Inspired by my brother-in-law Bill’s forays into the art of smoking meat, I built myself a smoker this weekend. My plan was to follow Alton Brown’s plans for a terracotta smoker made from a couple of large flower pots, a hot plate, and a pie plate to hold the wood. But I saw two issues with that design:

• You have to remove the meat and the cooking grate to add more wood.
• $50 in materials to build the thing? I figured I could come up with something cheaper.

And then it hit me: I’ve already got a made-for-the-outdoors, heat-proof box: my grill. I cranked the charcoal platform to its lowest position, and set up a hot plate ($11, including tax, at Walgreens) on it. Ran the cord out the side to an extension cord. Pie plate ($1 at Big Lots) full of wood chips on the hot plate. Meat on the grill above the pie plate. The coup de grace: my grill has a door in the front to add more coals, making it easy to add more wood chips without disturbing the meat or even opening the top. So for a mere $12, I had myself a working smoker.

We enjoyed some delicious proof-of-concept smoked pork chops for dinner tonight. They took about two hours and were delicious. More ambitious projects (whole chicken, pork butt) are in the works.

Look what just popped into my inbox, an offer of $100 in credit if I open up a Google AdWords account:

And you know what? For $100, I’ll think of a reason to take them up on it!

I’d love to send everyone there to take advantage of it, too, but the email included a single-use coupon code— I don’t think you’ll be able to sign up unless you get an email of your own from them.