Smoking Racks

To support the food to be smoked 1½–2 inches above the smoking ingredients, you will need a rack able both to support the food and to withstand the heat that will build inside the pot.

If you are smoking in a wok, the ideal tool is a Chinese-made collapsible four-bar rack, which looks like a tic-tac-toe grid when fully opened, and closes to an easily stowable 13 inch length. The four bars are each ½ inch wide and 10 inches long, joined at the points of overlap with small metal fastenings. Metal is preferable to bamboo. The traditional bamboo rack looks terribly pretty at first, but the edges that come in contact with the pot get increasingly singed and shorter with each use. The hefty, interlocking wooden bars that are often prepackaged in wok sets (illustration) will not burn so badly, but they are usually too small to raise the food high enough above the smoking mixture.