Blaine, MN Outdoor Cooking: Smoker Rules (2026)

Blaine's open burning article, Article III of Chapter 38, is built off state law: Blaine City Code § 38-49 adopts M.S.A. ch. 88 by reference for definitions, permits, and operating conditions, and § 38-50 lets the city council go further than the state minimum within city limits. Section 38-52 carries the article's definitions, and it draws a hard line between 'open burning', combustion products released directly into the air without passing through a stack, duct or chimney, and ordinary outdoor cooking. The section spells out that mobile cooking devices, meaning charcoal grills, wood smokers, manufactured hibachis, and propane or natural gas cooking devices, are not considered open burning devices at all.

Because they sit outside that definition, they are not swept into the permit requirement in Blaine City Code § 38-54, the prohibited-materials list in § 38-53, or the burning-ban and air-quality-alert authority the designated fire official holds under § 38-61. A resident firing up a charcoal grill or a wood smoker in the backyard is not applying for an open burning permit and is not shut down when the fire department declares a burning ban for wildfire conditions, because that ban targets open burning and recreational fires, not cooking appliances.

The Spring Lake Park/Blaine/Mounds View Fire Department administers this chapter for the city. Anything that does not fit the mobile cooking device carve-out, an uncontained wood pile lit for disposal, for example, falls back under the open burning rules and needs a permit unless it separately qualifies as a recreational fire.