GE Profile’s indoor smoker keeps the smoke out of your kitchen

Want the taste of ribs and chicken cooked outdoors on a wood-fired smoker, but minus outdoor cooking part? GE’s small appliances division has just the gizmo for you: a first-of-its-kind countertop cooker that can smoke your meat without smoking you out of the kitchen.

The GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker does up ribs, chicken (whole or wings), mac and cheese, peach cobbler, and a whole lot more with good ‘ol backyard barbecue flavor, infused with the genuine smoke of on-board, burning-hot wood pellets. And thanks to a clever feature dubbed Active Smoke Filtration, the Indoor Smoker won’t leave you singing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”

Developed by GE’s FirstBuild division and unveiled this week at CES, the $999 Indoor Smoker packs a lot of cool tech in a 16.25 x 16.5 x 20.35-inch (HxWxD) box.

Set-and-forget operation is enabled with dial-in settings for oven temperature and wood-burning intensity. Secondary control/monitoring functionality is available on the GE Profile Connect+ Smart HQ app. You can even get the show going from a distance or leave cooked food safely in a “smoke and hold” auto-warm setting for up to 24 hours. Several layers of security precautions make sure you won’t overcook your meal or stink-bomb the joint.

So, where does the smoke go? The answer: Smoke is absorbed and neutralized inside this cooker with a catalytic converter–specifically, a honeycombed box coated with the precious metals platinum and palladium, not unlike what’s deployed in cars to scrub the nasties (especially carbon monoxide) out of the exhaust system before it blows hot air out of the tail pipe.

Jonathan Takiff/Foundry

Jonathan Takiff/Foundry

Jonathan Takiff/Foundry

The catalyst in the smoker releases “de minimis” (too small to count) “amounts of harmless carbon dioxide and particulates,” explained Andre Zdanow, GE’s executive director of small appliances. (Catalytic scrubbing also is integral to modern wood-burning stoves.)

In my two demos at CES, some appetizing food smells did waft out through the device’s bottom-front vent, as first a chicken and then (later) a beef tenderloin were roasting away inside the carefully sealed cabinet.

The whiffs were just enough to assure me the process was working, though I could certainly see that for myself through the smoked-up front glass window. And the food that came out was, in a word, delish.

As explained by Zdanow, three heating elements are at work in this device. One is for ignition of the wood pellets; just a handful are used per session. A second, dedicated heater raises the catalyst temperature to 730-750 degrees Fahrenheit to enable the catalyzing process. Then, of course, there’s a traditional metal heater in the base of the oven for heating the food to temperatures of 170 to 300 degrees F, “similar to what you’re working with on an outdoor barbeque,” Zdanow noted.

An auger (simiar to a spiral-shaped corkscrew) moves the wood pellets from the top loaded pellet hopper past the igniter, which gets them smoldering to an ember state to create smoke. After smoking the food to your dialed-in flavor preference, the auger moves the embers to a waste tray filled with water, which extinguish the pellets.

“By putting out the embers while [they’re] still smoldering, we don’t get any ash in the cavity,” Zdanow said, “And we’re getting just the sweet flavors from the burning wood but not the acidity that comes at the end if you were to burn a wood pellet to ash.”

Jonathan Takiff/Foundry

Jonathan Takiff/Foundry

Jonathan Takiff/Foundry

Yes, there is a fan on board operating “similar to a convection fan,’” according to Zdanow.

“That enables us to circulate smoke through the cavity,” Zdanow said, “It’s also for use at the end of the cooking with a ‘clear smoke’ button, an added feature we offer. If you wanted to remove all smoke from the cavity before opening the door, you’d hit that button. It ceases all burning of pellets, they’d move into the waste tray; all the air in the internal cavity is cycled through the catalyst, consuming all remaining smoke. Then the device alerts that you can open the oven door. The process takes 15 to 20 minutes. It’s not unsafe to briefly open the door sooner, but if you live in an apartment building or were otherwise concerned about having any smoke come out, this option is available.”

The Smart Indoor Smoker comes with a probe for determining that the food has cooked to the proper temperature.

Meanwhile, the catalytic converter needs no cleaning. Whatever it captures on the surface areas of the honeycomb walls can just stay there.

“We’ve run well over ten thousand hours on our prototype in our development process without harm,” Zdanow said. “But cleaning out the oven before you use it the next time is a good idea. You will get some build up on the inner cavity of the oven from food juices and also some creosote like you see on the inside of your barbecue or fireplace. When the cavity isn’t cleaned you’ll get some more odor. Eventually those things will combust and smoke at a future cook session.”

The GE Profile Indoor Smoker is available now at nationwide retailers.