets that are hard to store. I do not regret this purchase one bit! And yes, I also spotted it on Iron Chef America recently and was proud to say, "Hey, that's just like mine!" What a food geek I must be.

This might be worth mentioning -- I'm usually just cooking for two, so there's a lot of wasted space (and smoke) in here. I use that to experiment with other ingredients that I can play with later. For example, I put some whole poblano peppers on the rack while I was also smoking tuna steaks, then the next day made a to-die-for cream sauce with those peppers and served it with pan-fried chicken. Are you getting hungry yet?

Last of all, beware of the instruction card. It has a vague recommendation to season the smoker with oil. I thought, oil? Not shortening, like other cast iron I've owned? So I stupidly used vegetable oil, warmed the smoker in the oven, and ended up with a thick, sticky residue that wouldn't come off. I called the All-Clad customer service number just as they were shutting down for the weekend and moaned, "Help! I think I just ruined my new smoker!" The male voice on the other end admitted he was unfamiliar with the product, then said, "I'm a sous chef, and I know something about cast iron. Let me think..." He (and liberal scrubbing with Barkeeper's Friend) saved the day. Gotta love it when you get that kind of service!

UPDATE, TWO MONTHS LATER: The smoker came with a small supply of Cameron Wood Chips (really more like sawdust, finer than chips) which will last quite a while. But I noticed an Iron Chef using regular wood chips on a recent episode... so I bought some Alder, Mesquite, and Pecan that didn't look TOO chunky at a local Barbecues Galore store and gave them a try. The first time, I used too many chips and generated so much smoke that the aroma stayed in the kitchen for three days and the food tasted bad. (Kitchen Stadium has industrial-grade ventilation, I don't!) Better results when I kept it to, oh, about 1/8 cup. I thought I'd come back here and mention it because those chips in a bag are a lot more economical than the Cameron superfine chips.

THIRD AND FINAL (I promise) UPDATE: The lid to this smoker is designed to be turned upside down and used as a grill on the stovetop or in a super-hot oven. I was skeptical. But not anymore! I've used it for fajita skirt steak, NY strips, and Vietnamese grilled pork, and I like the taste results better than what I get with my expensive Cuisinart electric grill/griddle. It's a little harder to clean and it does generate more smoke in the kitchen, but I'm okay with cracking the windows open and (later) doing a bit of scrubbing for the sake of the flavor. :)

As a foodie who is finally succumbing to his fate (I'm starting chef's school in just over a month), I decided that in my quest to learn different styles of cooking, I just had to have one. I've had a lot of success in experimenting with different flavors and cooking techniques, but there was one style- southern smoking- that I couldn't try because I lived in a city, and there was nowhere legal or safe to put a smoker. I tried the stove top wok method, to no avail; I just created a mess and burned a lot of tea leaves. This was beginning to be a pain as a lot of my friends were southern, and while they liked my cooking, I felt I let them down by not being able to create dishes reminding them of home. Enter the Emeril smoker.

I saw the Cameron stainless steel smoker at Macy's one day, but it really didn't make an impression on me. I saw it again here on Amazon, and while it's dishwasher safe, read the reviews: a lot of buyers have issues cleaning the smoking char from all the ashes. I thought about it, then decided against it.

Then one day, I saw it on Iron Chef America. The cast-iron smoker was being used by one of the chefs in a battle against Mario Batali (I regret to say that I can't remember who it was). Wheels began spinning in my head...as a person who has come to learn, use, appreciate, and love cast iron, I fell in love with this new piece that I didn't have. I had to have it. Forget the fact that it cost up to 50% more than the competition and weighted more than double...it was cast iron! I bought it, and let me tell you, the UPS guy gave me the dirtiest look for having to carry up my package 4 flights without an elevator.

I've had the smoker over a month now, and I've easily been smoking 3-4 times per week. I'm happy to report that it doesn't leak any smoke once the lid is fastened correctly, whether I'm smoking stove-top or in the oven. In fact, one day my roommates came home thinking I had made bacon, when all I had done was smoke some ribs using the hickory wood chips.

Recipes I've found online on different sites have come out wonderfully- pork chops, baby back ribs, chicken thighs, turkey legs. I'm going to try fish this weekend, but I've got the alderwood chips ready to go. The only thing annoying is that I've got to place smoked food under the broiler for 5 minutes after smoking to get the crisp outerlayer I love so much. Granted, this would be the same with a regular smoker, but after so much anticipation, I just want to eat!

The pros and cons of using this piece are pretty much the same that you would find with any cast-iron product.

Pros-

Ease of use. Simply put, follow the directions in any recipe you find and you'll do alright. Listen to what everyone says and cover the drip pan with foil and cleanup will be easy. DO NOT use soap to clean cast iron- just rinse it with water. It'll be fine, seriously it will. DO NOT PUT IT IN THE DISHWASHER. It's cast iron, it can crack in the washer, and that will void your warranty. Season with a dab of oil if you want to, I haven't had to yeat after a month. That's it. Does it smell like smoke after cleaning? IT'S SUPPOSED TO! That's one of the signs of proud cast iron.

Cons-

This thing is freakin' heavy! At 27 pounds WITHOUT food in it, it isn't easy to maneuver on the stove top or into the oven. I feel bad for the elderly or the women with carpal tunnel syndrome that try to move this around. It's really not good to use if you've got a glass top stove...I can see the thing cracking your stove top. I've got electric, so I don't have any worries.

