New to Weber Pellet Smoker’s - water pan?

[Capt Ruff]

Hi fellow Weber Searwood chefs, are you using a water pan? Going to smoke (first time using Searwood) a Boston butt tomorrow and would love to get some wisdom from the group.

 

[GRT1959]

Hundreds of cooks on my Smokefire and never used one yet. Water pans are normally used in traditional smokers to deflect direct heat from the meat and to help keep temps stable, but I always use a catch pan below the meat (w/o water) and pellet smokers run steady. Plus it just seems to make sense to me to not introduce any additional moisture to the inside of the grill. Just my two cents... have a great cook and enjoy the new toy, absolutely love mine!

 

[Capt Ruff]

Hundreds of cooks on my Smokefire and never used one yet. Water pans are normally used in traditional smokers to deflect direct heat from the meat and to help keep temps stable, but I always use a catch pan below the meat (w/o water) and pellet smokers run steady. Plus it just seems to make sense to me to not introduce any additional moisture to the inside of the grill. Just my two cents... have a great cook and enjoy the new toy, absolutely love mine!

The new Searwood apparently has a different flavorizer bar design then the Smokefire. The wetsmoke accessory for the Smokefire won’t work with the Searwood. It doesn’t look like I can fit a catch pan under the grate. We’ll see how this goes. Thanks for your input.

 

[Dougr]

I have literally hundreds of cooks on both the Smokefire and the Searwood. For what it's worth, on slow cooks I almost always use a water pan. As GRT1959 said, it helps to deflect the heat giving you more of an indirect heat source. This does help to even out the cooking temps. I believe that it helps to prevent the meat from drying out. On the "downside", I have found that it increases your cooking time.

I almost always use the top rack to cook on my Searwood, the water pan fits nicely under what I am cooking. I am going to cook a 15# turkey for Thanksgiving and I won't be able to use the top rack. I have a thin tray with a wire rack that I use for making jerky. I am going to try putting some water in the pan and the turkey on the wire rack, on the bottom cooking surface.