How to Make a Smoker in Minecraft: Cooks Twice as Fast
A furnace surrounded by 4 logs makes a smoker, which cooks food twice as fast. How to make a smoker in Minecraft, what it cooks, when it beats a furnace.
Put a furnace in the center of a crafting table and 4 logs in the slots above, below, left and right of it. Leave the corners empty. You get one smoker. The wood can be any logs, stripped logs, wood or stripped wood blocks, including crimson and warped stems, and you can mix types.
What a smoker does
A smoker is a furnace that only cooks food, and it does it in 5 seconds per item instead of 10. It has the same three slots as a furnace: food on top, fuel underneath, cooked food on the right.
It cooks everything you’d normally put in a furnace for food:
- Raw beef, porkchop, mutton, chicken and rabbit
- Raw cod and salmon
- Potatoes into baked potatoes
- Kelp into dried kelp
It won’t accept ores, sand, logs, clay or anything else that isn’t food.
Is it worth making?
It costs a furnace and 4 logs, so yes, as soon as you have a steady meat supply. A cow farm or a good fishing session leaves you with a stack of raw food, and a smoker gets through it in half the time. If you fish a lot, see how to start fishing for the catch you’ll be cooking.
It doesn’t save fuel. The smoker burns fuel at double speed, so one piece of coal still cooks 8 items. Charcoal is the easiest fuel to keep stocked; ironically, you can’t make charcoal in a smoker, since logs aren’t food.
Automating it
Like a furnace, a smoker works with hoppers: food in from the top, fuel in from the side, cooked food out the bottom into a chest. Many players put a hopper-fed smoker at the end of a chicken or cow farm so the meat comes out cooked.
The XP from cooking collects inside the smoker until you take items out by hand, the same as a furnace.
The butcher’s workstation
A smoker is also the butcher villager’s job block. Place one near an unemployed villager to get a butcher, who buys raw meat and coal and sells cooked food. Our villager jobs list covers every workstation.
The other upgraded furnace is the blast furnace, which does the same double-speed trick for ores and metal items. Most bases end up with all three side by side.
Common questions
Can a smoker smelt ores?
No. It only takes food. Ores, sand and other blocks need a regular furnace or a blast furnace.
Does a smoker use more fuel?
It burns fuel twice as fast, but it also cooks twice as fast, so you get the same number of items per piece of fuel. You only save time.
Which villager uses a smoker?
The butcher. An unemployed villager near a smoker becomes a butcher and trades in meat, coal and emeralds.
Sources & verification
Facts on this page are checked against these references and in-game behavior for the stated edition(s). how we verify.
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