adding water

[Guest]

First time out cooking pork butts right now - what's the easiest way to add water?

 

[Dave Lewis]

Before the meat goes on, I pour the water directly into the water pan thru the bottom grate. Once the meat goes on, I use a long funnel and pour it thru the funnel using the access door.

 

[Bill Dowd]

I also add water though the grate before assembling the cooker. If I need to add water, I use a watering can with a long narrow spout. The one I use hold a half gallon. It's easy to control the flow by the tilt of the can. That way I minimize the cahnce of overflowing the pan onto the hot coals below.

 

[Guest]

Pork butts are the one item I smoke where I don't use water. I wrap the water pan in foil and fill it with sand. Butts are so marbled with fat that any additional moisture produced by the water doesn't matter much. Just personal preference.

 

[Larry Evers]

I too use sand but when I did use water I found that those long tubed garden watering wands works very well. Mine was a "Orbit SunMate Pro 36" Wand with 9 Pattern Turret." The pattern to use is the "soaker" which puts out the right amount of water and not splash down on the coals. It also has a valve at the wand so that you can adjust amount of water as-well-as turn it on and off.

 

[Mike Rockwood]

I've recently gone to using only sand. I've done 2 different smokings of ribs, and a smoking of butt just yesterday. Personally, I haven't seen any major pro/con to either method, except for the one major pro using sand - cleanup. I use the WSM water pan filled to about an inch from the top with sand. I have a layer of HD foil on top of the sand, and a second layer that gets replaced with each use.

At this pont, I don't see any need for using water.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for all the pointers - butts came out perfect! I'm from Memphis but live in Colorado now. Only a few people at my party had even heard of a smoker and believe it or not there were a few who had never had a "pulled pork" sandwich!! They all want to know when I'm gonna do it again and if my cooking services are for hire!!!