[Fire Me Boy!]

Originally Posted by tooge

Well thanks. I've been doing competitive bbq for almost 20 years. That doesn't make me anymore an expert than anyone else, but it has provided me the opportunity to interact with hundreds of bbq affectionados over the years, and meat slow cooked directly over coals is generally regarded as not as good as meat smoked either over the coals with a pan in between (vertical smoker like the wsm), or meat smoked indirectly in an offset cooker. I'm sure FMB's food is fantastic. I'm just not a fan of the taste of smoke generated from fat drippings. Tomatos, tomahtos

I agree - the smoke from the drippings isn't very good for BBQ. It tastes fine, it's just not right, if you know what I mean. Hence the reason I've slowly been changing my ratio, and that's doing the trick. I can't explain it - maybe vaporizing on wood is different than vaporizing on coals? I really don't know. Or maybe it's still there, but the smoke is overpowering it. Either way, as I move the ratio of wood to charcoal higher, it tastes better.

Originally Posted by tooge

I was under the impression there was no pan in FMB's rig? I've used sand. It works well. I use water for chicken though. I thought FMB's rig had the meat hanging directly over the coals, so the drippings went onto the coals. I might have misunderstood. Dripping into the sand or water is fine IMO

No pan between the coals in the meat.