Cold smoking on a Kamado grill is one of the easiest things to do since you don’t have to start up your grill for that.
In my opinion, a Kamado grill is perfect for cold smoking because of its perfect insulation and airtightness. All smoke will go into the food you are smoking and not out of any gaps in the grill.
What do you need for cold smoking on a Kamado grill?
All you need is a pellet tube or something else you can smolder pellets in. I personally use a pellet tube since you can also use it for other purposes.
How To Cold Smoke
Cold smoking is best done when the outside temperatures are low. Low enough to keep the meat or other things you are smoking out of the so-called “danger zone”. This means below the temperature where to will start to go bad.
“For most products, this means it is best to keep it under 60 degrees Fahrenheit or 5 degrees Celcius.“
Although this means that you should not smoke at higher outdoor temperatures I found a trick that I can even cols smoke at higher temperatures and keep the inside of the Kamado under the advice of 40 degrees.
I add a large bag of ice to my Kamado cooking chamber and this lowers the inside temperature a lot.
Now all I do is fill the smoke tube with pellets and light them with a small blow torch till they catch fire. After that let them burn for about a minute.
Then with a quick blow, I blow out the flame and the pellets will now smolder and release only smoke.
Now I add the smoke tube to the grill grate where all the meat is placed and open the bottom and top vents a little bit. You can read more tips about that in my article about how to use the vents on a Kamado grill.
My experience is that a full tube of pellets will keep smoldering and producing smoke for about 4 hours. Long enough for the purpose, I am using cold smoking.
How Long To Cold Smoke
These are just my recommendations for my way of smoking. You might like different strongness of smoke flavor and can adjust the time to that.
- Breakfast sausage pattie – 4 hours
- 6 Slices of Cheese – 3 hours
- Eggs – 4 hours
- Salt – 3 hours
- Paprika powder – 4 hours
- Tilapia fillet – 2 hours
This is what I have used on my Kamado grill up to now. But I am planning on trying more things. I am thinking about Eggplant, Zucchini, Corn on the cob, and several other things.
I have smoked many times with multiple racks stacked upon each other and that works fine all you have to do is remove the food after the right amount of time and let the rest smoke longer.
Doing it this way it made sense for me to place the first ones at the top rack so they are easier to remove without removing the rack.
If you have experience with cold smoking on a Kamado grill feel free to add your tips and ideas here for the readers.
Jeffrey Brooks
Jeffrey Brooks is an experienced backyard griller that uses a Kamado grill for most of all the cooking he is doing. With his experience, he will do reviews and answer every question you have about Kamado Grills. You can read more about Jeffrey Brooks