What is a food "smoker"?

Answer:
A food smoker is a device or structure designed to add flavor and preserve some foods by exposing them to smoldering (thus smoking) plant materials, most often aromatic woods. 

Food smokers have been in use for eons.  Indeed, most farms once had smokehouses, which were used to preserve and/or flavor foods (mostly meats) in large quantities.

Today's food smokers are much more high-tech than your grandpappy's smoker.  And, much has been learned about which woods or other materials provide the best means of preserving or flavoring the food items.

While hot smoking is the most common method, cold smoking is another method of adding flavor to meats.  Normally, hot smoking, which typically takes only hours, actually cooks the meat as it adds the smoked flavor. Cold smoking, on the other hand, merely adds the smoked flavor through a much longer (even days) process where the meats are kept away from the heat but still exposed to the smoke.

There are many materials that may be used for food smoking; some of the more frequently used wood materials are:

Oak
Mesquite
Beech
Hickory
Alderwood
Pecan
Maple
Apple
Plum
Cherry

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