Water Pan in Pellet Smoker (Why and How to Use)
To use or not to use a water pan in pellet smokers is a debate that has been long discussed in the pellet smoking and grilling community. Some grilling enthusiasts support this idea, and others see no point in using it. So, should you have the water pan in your smoker?
The main reason for using a water pan when smoking meat in your pellet smoker is to help maintain consistent temperatures in your pellet smoker. Additional benefits of using a water pan in your smoker include keeping your meat moist, preventing it from getting burned, and improving the smoke flavor.
Discover more details below about the reasons for using water pans in pellet smokers, how to use them correctly, where to place them inside the smoker, and other helpful info.
Purpose of Water Pan in Pellet Smoker: What Does it Do?
If you’ve never used a water pan in your smoker, you might be dying to know what kind of magic it does in the pellet smoker.
Let’s discuss the purpose and benefits of placing a pan full of water inside the pellet smoker below.
1. Maintains Temperatures in the Grilling Chamber
The main function of a water pan in the pellet smoking is ensuring the cooking temperatures stay consistent inside the cooking chamber.
As you already know, water takes longer to fall/rise in temperature than air. Thus, when water in the water pan heats up, it’s sure to radiate heat upwards into your grill if the grill temperatures start to go down.
It also helps absorb excess heat if your grill temperatures start moving on an upward curve.
2. Prevents Your Meat from Burning
This is especially helpful when you’re grilling food at high temperatures. This is what happens in the cooking chamber when grilling at high heat settings: The temperature of the grill plate also increases. This means the juice and grease drippings from the meat to the dripping pan will start smoking and eventually get burned.
As you can easily guess, the smell of this burning activity is unpleasant. And even worse, it affects both the taste and flavor of your grilled meat. It even gets worse if the juice you rubbed your meat with has high sugar content; they get to burn even more even if you’ve coved your grates with foil.
Luckily, you can avoid this by introducing a water pan in your smoker (more details on the correct water pan placement coming up later).
Instead of hitting the plate/foil, the drippings will not heat, you guessed it right, right inside the water pan. And in so doing, you’re sure to avoid the undesired burned smells.
3. Facilitates a Moist Cooking Environment
In a typical smoker/grill where the heat source is pretty close to your food, the chances of your meat burning or drying out is quite high. But using a water pan in this situation will help keep the air inside the cooking chamber moist, thus preventing the issue of burned or dried out food.
4. Enhances the Smokey Flavor of Your Food
Probably the main reason why you’re using a pellet smoker is to impart that hardwood smoke flavor into your meat.
Here, the water pan lends a helping hand to ensure you get the best-smoked steak you’ve ever heard. When you place the pan inside the smoker, the water inside gets heated up and soon starts evaporating.
When the evaporating water comes in contact with the cooler parts of the meat you’re roasting, it condenses. As such, it mixes with the rub on the meat surface and makes your food “sticky.”
This “stickiness” sets the right conditions for the smoke flavor and particles to stick to the meat and interact with it better—resulting in a perfectly smoked piece of protein with a strong smoke flavor.
5. Promote BBQ Smoke Ring Formation
If you’re obsessed with smoke rings in your smoked meat, then you’ll be pleased to know that a water pan in your smoker can help you create the perfect rings.
This mainly has something to do with the moist it introduced in the cooking chamber. It makes the meat surface remain moist and thus delay forming a bbq bark.
This delay gives the smoke and chemicals more time to absorb into the food, essential for perfect smoke ring formation. A moist surface also enables the smoke to stick on the meat surface and helps with smoke ring formation.
Do You Need to Put Water in a Smoker?
You don’t necessarily need to put water in a smoker. It’s purely a matter of personal preferences.
Nonetheless, I highly recommend putting the water pan in your smoker. I’ve already discussed the top benefits that come with doing this.
- I recommend putting water in a smoker if you want to cook your food at a steady low-temperature setting for an extended period of time. This is a sure way to enjoy a water pan’s benefits.
