Want to make a food smoker? watch us. As part of our work with Ford promoting the Ford Fiesta, we went to Ikea, and bought the parts to make a salmon smoker. neat. and it works great.

Eric and his Ford Fiesta at the Red Hook Brooklyn IKEA

have you made a smoker? tell us :

First the recipe for the brine. You take the salmon, slice it into 2″ strips and place it skin side up in this brine. a 9″ x 13″ cake pan works well for this. Place the salmon in the refrigerator for at least an hour, longer is better.

Eric’s Salmon Brine Recipe:

2 quarts water

1 tablespoon Cinnamon

1 cup Brown Sugar

1/2 cup kosher salt – must be non-iodized

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 tablespoon black pepper

Place the fish skin side down in this brine in a flat pan, cover in refrigerator for at least an hour.

Take out the salmon and place on a wire rack skin side down,

Drain the brine pan carefully, reserving the brine solids an. Take the brine solids at the bottom of the pan and use a brush to coat the salmon with the brine solids.

Point a small fan at the brined fish until the brine has pretty much dried on the fish.

How to smoke salmon:

Add a large handful of wet hickory woodchips ( or whatever kind you like ) to the cast iron pan on the electric hot plate.

Place the grate in the smoker and spray with non-stick cooking oil, or brush with vegetable oil. Lay the salmon skin side down on the smoker grate.

Place a digital thermometer probe in the fattest part of one of the pieces of fish, place another digital thermometer across the grate to read the ambient temperature in the smoker.

Turn the hot plate on, ( i set mine to HIGH ) close the lid, and let it cook. Check the ambient temperature, you want it to be 160-180 degrees. Adjust the hot plate accordingly.

Hot plates sometimes turn off by themselves, so one needs to pay attention if you notice smoke not coming out of the smoker. Also, use a heavy duty extension cord, the shortest possible, to plug in the hot plate. Its possible to trip a circuit breaker.

When the salmon reaches about 140F, it is smoked.

how to build an Ikea hack food smoker

for this Ikeahack, we’re using

2 Skrin storage containers

1 Lamplig trivet

1/4 threaded rod, 2 pieces cut to 17″

Four 1/4 nuts , preferably acorn nuts for the threaded rod

2 hinges – 2″ or 3″ metal hinges work well.

Bolts, lockwashers, and nuts for hinges. 1 1/2″ are a good length.

Washers that fit the bolts you are using for the hinges: you’ll need about 5 for each of the bolts you use to attach the hinges.

Attach the hinges to join the two Ikea Skrin boxes. Because of the rolled lip of the Skrin boxes, you’ll have to use the washers between the boxes and the hinges, so that the center pin of the hinges sits on top of the rolled edges of the two boxes.

Mark and drill the hinge bolt holes. Wear safety glasses when doing this.

Attach the hinges with the bolts, washers and lockwashers. Its handy to have a helper when doing this.

Drill four 3/8″ holes just inside where the hinges mount on the lower Skrin box.

In my original design i used bolts to hold up the Lamplig grate, this is not a great design, so I changed these bolts to threaded rod which extends across the Skrin box.

Cut the threaded rod to 17″and slide them through the holes. secure with acorn nuts. This will hold up the Lamplig grate.

Additonal Modification: If you want, you can cut an access panel on the short side of the lower skrin box so one can easily add more woodchips to the hot plate. This is a lot easier than having to open the smoker and pulling out the grate.

The Skrin boxes come with metal covers, and you can use that metal to fabricate a access panel cover with a piano hinge and lock.