Pizza or pie pan instead of clay saucer or foil?


 
J

Jon Des.

TVWBB Gold Member
Anybody try it? It seems like a $5 or $6 pan would go a lot farther than $5 worth of foil and be much easier to clean. It wouldn't provide the heat sink of ceramic, but it would seal to the water bowl to make a good insulator.
 
Sure, that'd work.

For my mini-WSM, I found a 12" pizza pan for $1 that works well.

But I couldn't find one large enough for my WSM that wasn't twice the price of the clay saucer.
 
Jon the ceramic provides minimal heat sink , the charcoal pan functions as a heat shield/ diffuser . IMHO if not using water ( an effective heat sink) , you might as well just foil the empty pan to make cleanup easy.
 
Jon,give it a try. I switched to a clay saucer last year and love it! Does a great job as a heat sink,and with foil,clean up is a breeze! But some people around here don't use anything but the bottom vents to control the heat levels. Just an empty foiled water pan. I would try something with a little depth if doing something fatty like a butt,though. I'd think that a pizza pan would get full and run over. But that's just my 2 cents!
 
Thanks guys. I'm going to seek out a 13" pie pan and see what happens, and I'll report back either way. If nothing else, I might do my part to help out the world's reserves of tin foil.
 
Jon,

So you are going to place the metal pizza pan inside your water pan, and then not use foil? The air gap shoudl provide the insulation so that great doesn't burn, but if you were cooking multiple butts it might overflow. Also, if grease dropped down where the two pans meat, it will probably leak through and get to the bottom of the water pan, where it is going to burn.

By the foil from a restaurant wholesale if you want to save some money, it gets expensive in the small rolls.
 
Josh - that's basically my plan. Find a 14" (just measured and 13" is too small) pie or deep pizza pan and use it to top the empty water pan. I really don't enjoy cleaning the water bowl, and even if I use half a roll of foil it never keeps all of the grease out.

Hopefully I will find the right pan today and post some pics after a trial run.
 
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