- It doesn’t matter what you’re cooking brisket, ribs, pork shoulder, prime rib, etc. Using a smoker will ensure steady cooking temperatures, prevent your meat from burning, create a moist cooking environment, and enhance the formation of smoke rings. The result is a piece of protein perfectly cooked to your level of preferences.
However, using a water pan in your grill may not be a wise decision if you’re grilling. This is because grilling involves high heat settings for a short period of time, and the water pan won’t do much here.
Also, when searing, the high temperatures involved will make the water boil rapidly, and all of it might evaporate altogether.
Another case where you may avoid using a water pan in a smoker is when you’re cooking a turkey, chicken, or any other type of meat that has the skin on. This is because the moist cooking environment created by the water will stop the skin from getting crispy. If you don’t mind a crispy skin on your turkey breast, however, you can go ahead and use the water pan.
Video: Why You should run a Water Pan in your Pellet Smoker/Grill
Where to Put Water Pan in Smoker?
The exact place to place the pan depends on the type of smoker you’re using. If you’re using the traditional charcoal or gas smoker, you should put the water pan underneath the meat in your smoker. That is, right under the grilling grates but above the dripping tray in the smoker.
However, this isn’t the case for a pellet smoker, like a Traeger, where there’s no open flame. You can place the water pan next to the meat. Or you can simply put it anywhere off to the side or out of the way.
Remember, the water pan doesn’t serve as a dripping pan in the pellet smoker and only serves to max humidity in your cooking chamber and keep your meat moist.
You may want to avoid placing your water pan beneath the meat. This is because the drippings will drip right into the pan and coat the water, preventing it from evaporating.
But before you can even place the water pan in your smoker, you need to observe a few things to ensure it works correctly.
- First, you need to ensure you get the right type of water pan. I suggest getting a pan that offers a large water surface area and is not too deep. In other words, use a shallow and flat water pan. This is essential to ensure maximum moisture in your smoker/griller cooking chamber.
- Secondly, make holes on the upper sides of the smoker. This is important to give heat an easy way into the tray by letting it enter above and by the sides of the tray. Making holes on the upper edges of all the sides will do the trick.
Next, you’ll need to fill it with water. Do I need to explain why?
Once your pan is ready, place it in the pelleted smoker cooking chamber such that it sits next to the meat cut. Keep in mind that you should do this at the beginning of the grilling session.
You can now go ahead and place the meat on the grates. When the grilling begins, you should be able to see the juice from the meat dripping right into the water pan.
Drip Pan or Water Pan? What You Need to Use
Most beginner grillers often confuse a drip pan and water pan and even use the two terms interchangeably. However, these two are completely different grilling items.
The drip pan is meant to go underneath your food to help correct dripping from the food. The water pan goes over your heat source to offer moisture to your food. Depending on the type of smoker you’re using, you can use both the drip pan and the water pan in your smoking.
Let’s discuss the role each of these pans plays in your pellet smoker
Drip Pan
The MAIN role of a dripping pan is to correct the drippings of your meat. You can always use these drippings later as the base for your stock or sauce.
Besides, these pans also help keep the juices from running all over your smoke and causing flare-ups that can char and ruin the piece of meat you’ve spent hours preparing to come out perfectly grilled.
A drip pan may also be filled with water to double as a water pan while keeping it from drying out and burning. The high heat inside your grill smoker can burn all your gravy!
The good news is you don’t need to use a drip pan in your pellet smoker. Not only is there no space to sit this pan under your meat, but you also just don’t need it there.
Water Pan
On the other hand, a water pan is used in pellet smokers to stabilize temperatures and keep your meat moist. These pans are not intended for collecting gravy like the drip pans. Nonetheless, you can still use it for this job as they’re clean.
The water pan needs to sit above the heat source to enable the water to evaporate. Depending on the type of pellet smoker you’re using, you can simply place it at the side of your meat. Just make sure there’s a good distance between the two.
