How to Build an Outdoor Chimney Cooker

By eHow Home & Garden Editor

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People have used smokers to cook food for thousands of years. A chimney cooker will smoke your food evenly and be an addition to your backyard or patio that is pleasing to the eye. Read on to learn how to build an outdoor chimney cooker.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

Measuring tape
Stones
Grout
Trowel

Step1

Select an area of your backyard or patio that you can safely house the chimney cooker. This area should be free of any dry, flammable materials like leaves. Make the area suitable for the oven.

Step2

Measure out an area that will be large enough for your chimney cooker. You can make one that will hold a substantial amount of food.

Step3

Build a platform for the cooker. Since you are going to be working with fire, you will want to build this platform out of something non-flammable. Cement or rocks work well.

Step4

Build the cooking area. This is where you are going to put your food when it is being smoked. You will want to make it a couple of feet tall. You can build this out of stones. Begin at the base by making a circle and build your way up. But leave a gap in the circle that is about half a foot or a foot wide depending on the size of the cooker. Once you are about half a foot high, build a stone platform for you food to rest on. Now you will want to close the gap from this point up, but remember to leave a door at the front so that you can put the food in and take it out.

Step5

Build a hearth. The reason you left a hole at the bottom of the oven is so that you can attach the hearth to it. Build the hearth out of stone, and attach it well.

Step6

Cover the top of the cooking area. You can cover it with either wood or stone. Leave a small space open so that air will be able to flow through the cooker, fueling the fire.

Tips & Warnings

You can make the hole at the top adjustable so that you can adjust the fire's temperature by controlling how much air flow it gets.
Check with your local fire department to make sure that your plans are compliant with building codes in your area.