Garbage Can Turkey Smoker

Step 5 Prepare wood chips and get ready to smoke

Actually finding enough woodchips might be tricky. For a turkey, we recommend applewood (or pecan, if you can find it), but oak and hickory would work in a pinch.

You want to soak the chips for at least 20 minutes prior to smoking, but there is no real upper limit. Get a pan that you don't mind destroying that's small enough to fit between your two threaded rods, about the size of the hotplate, and at least a couple inches deep.

Fill the pan with chips and move the can to a safe location, far from any buildings, but shielded from the wind if it's cold out. Obviously, the smoker will generate a lot of smoke, so you might want to keep it away from open windows/doors as well.

You should also have appropriate safety equipment ready, namely heat-resistant fingered gloves and a fire extinguisher. Still, the ambient temperature you are generally shooting for is around 230F, so the risk of fire is very low.