All in all, this is a wonderful product. I recommend it to everyone who even has a taste for that incredible flavor known as smoke. If you're new to smoking or even to cooking, you might want to get that "Amazon.com recommended reading" cookbook "Smokin'" for some recipes to make your entry into the world of smoke easier. Enjoy!

I bought this for my wife for mother's day and she has used it at least once a week. As many have mentioned, it is very heavy, but that is no matter. It is a fine piece of cookware and can be used in so many different ways! The ribs she smoked in it came out absolutely delicious. She has smoked chicken in it and salmon too. Both excellent. The food has a nice smokey flavor, but not overpowering, and is tender and juicy. You do smell the items cooking, but the smoker does NOT smoke up the house or leave a heavy smell afterward. It is easy to clean it up but must be treated like all fine cast iron, carefully and deliberately. Great piece of cookware and highly recommended.

I've used my smoker several times now. I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes the taste of good BBQ. I tried the baby back rib recipe and they tasted like I had smoked them on an outdoor smoker. The only thing that was different was the step to put the smoked meat under a broiler to get that browned surface. It's a little heavy, but I love to cook in cast iron. It's even heat distribution, heat retention, and durability makes it well worth the cost. Get creative and try different wood..each has it's own taste!

This review is intended to clear up a couple areas of confusion for the 4-in-1 smoker and the 5-in-1 smokers. First off, they are the same thing. I've laid them out new, side-by-side, in the store, and there is no visible difference. I bought the former because they were putting it on clearance in favor of the latter.

The "fifth" feature on the new version is deep fryer. It doesn't include any new equipment in support of that feature. I didn't flip through the new recipe cards, but I suspect they've added a new recipe or two from Emeril that uses frying. Even without his help, I dare say you could fry in either one (though I probably wouldn't, dumping oil out of a shallow 30 pound iron pan ain't easy).

Some seem to believe the new one is bigger. It isn't. Amazon lists the box size as the "Product Dimensions." The ovens themselves are both 13-1/2 by 9 by 3 inches inside (it's actually about 5 inches tall, an extra inch of usable space coming from the lid, an inch of space used up by the pan and rack). I can see why you might want it bigger, especially if you want to smoke a big bird. But the thing already weighs a ton, for most purposes this is on the high end of the size-weight trade-off. If you really must smoke that turkey whole, you could leave the lid off and tent the thing with tin foil if you were very meticulous about folding your sheets together. Alternatively, for those special occasions, I recommend using a nice giant oval enameled cast iron roaster and placing the tray and rack from this unit (or similar) inside it (though an oven that size will cost you 2-4 times what this thing does).

Some have suggested the new version is pre-seasoned but not the old. I can't say for certain that the new version doesn't have a better treatment. But it wasn't visible, and my appraisal is that the old one was seasoned as well (it had a deep black sheen out of the box, not the dull grayish color unseasoned iron usually has). That said, I always season unenameled iron before a first use just to be safe, so while pre-seasoning is nice it's not worth paying too much for. If you are going to own this piece, you'll have to learn to do it eventually for occasional maintenance. Google will show you the way. My only tip you might not see in some guides is to place the pieces face down on the oven rack so that any excess oil drips out rather than pooling and hardening inside.

As for how the product actually works, I'd say rather well. It is well constructed and has superior performance to the steel smokers on the market (which are also generally smaller, though they do have the advantage of being easier to store). But because it is cast iron, the lid is also a useful broiling/grilling pan and it makes a nice large-shallow Dutch oven for certain purposes. I'm imagining simultaneously browning and braising 3 large pork loins at once (the marketing guys reading this are doubtless already drawing up plans to for a "new" 6-in-1 or 7-in-1 smoker).

Finally, though you may have seen this used on Iron Chef, don't expect the real smoked rib experience in 60 minutes. While the enclosed container allows more efficient retention of smoke than an open chimney smoker, the smoke penetrates some meats more quickly than others; most seafood great, thick chicken breasts less so. And for some dishes, part of the virtue of smoking is that it tenderizes with long, low-temp cooking. But if you were willing to monitor it and add occasional new chips (and give them a bit of extra heat to get them going), you could probably get an amazing result with this by smoking spareribs for 6-10 hours in an oven at 200 degrees or so. I haven't had the time or inclination to do that yet, but football season is coming, and that might be a good use of commercial breaks.

First of all, I bought this for 49.99 which is the current price at Dillards. I knew I couldn't really go wrong for that price.

My only complaint is that the woodchips didn't burn/smoke. They look/felt identical to the way they did when I started. This was after 90 minutes of cooking babybacks. The ribs were excellent, but didn't taste smoked at all.

I'm not sure where I went wrong as the description of the process seems so simple. The instructions did not mention soaking or adding water to the chips at all, so I'm at a loss.

Pros: All listed in other reviews.
Cons: As listed - it's heavy. I'd like to ad, as others have hinted in their reviews, the instructions were not very consistent. It said to use veg. oil (thank goodness for the other reviews here or I would have!) and it also said that it was pre-seasoned and ready to go in one part and in another said to start off by seasoning it! Okay... I seasoned it to be safe.

But if anyone has any clue as to what went wrong in why my chips didn't smoke at all - please let me know!

it is very heavy , but then it is cast iron .flimsy oven racks probably wouldn't hold it ,but mine does .Can proform a variety of tasks , smoke ,steam basting ,does great for fish ,tender ribs , will try more and report . Personally ,I like it ,thou it could be cheaper as I am sure that the Chinese only get $0.50 to a dollar for it .