Make perfectly cooked brisket in your homemade file-cabinet smoker

If you're ingenious like YouTuber Catfish and Carp, you upcycle your vertical metal file cabinet into a homemade smoker.

As our lives evolve from analog to digital, many of us are left with relics from our pencil-and-paper pasts. One such albatross is the filing cabinet. What can you do with a filing cabinet in a paperless world? If you're ingenious like YouTuber Catfish and Carp, you upcycle your vertical metal file cabinet into a homemade smoker. With a capacity of 25 lbs. of salmon, two racks of pork ribs, and 12 chicken drumsticks, the file-cabinet smoker has enough space and power to feed all the guests at your next block party.

About the Author

Alexis Gajewski

Alexis Gajewski

Senior Content Strategist

Alexis Gajewski is a manufacturing writer and editor with nearly 20 years of experience covering the people, practices, and technologies that keep industrial facilities running. For more than a decade, she served as Senior Content Strategist for Plant Services, creating content for plant managers, engineers, and maintenance professionals on a variety of industrial topics.

During her tenure, Alexis worked to develop the brand’s digital strategy and helped launch and produce Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast. She also created The Lighter Side of Manufacturing, a weekly blog that explored the inventive and sometimes humorous side of the industry. 

Alexis co-founded Influential Women in Manufacturing, a recognition program that honored 49 women in its first two years, earned an industry award for Best Product Launch, and received a proclamation from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and a commendation from U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth.

She also led newsroom operations and development at a large media company where she set editorial standards, developed training curriculum, and helped support AI adoption for more than 150 editors across 80+ brands spanning manufacturing, industrial processing, automation, and more.

Additionally, Alexis works as a freelance writer and editor, and her areas of interest include continuous improvement, the skilled workforce, and the role of emerging technology on the plant floor.

Connect with Alexis on LinkedIn

Sign up for our eNewsletters
Get the latest news and updates