Agreed, you should be able to do the same thing in the oven – as I mentioned, yesterday I did a pulled pork in the oven, using exactly the same method as I would with a smoker: dry rubbed, uncovered, straight on a rack with a water pan added no so much for temperature control/heat sink, but to just keep the fat from dripping and burning up on the pan. There’s really little difference minus the lack of smoke.
Yep, with a WSM, it pretty much is start the fire and forget about it – at least for about 6-7 hours until you may have to refill it, depending on what you’re doing. Mine runs on the hot side I think because I use a sand-filled water pan with foil on it instead of a water, but the exact temp does not matter, so much as it doesn’t flare up too crazily, which it won’t unless a lot of fat drips off the sides into the charcoal. I do direct on the WSM sometimes so I can get that fat-in-the-fire flavor I love, but that requires a little bit of attention if the fire gets out of control. I’m kinda wondering now if I can just throw a lump of fat into the fire using the sand pan method and get some of that flavor – for some reason, that’s never occurred to me until now.
Yep, I think we talked about this before in another BBQ thread, but it bears repeating…despite it running a bit hotter, switching from water to foil-covered sand in the pan was one of the best smoking decisions I ever made. Sand makes a great steady heat sink, and it’s so much easier taking the oily foil off the top after and discarding than having to deal with a big panful of greasy dirty water at the end.
Hunger makes the best sauce and all that. Once when camping with a half-dozen buddies we’d all brought a bag of charcoal and something to grill. The campsite had these grills that consisted of a three-sided steel box about six inches high with the grill on top.
Unfortunately it was cold and windy that night so the heat from the charcoal was being blown away and after a half hour nothing was anywhere near done. There was sand available and we considered fetching some and putting it inside the box to get the coals closer. Unfortunately it had rained the day before and the sand was still quite damp so that was vetoed.
The grill was hinged so we raised it up, laid some heavy-duty foil on the coals and put the meat on the foil. This smothered the coals so we wound up covering half of the pile while we fanned the other half with paper plates, switching back and forth as it looked like they’d recovered.
After about an hour of this, we had the meat cooked to the point of us being willing to eat it and one guy declared, “I don’t care how it tastes – this is going to be the best steak I’ve had in my life!”
Hah! I know exactly the grills you are talking about and they are a pain in the ass to grill properly on.
And yet people still buy them for home use! I’ve seen them offered in outdoor catalogs. C’mon, people. Weber kettles aren’t that expensive.
Really? Man, why would you do that to yourself? You just have so little control other than raising and lowering the grate and, beyond that, much of your heat is lost on the open side. And there’s no good way to lid them unless there’s some aftermarket product or you hack it with like foil or something.
Oh, and one more tip: you can grill directly on charcoal itself.