Has anyone seen one of these?

Was a ton of them on clearance at Home Depot last summer. Wasn't very well liked if I remember right.

Think of it as a cylindrical La Caja China, but not as big.

The heat is all on the outside of the food. That means it will not add smoke or charcoal taste. No different than a oven. Plus they have small cooking area. Waste of time and effort to me. Steve.

As mentioned above, the heat is from the outside, although it does have a spot to put a few wood chips inside to get smoke circulating inside with the moist air circulating around. I have never cooked with one but I can't imagine the results being similar to other smokers. In fact, someone asked about one of these just a few weeks ago and some people who had tried them chimed in. They sound like they can definitely cook, just the cooking method is different, and results aren't quite the same.

Saw a guy using one at Troy a year or two back. Cooked some shoulders on it and let me try them. Tasted burnt and dry.

A buddy of mine has one. I'm not impressed and it consumes a lot of charcoal compared to cooking time.

I know it turns out a delicious and moist product from the few times I have been around one. Seems like they waste charcoal though. They are awesome for turkeys. You will get an very good product consistently with one of these. Just not as pronounced of a smoke flavor.

Someone posted about this cooker a week or so ago. I've cooked on one. The last post has my opinion on it. Here's the link:
http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=98305&highlight=orion+cooker

Overall.....I didn't care for it. Especially for the $.
Lots of people dig them though, and I only cooked on it once.

Bought one on sale a few years back. It does a nice job on turkey or chicken, but as others have said, it's inefficient, a real fuel hog, and not great for adding smoky flavor. Came with hooks for hanging slabs of ribs, but the one time I tried thier directions, the ribs got so overcooked their weight pulled apart where the hooks were, and I opened it to find my ribs sitting in a pool of their own fat at the bottom:mad2:

I am keeping the hooks and the conical bird stand for use in my vertical smoker. The rest goes on craigslist in the spring. Not worth even the sale price.

Seen one at one comp, all I could smell was lighter fluid....yep he was using match light!!! But in this instance maybe ok? He had wood chips inside of it, cooked a brisket flat in like 2.5 hours, tasted worst than shoe leather!!!!

luckyduk said:

Seen one at one comp, all I could smell was lighter fluid....yep he was using match light!!! But in this instance maybe ok? He had wood chips inside of it, cooked a brisket flat in like 2.5 hours, tasted worst than shoe leather!!!!

Click to expand...

You're supposed to use Matchlight. The instructions say to use a WHOLE 11 lb bag of the stuff for EACH cook! Here's a link to the downloadable PDF of the Manual and Cookbook:
http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pdfImages/e5/e5c88df4-69c6-499c-b77f-04b98c9d30ea.pdf

That's the other reason I didn't care for it. If I recall, an 11 lb bag of Matchlight was like $10 or $15. PLUS, you can't check your meat during the cook. The way it works is by convection. SO, you put the meat in, put the lid on, fire the charcoal and let it go. If you remove the lid 1/2 way in, you lose the convection and I'd assume it would take some time to let the cooker come back to temp.

You can add wood chips in the bottom tray for smoke, but I just didn't taste the smoke much in the butts I cooked.

The butts were pull apart tender for sure in only 3.5 hours, so that in itself is an amazing thing, BUT it tasted like they were cooked in the oven. Not much smoke flavor.