Lots of burgers

Who has tried regular old burgers on a RF smoker?

I was asked to cook a ton of burgers for a work "picnic" and am wondering if they can be done on the RF smoker.
They said there will be about 600 people attending (a lot of kids) and they want burgers and brats. I know I will have enough cooking space on the 500 gallon smoker but wonder how they will turn out if I smoked them like I do ribs or brisket and butts.

I could build inserts that would sit on the reverse flow plate below the cook grate that would allow me to run charcoal below the cooking grates to actually grill the meats like you would on a normal charcoal grill. This would be easy and I could still cook using the fire box to "enhance" with wood flavor.

What do you guy think?

We will also be doing hot dogs brats for those that don't want burgers.

So how so they cook on a smoker?

Would I be better off with the charcoal inserts

This has evolved to something much bigger.

I now am cooking the main course - Brisket - along with these burgers, brats, hot dogs.

The original caterer could not "grill" the burgers brats and dogs so they were going to cook ahead of time and re-heat at the event which will probably not please peoples tastes for this type of food so they decided that I should cook everything !

Gets better - they now expect 700 people there.

One good thing is that they are bringing in the brisket pre-cooked and shreaded from one of our other plants ( I work for a very large meat processing company ), so since this brisket is pre-cooked all I have to do is pan it and throw on my smoker to heat (and soak in real smoke) and serve it.
The challenge is still going to be the burgers ! I have decided to make large stainless pans that will sit on the reverse flow plate below the cooking grates and I will be able to grill the burgers as well as run the fire box so they will be getting good smoke while being grilled.

Its going to be busy but a cooler full of beer will keep me going :becky:

Well the event was a success !

I cooked about 160 pounds of brisket and 300 or so of hamburgers at the same time on the same smoker.
I made charcoal inserts for my big smoker so I was able to "grill" the burgers and also added smoke to them and they were fantastic!
I will try and post pictures once I find my camera.

Thanks for all of the input !