In order to understand why you would want to use a water smoker we need first of all to distinguish between two types of smoking.

The first is smoking for preservation and this is what I would call the traditional smoking that has evolved through the ages and was (before the invention of canning or the refrigerator) one of the most important ways to prevent meat from spoiling. The smoking is actually only part of the process and is the final part, the fist part is to dry the meat or cure it.

In essence, to make a good smoked product ie. one that is going to keep and not go rotten, it\’s important to remove a significant amount of moisture content from the meat. Even now there are regulations that determine how a product may be labelled as smoked or barbecue and part of meeting that regulation is to be able to demonstrate that you product has lost dry weight to the tune of 30%. Examples of food cooked this way include jerky and pastrami.

The second type of smoking is the hot smoking or barbecue that we do in our backyard or buy down at our local BBQ pit. In this instance it\’s not about preservation is simply about flavor and texture ie. a great dining experience. We\’re looking for succulence and tenderness to our food, not something that\’s dry and chewy.

This second type of smoking actually originated in ancient China where water ovens were extremely common and it was only when it came to America and folks started passing smoke through the oven that the hot smoking process of barbecue as we know it today came into existence. So here you have it, the birth of the water smoker.

Water smoking does exactly what I\’ve already described, the result is a moist, succulent piece of meat with minimal shrinkage and this is achieved because the smoker oven is set at approximately 225