Smokin stone for Acorn

looks great

I borrow the coal grate from my Weber kettle and use a old cast iron pan with the handle cut off lined with foil

Looks good to me. So how much heat can those tera cotta pots take anyway?

Nice ingenuity Dport!

let us know how flower pot base works, my pan works fine, just lacks some surface area for larger cooks

Very nice. I got the Chargriller stone directly from them for 19 bucks + shipping. Not sure if they have that deal any more though.

Nice idea and work

That looks like it will work well! Hopefully it will stand up to high heat. I used the charcoal grate with a pizza pan for a while while the smoking stone was back ordered. I also orders from char griller and don't think they have them cheap anymore.

I'm not really familiar with the Akorn cooker, but I thought it was designed to be used as s smoker straight out of the box. Is that not the case?

AZRaptor said:

I'm not really familiar with the Akorn cooker, but I thought it was designed to be used as s smoker straight out of the box. Is that not the case?

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It is a kamado and operates like a lot of the other ceramics on the market. Some people have enjoyed smokes at 225-275 but I haven't had a lot of success smoking with mine just yet after a few attempts. Next try I will use briquettes instead of lump and use smaller but more chunks.

They are designed to use very little fuel, so you load it up with coals and smoke for say 6 hours and you will have only used a fist sized amount from the middle of what you started with. This means you have to place your wood strategically otherwise you could go several hours only burning coals with no wood. They also use an extremely small amount of airflow. Opening the intake or exhaust vents will cause the temp to spike and they are very difficult to cool back down without cutting off oxygen.

They work beautifully at 350, 400, 450 and will roar at 600-700 for searing. It has turned me into an expert pork tenderloin, chop, and chicken cook. You can achieve these temps easily with or without a diffuser, and there is a nice amount of space between the coals and the grate with the additional option of the warming rack, which provides even higher heat dome temps without scorching any meat.

Again, my troubles with smoking are not universal and a lot of people have had some great cooks. My cabinet smoker sits right next to it, and I didn't originally buy the Akorn as a smoker, so maybe it's a preference thing.

By the way, I really dig this idea. I got the stone because it was the easy solution and it has been nice to have one piece if you need to remove in the middle of a cook. Grate hooked with one hand and stone in the other and it goes back together really quick. Then again, if you are reverse searing you should rest in between anyway.

One more solution for thought. I use the cast iron griddle in the following link on a Weber charcoal grate. Perfect fit.

http://www.academy.com/shop/pdp/outdoor-gourmet-14-preseasoned-round-griddle?repChildCatid=27890

ETA - I also use a deep dish pizza pan from Wally World on top of the griddle to catch grease.

I used the the terracotta and was a believer until it finally split in half after close to 20 cooks. Most were 220-250 and a few up to 375. But none the less it still works fine as a 2 piece.