To water pan or not

Gang,

As most of you know I just got my Bandera and am in the process of putting it together as well as doing the mods now while she is still a virgin.

I have been looking over the instructions for the unit (going to start putting it together tonight) and I see the waterpan. Assuming this is included in my box of good goodness, do you guys actually use it for water and other liquids?

I know I have read tons of reponses on other forums regarding the use of water, and the absence of a waterpan. It seems like it is a 50/50 split from what I have read. Some folks say that the evaporation of water in the air creates a barrier on the meat in which the smoke does not penetrate as well if there was no water vapor in the air.

Do you use your waterpan?

If so, what do you put in the pan? Water, apple juice, red wine (for beef)...

Have any of you done a test cooking meat with a pan and without?

I am curous to see what you folks have to say about it.

Regards,

Search "water pan contents", click "all terms" and there you go.

The one is Woodpile is hillarious, but there is serious ones too.

Yeah, I'll search and save us all the ruminations from old. =) Thanks gang.

parrothead said:

Oh boy here we go.

Click to expand...

heavy duty foil (2 layers), then sand, then 4 layers of heavy duty foil.

Next?

I'll save Phil the trouble of typing his standard response again. It's called a water pan for a reason. Put water in it and use it for your first several cooks, if you want to try sand later, by all means do so. The water will make fire management easier in the beginning so start with that.

If you imagine your firebox and baffle as a stove burner and your food suspended on a shelf above it. The heat would obviously be too direct for low and slow Q-type cooking. If you set a pan of water over that same burner, then you get mellow even heat, the type we look for in the smokebox.

Some folks say that the evaporation of water in the air creates a barrier on the meat in which the smoke does not penetrate as well if there was no water vapor in the air.

Click to expand...

I've read a lot of the same kind of crap in other internet sources too. I think this stems from some machismo induced thinking that a WSM or ECB with a water pan is somehow not a "real smoker" like a heavy guage Klose, Gator or other offset woodburner and that anything with a waterpan is somehow inferior to anything without one. Bullshit!

BB-Don't think I'm ranting on you, I'm going off on the mental midgets that write the stuff we've both read that spreads this misinformation. I get smoke ring just as thick on my BSKD as I do in my Cimarron with no water. Smokering comes from the wood.

BB - my motive for using sand is that I am far too lazy to clean out the crud left behind
when the water boils off. I kept forgetting to check the water pan until it was too late.

So now, sand. It's a heat sink but not a moisturizer.

Anyways, lot's of threads have touched on this. Lot's of good info in those threads
too. Have fun reading them and then try out things for yourself.

Newp, no offense taken in the least. I appreciate the responses. That is why I asked...I wanted to hear it from folks using the good Ol' Bandera. In the past I have cooked in large offset cookers and had great results with no using water. However, this little guy is so compact I wanted to hear from the horses mouth what the real deal was using the pan.

After reading those threads and sifting through the irrelevant comments I did come away with the fact that by using sand or water I will achieve the same end product. With that said I will not be going in dry! =)

Thanks guys.