Not being overly happy with getting my temperatures up on the ProQ, I decided to treat it like the Smokey Joe and take the water pan out of it. Don't get me wrong, the big ass water pan is great at defusing the temp and keeping it consistent, but it also adds a lot of time to the cook.

So, at 3:30 PM, I fired up the pit. I used plum wood chunks as my smoke source. It's a very hot day today, I'm sweating from head to toe, so time to crack a Lazy Yak or two.

At 3:50pm, the chicken went on with an internal temperature of 11C. Mmm ... that dark rich plum wood smell, oh how I have missed thee. Still getting smoke out the edges of the lid of the ProQ but happy with the temps - ProQ rangehood was sitting at 200F and my own gauge in the top vent was just under 250F.

One hour later, it was smelling awesome and my stomach was grumbling. The internal temperature was at 38C with the rangehoods at 300 and 350F ... a little higher than I wanted, so I closed the bottom vents by half. It seems without the big water pan, controlling the temperature by the vents is a must.

At 5:50pm, it hit a bit of a stall and was at 74C internal. I removed one of the stackers to bring it down lower and 15 minutes later, it was at 83C, the chicken came over and it was time to cleanup. And then eat.

On the weekend, my wife went to the $2 shop too and found alfoil trays on the cheap and picked me up a couple. I'll save them for the big Christmas cook I'm planning on doing in a months time.

It's been a couple of weeks since the last cook and my wife had bought this nice leg of lamb for me to smoke. I rubbed the lamb down with a simple rub consisting of just 1 tablespoon of salt and pepper and some ground dried rosemary from my garden. I used lemon juice to make the rub stick.

At 11:35am, I fired up the pit and put the boiling water in the smoker's water pan. I'd taken the leg of lamb out of the fridge and after about 30 minutes, with an internal temperature of 14C, I put the meat on the smoker. The rangehood temperature gauge was steadily rising too.

At 1:45pm, the ProQ rangehood was sitting at 175F, whilst my other rangehood gauge that I put in one of the top vents of the smoker was reading 225F - it always seems to be able a 50F difference between these two gauges. The internal temperature of the lamb was 53C.

At 3:10pm, I started boiling a new pot of water for the pan as it was starting to look low. An hour later and the internal temperature was 70°C and my rangehood was 250F, whilst the ProQ one was sitting at 190F.

At 4:45pm, I decided to take the water pan out and the temperature when up to 300F. I did this because the internal temperature had stalled and dropped down to 70C. I also wrapped the lamb in alfoil to help getting through the stall.

30 minutes later and it was back up to cooked internal temperature of 77C, so I took it off to rest and began the clean up / shutdown process of the ProQ. So, how was it ? Fantastic. The smoke ring was amazing, The rub was tasty. I got comments from the wife and in-laws that it was the best lamb they've ever had. Guess I'm doing something right.