This short Q&A is intended to demonstrate why it is not necessary or even desirable to use a water pan when using a BBQ Guru® or Pitminder E-temp Temperature Control.I would be the first to admit that a lot of great BBQ has been cooked while using a water pan, but not for the reasons that many people believe.
Questions and answers
Question: Will a water pan add moisture to your meat while you cook?
Answer: No, the only simple way to add moisture or liquid is to brine your meat before you start cooking.
Question: Will a water pan keep my meat from drying out?
Answer: Yes, to some extent, but meat can dry out even while a water pan is in use. The water pan is an aid to keep temperatures low so that drying out doesn’t occur.
Question: Why?
Answer: All living tissue is made up of a good quantity of water. Water boils at 212ºF and vaporizes or evaporates at even lower temperatures. This is true whether the water is in your water pan or in your meat. Get your meat hot enough inside and this moisture will turn to vapor or steam and go up the stack along with water vaporizing in your water pan.
Question: Will steaming or boiling add moisture to meat.
Answer: No, in fact you can boil or steam meat until it is tough as a boot! When you poach meat in a broth, it is important not to exceed about 140ºF liquid temperature to prevent this liquid loss from happening and making your meat tough.
Question: If this is true, then why do I need a water pan at all?
Answer: When you use a water pan, it will do several things for you. First and foremost, it is a simple and rudimentary temperature control. The water heats up early on in the cooking process and becomes a thermal mass. This makes damper adjustments less critical. If your fire gets too hot, more water vaporizes which cools the heated air rising toward the stack of your cooker. If the fire is losing heat, the thermal mass of the water maintains the temperature in the cooking chamber for a while. Second, moist vapors carry heat to the food product being cooked at a faster rate than just heated air alone would. This is why you steam vegetables to cook them quickly. The bottom line in a BBQ pit is that the water pan makes the temperature more stable around an ideal low and slow cooking temperature.
Question: This sounds like the Ideal solution to BBQ cooking!
Answer: Many people think so and millions of cooks have been carried out using this age-old method. I have done it myself more times than I could count in the 40 + years I have cooked BBQ. This method does have a few down sides. First, it can be dangerous. Any time you deal with a quantity of very hot water you are at risk of scalding. I have read many accounts of people who have had either minor or serious injuries in their own back yards as a result of tending their water pan smokers. Some times the water pan falls or is tipped over into the fire causing instant flash steam burns. Yes, I have also had an incident, which made me far more cautious. Second, a water pan consumes a large amount of fuel. It takes energy to heat water. You may think charcoal is cheap, but just think how many fewer dollars worth of gas or electricity it takes to cook the same amount of meat mass in your kitchen oven. Good charcoal is not so cheap anymore and not always so easy to come by in many locations.
Question: I don’t care what the charcoal costs so what’s the big deal.
Answer: If you’re asking this question, then you’ve probably never stayed up all night feeding “the beast”, when you would really rather be sleeping. You know that you should only add a few lumps at a time every couple of hours. This keeps the temperature up, but not too high. On a low and slow cook, your water pan is sucking up energy like a locomotive boiler. By the way, you are also topping off your water pan with “ hot water” to keep your temperature up and save fuel on these all night vigils. You do this because you know that if you don’t, your temperature will go too high or too low and ruin your otherwise fantastic cook. This is not much fun unless you are young and partying all night anyway.Is this really “being in control”?
Question: How about if I replace the water pan with a pan full of sand? Isn’t this mass that won’t boil away?
Answer: Correct, it won’t boil away, but it will absorb a large quantity of heat on start up. It may, however, overshoot your target temperature anyway and take a long time to cool down unless you can be there to anticipate when to throttle back your dampers.
Question: Is there a better way to cooking without these thermal mass devices?
Answer: Yes, the name of the game is control. If you stay close to your pit for as many hours as it takes to cook your food, you can, with a little practice, build your fire right and control your dampers so that your pit will run at an even temperature for some time. This time depends on a number of factors, the most important of which is the rate that fuel needs to burn to maintain a given temperature. Well-insulated or massive pits are always at an advantage here because the rate of burning is slower and therefore easier to control.The lower the temperature that you try to maintain, the easier it is for your fire to go out. This is because at lower temperatures draft control is more difficult. There is just less air moving through the dampers and the pit is cooling. Natural draft dies as the fire dies. This affect is then compounded and the fire goes out.Another way to skin this cat is to build a very small, but active, fire and add small amounts of fuel every few minutes, so that the heat output matches the need for heat.The key words here are “ every few minutes”. If you feel the need to “ride herd” on your pit to this extent, you will get fantastic results every time. You will be able to do cold smoking, jerky making, or pepper drying of the first order.If you are not inclined to devote this level of attention, then you are a candidate for at least some type of automation. There are such things as pellet feeding cookers that feed just enough fuel to hold a low temperature, but they are expensive and require substantial power input.
Question: Is there another way to do this on my pit? And can I maintain both low and high temperatures?
Answer: Yes there is, and I am glad you ask that question. It is called The BBQ Guru. The BBQ Guru is an industrial strength temperature controller that will retrofit any design of pit, grill or smoker that burns charcoal and or wood.The BBQ Guru will help you start your fire, control your fire, and change your temperature at the turn of a dial. Not only that, you will always know exactly:
What your pit temperature is
What your meat temperature is
How your meat is cooking regardless of time or number of pounds
How many degrees from done you are
What your cooking rate and doneness areYou will also be able to easily:
Cold smoke cheese, fish and meats
Dry and smoke jerky, peppers or fruit
Dry spices and herbs to make your own rubs
Bake bread
Make pizza, casseroles and cobbler
Make stuffed apples, peppers and cabbage
Barbecue pork, brisket, ribs, chicken, etc.
Grill steaks, burgers, vegetables, fish
Sear meats at high temperatures
Cook and hold meats at low temperatures
Put out your fire to save charcoal for your next cookAll this without a water or sand pan. In the words of one of our recent customers, “This is one awesome little gizmo.”
Just One Final Question: Can I use the Guru and a water pan?
Answer: It is not a good idea. The water pan will fool the Guru. The cooler water vapor in the cooking chamber or dome makes the controller call for more heat. The actual fire then becomes too hot, and the temperature of your pit will bounce up and down.The water pan will actually buck the controller. You simply don’t need a primitive control when you have a real modern day electronic control on the job.You can load all the charcoal fuel you want at the start of the cook and not worry about it getting out of control if you want to go about your life; sleep, party, play golf, mow the grass, or go fishing.
Now you’re in control!
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