Smokehouse Plans: 8 Designs From a Weekend Barrel to a Walk-In

Structures & Plans · 9 min read

A smokehouse lets you preserve and flavor meat and fish the way it was done for centuries — and you can build one this weekend from a barrel, or over a season as a timber walk-in. The right build depends on whether you want to cold-smoke (preserve, below 90°F) or hot-smoke (cook and flavor). Here are eight designs from simplest to most serious, plus the basics that keep smoked food safe.

1. The barrel smoker (weekend, cheapest)

A steel drum with a rack and a lid, fire in the base or piped in from a side pit. Under $30, up in an afternoon, and it smokes plenty for a family. The perfect first build.

2. The trench / offset firebox smoker

A firebox dug a few feet away, connected by a buried pipe or trench to the smoke chamber. Distance cools the smoke — the classic cold-smoking trick — and it's cheap to build into a slope.

3. The metal-cabinet smoker

An old file cabinet or locker fitted with racks and a small heat/smoke source. A resourceful, near-free upcycle that works surprisingly well for small batches.

4. The wooden box smoker

A tall plank box with a hinged door, racks, and a firebox below or piped in. Bigger capacity, still simple carpentry — a real step up from the barrel.

5. The cinder-block smokehouse

Stacked (or mortared) concrete blocks make a fireproof, durable chamber that holds temperature well. A permanent smokehouse for not much money and no rot.

6. The brick smokehouse

The traditional permanent build — thick masonry that holds a steady low temperature beautifully and lasts generations. More work and cost, but a genuine heirloom structure.

7. The timber walk-in smokehouse

A small board-and-batten building you walk into, hung with racks and hooks, firebox piped in from outside. Big capacity for curing a whole hog's worth of bacon and hams — the homestead classic.

8. The smokehouse-and-cure-room combo

A walk-in with an adjacent cool room for hanging cured meat before and after smoking — the complete meat-preservation setup, pairing smoking with the cold storage of a root cellar.

Safety and the cure

Cold-smoked meat must be properly cured first (salt, and usually curing salt with nitrite) — smoke alone at low temperature does not make meat safe. Keep cold-smoke below 90°F, use clean hardwood (never softwood or treated wood), and follow tested curing ratios. Done right, it's one of the oldest and finest ways to preserve food without electricity.

Curing and smoking meat carries real foodborne-illness risk if done carelessly. Follow tested cure recipes and temperature guidance from a trusted source.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a cold and hot smokehouse?

A cold smokehouse keeps the chamber at 70–90°F with the fire set apart, preserving cured meat with smoke only. A hot smokehouse runs 165°F or more, cooking the food as it smokes. The firebox placement is the key design difference.

How do you build a simple smokehouse?

The simplest is a steel barrel with a rack and lid, with fire in the base or piped from a side pit — buildable in an afternoon for under $30. From there you can scale up to wooden box, block, or walk-in timber smokehouses.

Is smoked meat safe without refrigeration?

Properly cured and cold-smoked meat keeps well in cool storage, as it did for centuries — but the curing (salt, often with nitrite) is what makes it safe, not smoke alone. Follow tested cure recipes and keep it cool.

What wood is best for smoking?

Clean hardwoods — hickory, oak, apple, maple, cherry. Never use softwoods like pine (resinous, bitter) or any treated or painted wood. Different hardwoods impart different flavors to the meat.

Eli Hartwell writes the Worth Honoring journal — plans, skills, and the kind of know-how that used to pass from one generation to the next. When he's not writing, he's fixing something that didn't need to break.