Stick Burning in WSM

[jfmorris]

While I love Steven Raichlen's books and videos, my experiences with burning wood in a custom offset with a firebox that is smaller than it should be for stick burning lead me to have a few concerns about this in the WSM. While I am sure "Steve" pulled it off quite well for a show, I think:

1. Flames like shown in the photo won't bode well for food above them, so you will have to run a good bit of wood through until it burns down to a bed of nice coals, to generate heat without huge flames.

2. If you don't burn down to a bed of coals, then feed the fire with limited wood, the flames hitting the water pan above will generate soot. That is what happens if I put too much wood in the undersized firebox on my offset - the flames hitting the top of the firebox and shooting into the cooking chamber tend to turn "sooty" and generate bad black smoke.

3. You will need to run with all vents WIDE open, maybe the door too, to burn cleanly. Otherwise - black sooty smoke will start to form. With my offset, is the fire is too big, it will only burn clean with the top of the firebox open (no end door on this one, just a top door).

My thoughts are this won't be a LOT different in the long run from starting with a nice bed of coals from a lit chimney, then feeding your sticks of wood to the fire through the side door of the WSM continuously throughout the cook.

And to further the thoughts started by ecowper - you will be sacrificing temp control. You will have to manage the temp by how much wood you feed the fire, and not by vent settings, much like many offsets. I think it is going to run much HOTTER than you are used to as well.

I am not saying this technique won't work - just my observations on it in a WSM, and pitfalls to look out for. Why don't you split some wood down to size, try it, and let us know what happens?

EDIT: I think that the WSM with a wood fire like this, no pan, and just the cooking grates would be a GREAT approximation of a Santa Maria Grill! I.e. grill over a live fire, but don't smoke with it.

[ecowper]

I have never tried stick burning in my WSM. I would be very concerned about temp control, I think. Also fire management and tending the fire. One of the things I value about the WSM is how stable the fire and temp is once I've got it set up and burning.

[Brad White STL]

I was gifted Project Smoke by Steven Raichlen for Christmas. If you own it, you will find the attached pictures on pg 25 and 26 of the book. This is clearly showing Steve (he doesn't know we're on a first name basis yet) using just wood in a teepee and log cabin method in the WSM.

The logs have been split pretty thin, at least compared to how I normally buy them.

Has anyone tried this? Does it result is better flavor? Huge caveat... I'm not afraid of the "extra work". I very much so enjoy the process of smoking almost as much as I enjoy the results.

Thanks in advance for the feedback.