Gas Grill Smoker Boxes

The problem: Gas grills offer tremendous advantages over charcoal or pellet grills. Though they are good to use all the time, gas grills are especially convenient to use on weeknights as they are ready to cook about 5 minutes after turning them on. They usually have large cooking surfaces and they save on the effort of weeknight kitchen clean-up. However, it is obvious to the backyard griller that they fall short in one area, flavor…which just happens to be the main reason people like to grill.

Cooking over charcoal and wood-based fuels results in more flavor being captured on the surface of whatever is being grilled. Cooking over propane or natural gas can leave the food tasting flat…that smoky flavor is missing. When we approached this problem, it became clear to us that the typical way of introducing smoke to gas grills wasn’t adequate. By either putting a traditional smoker box on top of the grill grate or by putting a shaped aluminum foil container of chips under the grate. The box on top usually doesn’t get hot enough to get the smoking chips smoking and the foil container is messy and many times results in wood chip debris getting onto the burner jets and causing clogging of the gas outlets. What solution deals with these issues?

The process: The first task was to conceptualize any possible solutions. It is extremely important to be able to suspend one’s “frame of reference” at this point and just ideate…that is, any and all solutions are equal until disproven. This is the point where creativity moves to the forefront of the process.

The solution: There were any number of solutions proposed including the hanging of a chip container from the grill grate suspended above the V-shaped heat deflectors to a heat driven fan to disperse smoke from smoldering wood chips. After going through the ideation process a triangular shaped smoker box, which could fit between the heat deflector bars, was deemed the best solution. This allowed the smoker box to fit right under the food for the smokiest result. It also allowed the smoker box to be in contact with a very hot part of the grill for the fastest and most efficient heating of the chips…all-in-all an especially great way to design this product.

After a lot of testing we determined the best hole pattern for lots of smoke but also to extend the time the chips smoldered and smoked. We applied for and received several patents which covered line extensions for this item. They included a way to fill the smoker box with chips without lifting the grill grates as well al a drop-in feature that added a liquid reservoir to the smoker box resulting in a humid cooking environment which made for a moister piece of meat that had great smoky flavor that attached itself to the surface of the food in greater amounts than would happen in a dry environment. Both design and utility patents resulted from this exercise.