how to keep smoke out of your cook

Two things:
i) use a neutral (non-smokey) lump - e.g., Rockwood, Basques Sugar Maple, Maple Leaf, etc.; and
ii) ensure the acrid white smoke clears before you begin cooking. 

Silly me, I forgot not everyone uses Rockwood. 

Mattman3969 said:

Once the initial smoke from light calms down wave your hand over the exhaust and then smell your hand. Good clean smell time to add food, dirty campfire smell wait another ten mins or so.  

The nose knows.

Cooking with wood has a tendency to produce some smoke.  No way to get rid of that completely, really.  

What the others said...but if you have had many cooks already then the baked on grease in your egg - particularly in your dome MAY have much-o smoke flavor which will be released during your cooks.

BTW I’m just curious - is the smoke aversion just yours or that of your wife and kids? 

I'll echo what everyone else has said.
1)Make sure to use a quality lump.
2)If you have cooked direct you may have nasty, fat soaked lump. This is particularly an issue with chicken. Use clean lump
3) Make sure to burn off the VOC's. There shouldn't be visible smoke coming from the chimney
4) Dirty/grease soaked platesetter/egg will produce atrocious smoke 

When I want food just grilled, with no smoke taste, there are a few things I do. Lump is a factor, but following this method makes lump less of a variable. I like to use only the fuel I need for that cook, and get all of it burning with no visible smoke at all. Secondly, I cook on a grid higher up in the dome to accommodate for the hotter burning fire. I have done chicken like this many times. It makes the chicken taste grilled, but not smokey at all. The chicken is far from the heat source during the cook, like around six inches above the felt line. There are various raised grid on the market to accomplish this, or you can rig up your own with a smaller diameter grid (12”-14”) and some bolts that are used used like stilts from your main grid. 

courierbob said:

I don't mind a little bit of a smoke taste.  The wife hates smoke. Thusunless i want to make mall mown food and only my own food, i need to learn how to cook more smoke free.  And i plan on cooking breads and don't want any smokey taste on that.  Thanks for the comments and advice.  Always appreciated

Smart man who tries to please SWMBO! 

RRP said:

courierbob said:

I don't mind a little bit of a smoke taste.  The wife hates smoke. Thusunless i want to make mall mown food and only my own food, i need to learn how to cook more smoke free.  And i plan on cooking breads and don't want any smokey taste on that.  Thanks for the comments and advice.  Always appreciated

Smart man who tries to please SWMBO! 

I’ve known two eggers whose wives and young daughters who got so nasty that both guys had to sell their eggs to TRY to keep peace in the family! 

BTW one told me later that both of his daughters told him after the divorce how the mother MADE them agree to say how bad the food tasted. 

And the other dude? Talk about a poor male with no nads...

Ron did the dude who got divorced at least go back and buy another Egg after the anti-smokite SWMBO left him?

Unfortunately The only real answer here is to not use the egg. You can minimize smoke flavor but there is no fool proof way to eliminate it.