Raising Humidity in Smoker to decrease cooking time
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Jonathan in one of your post you mentioned 2 methods or raising the humidity with the wick/sponge effect and was wondering how they introduce steam in a commercial operation and does anyone have any other ideas what we can do it in our home smokers. I installed a water pan on my home smoke and I am afraid to put a sponge or mop head in it to increase the evaporation as if the pan drys out they may catch fire. 10-12 hours is a long wait for the larger sausages to reach 156 Degrees
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akdave Commercial processors will have smokers that are able to atomize water or spray water onto a hot plate to control the amount of humidity in their smokers. The biggest advantage of this style of smoking will show up around 140 degrees, they can make their wet bulb hotter than the surface temperature of their products so the product will finish cooking very quickly but still give you a juicy finished product.
I’d love to hear from anyone who has additional ideas on this!
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If I can reach 50% Humidity how much do you think it will decrease the cooking time, it now takes me 10-12 hours to get my product finished in the larger casings.
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akdave There would be too many factors to give you an exact amount but I would say that you could knock off at least an hour ro two of that time, especially during the initial phases when your wet bulb temperature (which you won’t have a way to measure) is hotter than the surface temp of your product. Once that reverses and the surface temp is higher than the wet bulb the advantages will be cut down but I still think I am being conservative when I say an hour or so.
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akdave how about putting in a vaporizer that produces heat vapor. I bought one for my aging chamber not realizing it produced heat vapor. I will bet that will work and if you don’t have the room…Magyver it! LOL. leave it outside and attach a hose to it and attach the hose inside the smoker.
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demmerich I actually thought of something like this, using a humdifier and running a hose but unless you can get it to travel in an upward direction the entire way I don’t think it would work. I couldnt set that up (at least without getting totally ridiculous) without drilling a hole in the PK-100, which I was not willing (or allowed) to do.
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I am using a Wagner wall paper steamer to boost wet bulb temp to allow me to get smoked sausage up to safe temp while in smoker. I generally warm smoke sausage first to develop flavor , then use higher temp and steam to raise sausage to safe temp. Now my sausage comes out like commercial having retained the moisture. I also use it on the Traeger but it has less effect because of the open flame heat. For long hot smoke like ribs or tritips my goal is wetbulb temp just above 150F. Current project is to use a PID temp control to throttle steam production with wetbulb temp as the input in a masterbilt electric smoker . Much like Anova does with their precision oven. Dream is to do sous vide like cooking in a smoker…
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processhead Power User Regular Contributors Smoker Build Expert Bowl Choppers Nebraska Veteran Team Camoreplied to sarositano on last edited by
sarositano Is yours the model 725? How much water does it use? Do you have to refill it during the smoke?
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Yes, 725.( Amazon or Home Depot). i have 2 steamers so I can change without waiting for heat up. I just added a hole on left side of Traeger and added a male /male brass fitting to screw on the hose as it comes from Wagner. It’s just a proof of concept right now. The hose should be insulated and shortened. The wet bulb sensor is one of my Fireboard 2" thermistor probe with a cotton shoelace wick that is on a L bracket spot welded to a tin can for water.
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Had to bail out a disaster this week when RH was 23%
Hot Smoked salmon I usually do in Traeger at 160F for 3 hours to internal temp of 133F… This time, at 4 hours at 165F, Internal was 115F and stalled!! I looked at the weather station. Relative humidity was 23% and guess what the wet bulb temperature is at 165° and 23%: exactly 115°. So I increased the temperature to 175F and added Steam. Within 20 min the internal went to 133 And OUT it came! Product was good but dryer than last week. Lesson learned. California sunshine and Physics!
Rule:
Just keep wet bulb temp above desired final internal temp!!!
