Smoker

If you're a beginner like me, the thought of keeping a smoker going for any length of time and making sure the smoke is steady, cool and not acrid is daunting. I have difficulty enough getting a fire going and keeping it ablaze in my fireplace at home. So the prospect of doing this in a small tin was a wee bit frightening.
In addition there are so many opinions out there about what to put in a smoker, what not and how to get the mix you put in right, it's almost like a very complicated recipe. I picked the following up from a beekeeping course and tested it today. It worked very easily.
You'll need: a page from a newspaper, egg carton torn into cup sizes (roughly), pressed wood pellets (I used pressed pine wood, which is sold as cat litter - important thing is that it's only wood).

Light the newspaper and put it into the smoker. Put a few pieces of the egg carton in and push it down. Pump a few times. Take a handful of the wood pellets and throw in. Pump again and that should keep the smoker going for a good forty minutes.