Smoking with meat on a griddle.

[NCGrimbo]

I recently purchased a griddle for my YS640 and have used it to make many a tasty burger, eggs, and stir fry. I clean it up after use but I also leave it in the smoker as I use it more often then I use the YS640 to smoke meats. It sits on the left side of the smoker above the fire pit. When I smoke meat in the YS640, I have always put the meat on the right side of the cooker if I'm not going to fill the YS640 full. I just find that I get a better consistency in the time that the meat finishes when I do that.

In about 2 weeks, I'm planning on doing my twice annual "Fill it full" smoke to stock up the freezer with smoked meats. I'll be smoking some salt and fatties along with a brisket and some butts. I was thinking that I could just put the salt in an aluminum pan and then place it and the fatties on the griddle and the other meats on the grill grates. I figure that smoke fills the whole chamber so that salt and fatties will still get smoke and I'm not concerned if they don't get as much as they would over the grates.

Can anyone think of any reasons why I would need to remove the griddle? (On a side note, I haven't had any issues with rust forming on the griddle so that hasn't been a problem.)

Thanks!!

 

[KClandcruiser]

My only concern would be with the airflow. If your fire pot is on the left and stack on the right, I don't see much smoke flowing over the fatties or salt. I also don't know the airflow dynamics of that smoker, so I could totally be off base