Water Smokers – The Argument For And Against
For some reason, most of the research I do into the origins of cooking always leads me back to China. Don't get me wrong, Chinese food is great but why always China? Or is it to do with the fact that most of my research is into the barbecue smoker?
I started researching kamados and now it would appear that the humble water smoker also originated in China.
The principle of the water smoker is that that a bath of water is placed between the heat sources and the food to effectively steam the food. By cooking this way, you can ensure that the results of your cooking are always supremely moist.
The perceived negative of water cooking is that the temperature you cook at is lower (otherwise the water would boil away in no time) and therefore the cooking process takes about twice as long. Fair enough but it also means that your cooking time doesn't have to be quite as accurate.
If you are cooking at 350 Fahrenheit and you happen to leave something in the oven for an extra hour, you're sure to know about it by the texture and flavor but if you do the same with water cooking then the difference is less marked. This must have been a tremendous advantage in ancient times when you could just heat up the water over and let you food cook all day long, certainly it works for me today too.
The water cooker eventually found it's way over the Pacific to North America and it was particularly in the South of the country where devotees to this style of cooking started to appear. Some of these folks started the habit of putting wood chips on the fire and so we have the birth of water smoking.
Many modern day water smokers look somewhat like a torpedo or bullet. An upright elongated oval cylinder with a heat source in the bottom, two racks in the top for the food and in the middle is the water tray.
Fuel wise, you can get charcoal burners, propane and electric units so the options are there for you to try. Charcoal units will have the wood chips placed directly on the heat source whereas gas and electric units normally have a "hotplate" arrangement. The choice of fuel is yours, some will argue that charcoal is the traditional way to go but it is messy and takes more time to get the fire under control. Just like a gas grill, the propane units are a little more immediate to get the oven up to temperature and under control.
The advantages of these units are that they are compact in design and lightweight making them quite portable so if this is an issue for you then a water smoker maybe the way to go.
There are however a number of downsides:-
- Take care that the water bath doesn't run dry. If it does you'll get some pretty nasty burnt smells that are going to taint the flavor of your food.
- When you open the door to replenish fuel and water, you'll see a dramatic drop in oven temperature and it's take 10 or 15 minute to recover – all of this will add to the cooking time
- These smokers aren't well insulated so every time you set up your smoker the settings are going to be different dependent on ambient temperature.
Having said all of the above, you can achieve great results from one of these little bullet smokers and they don't cost the Earth to buy either.
Questions and Answers
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