What Makes Chicago-Style Aquarium Smokers Unique

Chicago's distinctive regional barbecue style is due largely to the aquarium smoker, a tool that prioritizes both utility and flavor. Chicago-style aquarium smokers are designed for indoor use in cold weather — a symbol of the gastronomic scene's South-meets-North evolution. When millions of African Americans migrated from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago, they brought their Southern barbecue traditions with them. This background, combined with the Windy City's climate and infamously harsh winters, drives folks indoors for much of the year.

An aquarium smoker consists of two enclosed chambers stacked on top of each other, topped by an exhaust vent. The central cooking chamber is a steel-framed pit with sliding glass doors that allow pitmasters to both access and view the meat inside. Directly below this pit, in the lower chamber, is an enclosed live wood fire. Thanks to the stacked design, the meat cooks quickly at high temperatures directly over the heat source, and all that flavorful wood smoke is trapped inside the chamber. Pitmasters utilize different types of wood, from red oak to hickory, apple, cherry, and more, mixed with kindling elements like charcoal or a thin layer of cardboard.

To control the temperature, a hose or water pipeline allows the chef to manipulate the fire inside the chamber. An exhaust vent on top of the smoker extends upward through the roof of the building to release excess smoke. Hungry barbecue enthusiasts can tell whether a restaurant uses an aquarium pit without even stepping foot inside.

Aquarium smokers can cook flavorful meats within one to three hours, significantly faster than the traditional open-pit barbecues of the South, which can take hours or even a whole day. This method is also better suited for anticipating customer traffic patterns, as the smoker can be loaded based on demand. Today, aquarium smokers are especially associated with Chicago's South Side and far West Side. Textured rib tips and link sausages are the popular cuts of meat for barbecuing on the South Side, as both perform well when cooked quickly over direct heat. Other cuts of meat are better suited to different smokers. Delicious smoked brisket, for instance, is popular in Chicago's North Side barbecue scene, where it performs better in rotisserie-style smokers with lower, longer, indirect heat.

Aquarium smokers are typically custom-designed for the needs of each restaurant, but the dimensions are generally around four to six feet wide, eight feet long, and seven feet tall. Lem's Bar-B-Q on Chicago's South Side boasts a gargantuan aquarium smoker with a 64-square-foot capacity. Those glass-enclosed pits also double as display cases (hello, built-in advertising), which is why aquarium smokers are often placed in restaurants' front windows. Passersby can savor the drama of lapping flames and billowing smoke. The sliding glass door design also means aquarium smokers are totally food-safe for commercial use. The glass panes and fire bricks can be removed and scrubbed, which keeps the appliance up to health code regulations and reduces the risk of grease fires.