The smoker recipe in Minecraft turns a regular furnace into a dedicated food-cooking machine. It’s cheap, fast to build, and doubles your cooking speed. Here’s the exact recipe, plus what it actually does — and doesn’t do.
Quick Answer
To craft a smoker, you need:
- 1x Furnace
- 4x Logs, Wood, Stems, or Hyphae (any type, including stripped)
Craft it on a Crafting Table. Yields 1 Smoker.
Step 1: Craft a Furnace First
No furnace yet? You need one before you can make a smoker.
| Ingredient | Quantity | Where to Get It |
|---|---|---|
| Cobblestone (or Blackstone / Cobbled Deepslate) | 8 | Mine any stone block with a pickaxe |
Place all 8 blocks around the outer edge of the crafting grid, leaving the center box empty.
Step 2: Craft the Smoker
| Ingredient | Quantity | Where to Get It |
|---|---|---|
| Furnace | 1 | Crafted above |
| Log / Wood / Stem / Hyphae | 4 | Chop any tree (Overworld) or harvest stems in the Nether |
- Open your Crafting Table for the 3×3 grid.
- Place the Furnace in the center box.
- Place 1 Log in the top-middle, bottom-middle, middle-left, and middle-right boxes — a plus-sign shape.
- Leave the four corners empty.
- Drag the Smoker into your inventory.
What Does a Smoker Actually Do?
A smoker cooks food twice as fast as a furnace. That’s its entire job — it does nothing else.
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Cook speed | 5 seconds per item (furnace takes 10) |
| What it smelts | Raw food only — meat, fish, potatoes |
| Ores, sand, other items | Cannot smelt these — use a regular furnace instead |
| Villager job | Turns a nearby villager into a Butcher |
Smoker vs. Furnace vs. Campfire
All three cook food. Here’s how they actually compare.
| Block | Cook Speed | Slots | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smoker | 5 sec/item | 1 | Fast bulk food cooking |
| Furnace | 10 sec/item | 1 | Everything — ores, food, glass, and more |
| Campfire | 30 sec/item | 4 at once | Passive cooking, no fuel refills needed |
Villager Job Site: Butcher
Place a smoker near a jobless villager and it becomes a Butcher. Butchers trade cooked meats and raw food for emeralds — a solid early trading loop if you’re farming animals.
Smokers also spawn naturally inside butcher houses in villages, so check nearby villages before crafting one from scratch.
Quick Tips
Pro tips:
- Keep your smoker separate from your ore-smelting furnace — mixing food and ore queues wastes time.
- Stripped logs work just as well as regular ones, so don’t waste un-stripped wood on other builds if you’re short.
- A smoker can’t be pushed by a piston in Java Edition — plan redstone farms around that.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use wooden planks to craft a smoker?
No. Only Logs, Wood blocks, Stems, Hyphae, or their stripped versions work. Planks are not accepted.
Does a smoker use more fuel than a furnace?
No. It burns fuel at double speed, but cooks twice as fast too — so fuel used per item cooked stays the same.
Can a smoker smelt ores?
No. It only cooks food. For ores, use a regular furnace or a Blast Furnace.
See Also:
That’s the complete smoker recipe in Minecraft — furnace prerequisite, exact crafting steps, real cook-speed numbers, and where it beats (or loses to) the furnace and campfire.
Abhigyan identifies himself as a tech geek, gaming cognoscenti, and also a connoisseur of music. Unidentified and mysterious phenomena never fail to gather his undivided attention. When not reading about bizarre and perplexing entities across the Universe, he can often be found cheering for his favorite teams in Football.