As for the contents, you should ONLY use water in the pan. You may consider using hot water since cold water will cool down the smoker and require a lot of energy to bring its temperature up. Use cold water when your smoker is running hot and need to cool it down.
Be sure to fill the pan with water just below the holes you made below its lips, so you don’t need to keep opening your smoker to refill it.
You may come across some griller arguing that you can use other contents in your water pans such as beer, wine, apple juice, onions, herbs, spices, etc.
Just stick to water, period. There’s a reason they call it a WATER pan. No other liquid you use has similar properties to water, and you’ll not get the benefits you expect from your water pan in the smoker.
How to Use Water Pan When Smoking Ribs?
By now, you already know that a water pan in a smoker helps regulate temperature. But more importantly, it helps keep your ribs moist and improves the smoking process.
If you’re smoking some ribs and want to use a water pan for the first time, you may ask yourself how you do it correctly.
- The process is pretty simple. You just need to start your grill as you normally do. But before placing your meat, you need to fill the water pan with water. Some smokers come with a built-in pan, while others don’t have one. You can always get a new pan for your smoker.
- I advise you to fill your pan with water up to the level below its lips to ensure the water can last the cooking duration. This will keep you from having to open the lid every now and then and letting the heat escape.
- I also advise you to fill your pan with hot water. This is because cold water takes longer to heat to warm up to the perfect level for condensing your meat cut.
- As I mentioned earlier, I don’t recommend adding anything else to your pan apart from water. Make sure you place the pan in the cooking chamber of your pellet smoker, next to your meat.
How to Clean Smoker Water Pan?
Cleaning is an impart part of using your water pan for obvious sanitary reasons. Plus, using clean pans ensure your smoked meat tastes fresh every time. Follow the steps and tips below to properly clean your smoker water pan.
Step 1. Give the pan time to cool off
After you’re done grilling, don’t get down to cleaning your water pan right away. Instead, let it cool.
This gives the fat time to solidify for easy removal and hassle-free cleanup.
If you’re in a hurry to clean it, simply drop some ice cubes in it to quicken the cooling process and help the grease solidify.
Once the fats have solidified, peel them off the pan and throw them away since they’ve no extra use.
Step 2. Dealing with the remaining water
With the fat out of the way, you still have one more thing to take care of: the water remaining in the pan.
There are several ways of dealing with this water, such as pouring it in your garden (only do this if there are no fats in the water). You can also drain it in the closet sink, flush it down the toilet, or put it in a waterproof trash bag and throw it away.
Step 3. The cleaning the pan
Once the water pan is free of fat and water, cleaning it becomes easy-peasy for you. Simply use hot water and a detergent to clean the pan. Rinse with clean water, and your pan is ready for reuse.
Additional tips for cleaning your water pan:
- Line the pan with aluminum foil before putting it in the smoker: This makes it easy for you to get rid of fat and everything else out at the end, making cleaning much easier and quicker for you.
- Use disposable pan: This way, you don’t have to go through the hassle of cleaning your water pan. You simply throw it away after use.
Can I Reuse the Water Pan?
Yes, you can reuse the water pan. But make sure you clean it properly before reusing it (see our cleaning instructions above). However, if you’re using a disposable pan, I advise you to throw it away and use a new one every time.
Final Verdict
Using a water pan in a pellet smoker is not a must. But after learning the benefits it comes with, you should consider having it in your pellet smoker or grill when cooking meat.
With a water part in place, you don’t have to worry about temperatures in your smoker fluctuating below or above your target cooking temperature. You also don’t have to worry about your food getting burnt. Water in the pellet smoker also improves the smoke flavor and enhances the formation of smoke rings.
Remember to only put water in the pan and not any other liquid. And be sure to clean your pan after every use to ensure it’s always ready for the next grilling session. Follow the helpful tips I’ve shared with you in this guide to enable you to use your water pan the correct way and derive all the benefits it comes with.