Sand in the Water Pan


 
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Dale Groetsema

TVWBB Super Fan
At the Madison Ribberfest last weekend, I had the opportunity to meet Stephen Smith, the rep from KCBS. We talked about BBQ and WSM's which he indicated are his favorites and he felt can hold their own against these bigger cookers you see at cookoffs. I could not agree more.

One tip he gave me that I am going to try out this weekend is to replace the water in the pan with sand. According to Stephen, fill the pan 2/3 full with sand, cover with foil, and cook as you normally would.

The theory is that the water helps to moderate temperature and the sand does that as well. When done cooking, just toss the foil, scoop out any dirty sand, and pack up your gear. Makes sense to me from the moderating temp focus, but I wonder how much different my meat will be without the moisture provided by the water.

I'll report the results here later, but was wondering who else might have used the sand in the pan method?

Dale
 
Dale
db has been doing this for a while and I believe Dylan has been doing it.
I haven't as of yet but I can't see any reason why it would not work.
I believe Stogie may be using sand for smoking jerky and peppers.
Jim
 
Jim, Yes it was db who originated the idea of the sand in the pan. Both he and Dylan have had success with this method. I haven't tried the sand in the pan method yet, but I did do something similar with a dry pan method.

Instead of sand, I used a triple boiler method consisting of an ECB charcoal pan on the bottom, the WSM waterpan in the middle, and a heavy duty sheet on top of the WSM waterpan. The foil was placed so that there was air between the WSM pan and the foil.

I have only tried this once and that was when I "smoked" bacon slices by hanging them from the top grate of my WSM. The reason I used this triple boiler method was to capture the grease from the bacon so that the grease did not smolder or burn. I cooked three pounds of bacon at 275F and had no problem holding the heat at this level nor did the grease smolder one bit. I would have used water, but I wanted a dry cooking environment for the bacon.

One thing I did notice when cooking without a thermal mass of either sand or water was the WSM seemed to respond quicker to rise in temperature. On the other hand, it was slower to lower in temperature.

But as I said, this was one trial and a short cooking time of about two hours for two batches of bacon. I may post a more detailed report about the bacon in another thread. I want to do another trial on the WSM before I post anything more.

I thought I would just pass that triple boiler idea along to everyone and see what they thought about that.

Beers,
 
Hi Dale...

As Jim mentioned, I have used the sand method many times for drying my jerky and peppers and garlic. Works very good and is much better than using just the pan, unfilled.

I place foil over the sand which makes clean-up a breeze. I use the sand from my kids sandbox.
 
Kevin
Isn't that the cats litterbox?? LOL
Juggy
I have saved your bacon post you sent out but have not had a chance to try it, soon I hope.
Jim
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kevin Taylor:
[qb]
I place foil over the sand which makes clean-up a breeze. I use the sand from my kids sandbox.[/qb] <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>I just tried the sand in the pan method today. Had two nice pork butts waiting for me when I woke up this morning. Thanks for the foil idea, clean-up was quick today.

Anyone have an idea as to what the temp difference is from top to bottom grate when using sand? My guess is that temperatures is probably within 10-15 degrees, but is it cooler or warmer?

Josh
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Josh Johnson:
Anyone have an idea as to what the temp difference is from top to bottom grate when using sand? My guess is that temperatures is probably within 10-15 degrees, but is it cooler or warmer?
[/QB] <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>I would expect the bottom grate to run 10 degree cooler in the early stages of the cook. After several hours, when the fire has stabilized, I would expect the temperature at the two grates to equalize.

That's been my experience running my kettle conversion cooker with a pizza stone instead of a water pan, measuring temps at both grates throughout the duration of the cook.
 
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I finally was able to try the sand in the waterpan method this past weekend. We organized the local block party and when word got out that I was cooking BBQ, 17 out of 21 homes on our street committed to coming. Seems they had all seen me at one point or another, tending to my smokers in the middle of the night. HA!

I set up my WSM with 2/3 pan of sand, covered with foil. Standard Minion method, using lump charcoal. Put the meat on (4 butts average weight of 6.5 pounds) at 12:30am on a warm, clear, calm night. At 6am, temps were running 242 degrees, still warm and clear. At 8am, was woken by thunder, lightening and a downpour. Checked temps and cooker was running 140 with 3 inches of water in charcoal pan. Set up spare cooker with another Minion batch, moved meat and sand to hot cooker (under cover) to finish cooking.

Removed meat from smoker around 3pm--checked internal temp on smalles butt (6.25 pounds), read 200. Largest butt (7 lb) was 193.

Compared to previous results using water in the pan, I found the surface "skin" had split on all the butts and the meat closest to the surface was drier. But, the crust was better and the rest of the meat was its normal juicy delight.

I'll play around more with this sand thing. In a competition, I might fuss over it more, basting once or twice, which I did not do the entire cook--unless you count rain as basting.

Dale
 
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