Panless "Minion" Cooking Method

Still experimenting with my new WSM, and now that I've got 6 or 7 cooks under my belt, I would like to hear some opinions on the "Panless" Minion cooking method.

I have had good success with the panless method on short cooks with ribs and chicken, but I tried it on a long overnight cook with two 7 lb. Boston Butts and the bark was a little too crisp. The good news...I was able to maintain 225-250 degrees for a full 21 hours! (The meat came off at the 18 hour mark, with the internal temp @ 190.) I did have one spike to 270, but I got it back down to below 250 within an hour.

I did the same cook with the same amount of meat and charcoal the following weekend, but used the water pan with water, i.e., method #2, The Minion Method. I maintained an average of 200-225 this time, but had the vents open wide after about 11 hours. The bark was perfect, but the charcoal ran out at the 18 hour mark, before I could get the internal temperature I like for pulled pork (190-200 deg. range). Reading through the various posts and articles on this site, I understand that the water pan method absorbed much of the heat, but I've also read that the "panless" method doesn't necessarily dry meat out. Since this was not my experience, I'm curious to hear from others who successfully use the panless method, and what they have done to prevent dried out bark. (Or was my experience just an abnormality?)

PS: I'm using Kingsford charcoal, and controlling wind by placing the smoker in a small shed with the door open. Ambient temps were in the 30's on the first cook, and 50's on the second cook.

I use the water pan foil lined with no water in it. I think the water pan helps deflect the heat. Have had very good luck with it.
Sometimes on long cooks I will start with water in the pan and not add anything else to it after that. The pan usualy keeps liquid in it from the fat dripping from the meat. Sounds like you are doing a good job of experimenting. I think everybody has their own special way of smoking that they have found along the way. Good luck.

Hi John,

I have not yet tried the panless Minion method. I am a little surprised that you didn't have the mother of all grease fires with the grease from two butts dripping on the fire. Or did you have some kind of pan to catch the grease? Using the water pan with foil only in it sounds like a good idea.

DougW

John..

What happens when you use the pan without water is you are cooking over DIRECT heat. That is why these units come with a pan. No matter that you keep the temp in your preferred range..it is still over direct heat.

That is why the bark will become very "crusty". You can alleviate this by mopping more often, but that entails lifting the lid and it will start to defeat the supreme temp control we all love. It also lengthens the cooking time by a LOT!!

I only use without water when cooking in cold temps..under 15?.

Stogie

Doug:

No fires or flame-up's occurred, nor did I use a catch pan. My guess is that shutting down the vents to get the right temperature discouraged flare-up's. Even my smoke wood chunks did not burn up entirely!

A big fire wouldn't have been such a bad thing on that particular cook. The shed/metal building I used for cover is for yard tool storage. I sure would hate to see that stuff go up in flames!

Thanks to all for the information.

John
You cooked the Butts for 18 hours and the smoking wood was not burned up?
The reason for the waterpan is to control pit temp and maintain a clean burn by not starving it for oxygen. The less oxygen the more the charcoal and wood smolders and that's not really after.
The beauty of the WSM is you can spend less time watching the pit and the end product
in the condition you are looking for.
At this time of the year if you get 18 hours out of a load of charcoal, the cooker did what it was made to do.
When I first posted the burn method it was in the middle of the summer and we got 18 to 24 hour burns depending on the wind.
Produce the best BBQ and add charcoal if you need to.
Jim

Jim:

The cherry smoke wood at the end of the cook was still in one piece, and had the appearance of a piece of lump charcoal. When I broke them in half they clearly were black all the way through, but not diminished to ashes like my past experiences with using wood chunks and my ECB.

Thanks to all for the info! I'm sure enjoying the learning process, and so is my family. I wonder sometimes what my neighbors think when they see me in my backyard darting back and forth to check temps, etc.

If the Cherry was in the condition you say at the end of the cook you had made lump charcoal out of it. That's done by burning it down to that condition and snuffing out the fire.
By shutting the vents down to control temp you starved the fire.
Cooking direct is one the eariest methods of cooking and you control the heat by the size of the fire and when and how much coals you add to the fire, not by controling the air supply.
Cooking without the waterpan, you'd be better off add coals as you need them, allowing for a cleaner burn, better smoke.
Good luck
Jim

I have been cooking with a dry water pan for a while know. Sounds like it may not be a good idea. When I was using the water pan cooking butts and brisket it never seemed to go dry, probably from all the fat. Do you notice this? As long as there is liquid in the pan do you just leave it alone?

I find that about 3 1/2 to 4 ours into a long cook I will refill the waterpan, after that I normally don't have to. If you let the waterpan get to dry then the fat burns and does change the flavor of your end product.
There are times when cooking with a dry waterpans the right way to go (smoking cheese or making Tasso for example), but on a long cook the waterpan makes the job much easier and the results are very good.
Jim