Don Reed
TVWBB Pro
I've been bugging ya'll about this thing for a while and I think I finally found what works for me, I'll know better on my next low temp cook. I know water is the perfect heat sink for low temps but I wanted to find something that would work about the same with less weight and won't slosh around. I tried sand, didn't like it,to hard to get temps stable at any temp for me and I had heard that the clay saucer would pretty much have the same results mainly because they absorb the heat then let you have a healty dose all at once it seems. The plain foiled pan is good for high temps but can be kinda touchy for lower temp cooking so I'm told and read that one person warped his pan that way. I had made mention of using a 1/8 thick steel plate in the pan which no one has tried before, so I brought home 2 round pieces of metal, one a little over 1/16 thick or lets say about the thickness of the water pan and the other 1/8 thick. The dimensions are 15.75 for the thin one and a little over 18 for the thick one. The thin one nested about 1.5" above the bottom of the pan and the thick one about the same distance above the thin one which still leaves room at the top to collect drippings. Everything is foiled with a dbl layer on the top for easy clean up. The weight was much lighter than sand or water, I ran the temps up to 270* and closed one vent and let it get to 310* then closed 2nd bottom vent and the temps held there for a little over 2.5hrs until the chicken was done. Time to see how easy it was to bring the temps down and closed the 3rd vent about 90% and the temps dropped to around 260* and stayed long enough to make me happy then shut it all down. So far I would say I am satisfied with the results. I think and 18" plow disk would have done the trick because the ones I saw on line where about 1/8" thick and I didn't have to pay for the disks I brought home. Thanks for letting me rant.