We’re about to show you how you can fire your filing cabinets and use the remnants for a summer cookout.
Filing Cabinets: A Culinary, Step-by-Step Guide
Put down those pencils and sheets of paper, and get up from your desk. It’s time to send your filing cabinets to the unemployment line by turning them into meat smokers.
And after all, how could this not make you the life of the party? There’s only one way to clean up your office while getting your plate dirty at the same time, and it all comes with the instructions below.
Retire from Office Labor at 350…Degrees
Summertime makes room for those inevitably awkward summer parties, but a good ice melt-er is turning those crummy and useless filing cabinets into meat smokers for as little as 20 bucks, Southern style.
At eFileCabinet, it’s our goal to empty as many filing cabinets as possible, making these pieces of office furniture obsolete for document storage purposes.
Ready to get started?
You also have to be handy with your equipment. Workers are only as good as their ability to make resources useful, and that begins with filing cabinet craftsmanship.
Turning a filing cabinet into a personal meat smoker isn’t an easy task. The first thing you’ll need to do is strip that filing cabinet down to bare metal, sand it away, and prepare to eat meat, not paint chips.
The Materials You’ll Need
Be sure to gather up the following things to complete your masterpiece:
- Propane
- Grill grates
- Water pan (stainless or cast iron material)
- Metal hinges
- A few thermometers
- A tool belt with a drill and the appropriate bits
- A filing cabinet made of metal (remember, wood can burn)
The Process
- Take the cabinet to a place you can clean it with a buffer, inside and out. You will be eating out of it, after all
- Sand off some of the old paint if it’s chipping
- Take the lowest drawer out of the filing cabinet and make it the meat box (this is where the burner and water pan will go)
- Use the top cabinets as drawers for the meat (insert the grill grates in them)
- Drill some air holes into the bottom of each drawer above the burner
- Fire that puppy up!
The Official Roast of Your Filing Cabinets
Clean it as thoroughly as you can, and sand, strip, or scour off the old paint, inside and out. Be sure you remove the drawers to do this. This will ensure you get it as clean as possible.
The bottom drawer of the cabinet will become your firebox. You’ll need to place your water pan in the bottom of the cabinet, then secure your burner a few inches above it.
Find a grill grate to put above your burner that will hold your wood or wood chips. Remember, you want to make sure that the wood is far enough away from the burner that the wood just smokes, and doesn’t actually catch fire.
The upper drawers will become your meat drawers. Drill holes in the bottoms of these drawers to allow proper airflow from the firebox all the way to the top drawer.
You can use a hole saw to make one 1.5” hole in each drawer, or drill several smaller holes. Place grill racks in the drawers when this is done. You may also want to drill a hole in the top and install a damper so that you can control the amount of smoke escaping from your smoker.
A few things to keep in mind with your filing cabinet smoker: This is a manual smoker, so regulating the amount of smoke and the temperature may take some practice.
You can use digital thermometers to help you out if desired. Also remember that the metal handles on each meat drawer will get hot when the smoker is on, so use an oven mitt or towel to open and close the drawers.
So if you’re a fan of smoked meats, start getting rid of all your old documents and files and store them in eFileCabinet instead. Then, you can convert that filing cabinet into a smoker just in time for summer, sunshine, and backyard barbecues.
Meet Your New Office Meat Maker
We don’t always hate work, but when we do, we should turn our filing cabinet into a meat smoker. Why? Because filing cabinets are why we hate work: they waste time and office space, and have, quite literally, turned the American workplace into a world of drudgery.
Staking (or steak-ing if you prefer puns), claim to a new way of work-life balance begins with re-purposing those dumb cabinets into works of art, and meat making wonder.
That Was Awesome! But What Exactly Do I Do with My Files Now that I have No Filing Cabinets?
This is what makes the roasting of your filing cabinets worthwhile. You can now use a digital document management system that will let you:
Grow Your Business Faster
Protect Your Professional Reputation
And Make Your Job Easier