British BBQ Society Forums

Just taken delivery and built my new WSM 18" (an upgrade in my smoking life from the converted kettle that I have been trying to hone my skills on). Going to try my first cook on it tomorrow but one thing is playing on my mind - the use of water as the heat sync....

Am I completely wrong in thinking that the water will create a load of steam and I will end up steaming the meat instead of a nice dry smoke??? (after all the "perfect smoking temp is over the boiling point of water)

Should I be using sand or something as a few seem to be based on a quick on-line search?

Ignore the title of this post and work your way through there is a debate on sand, clay saucers and water. If you search carefully you will find other such debates. Good hunting

http://www.bbbqs.com/Forum/viewtopic.ph ... hilit=sand

As keith says there is a debate on on if anything is best to put in your water bowl. Back to your question though - yes it will create steam but not loads of it and its not sufficient to cook the meat.

Personally in a WSM I've had good results cooking with water in the pan and also cooking with nothing in the pan other than foil.

I ended up using warm water and got the thing started at about 9pm last night. It took a good hour to get up to temp and then put a "hand of pork", as the butcher called it, on at ~10pm.

Then went to bed.

Got up at 6am and the temp was reading around 216F (with meat temp at 158f) so opened the vents and got it back to ~250F. Now we are cruising at 261F with meat temp climbing nicely.

I haven't had to top up the coals or water and am seriously impressed with the WSM.

If you are going to use water, and why not if that is your choice, the water in the bowl must be as HOT as you can get it when you put it in. This speeds up the whole process as non of the heat is diverted to heat up the water. Personally in my ProQ I use sand and haven't had a problem with the meat drying out.

When using water in the WSM I find that cold water takes about an hour to get up to temp, whilst with hot watering is closer to 20-30 mins. I don't wait for the WSM to get up to temp before putting the meat on.