Yesterday, while cooking ribs, I took a break from the smoker and ran to Wal-Mart, looking for a thermometer. Yeah, the smoker has a bi-metal thermometer on it, but those are notorious for inaccuracy and I wanted to see what was available. I came home with two, and put them to work, monitoring various parts of the smoker.
The larger unit is a
Taylor thermometer that I picked up at Wal-Mart. It cost 15 bucks, and has a probe that you can put in the oven. So, I wrapped the middle of the probe in a ball of aluminum foil to keep the probe tip from touching anything, and put it in the middle rack of the smoker.
The display unit has a small magnet that you can use to put it on the smoker, but I preferred to use a gas pipe that's running up the wall. That keeps the unit away from the heat of the smoker and puts the display at a convenient height. The thermometer displays two temps, the actual on the left and the target on the right. It comes with an alarm feature when you're using it as a meat thermometer, but I'm ignoring that read-out for todays purposes. This little unit supposedly has a range of 32F ro 482F. We'll see about that. As long as it goes to 400F, I'm good.
The second thermometer, also by Taylor, is a smaller, pocket thermometer. I stuck it in the top vent of the smoker to see what the temps coming out the top vent are. I can't find it in Wal-Mart's online catalog, but it was hanging right next to the other one, on the shelf. Also, 15 bucks.
Interesting that this one is reading a good 35F higher, out of the top vent. But, heat rises, so there's that.
Still, it's nice to see how temperature varies across the various places in the cooker.
2 comments:
Try smoking a corned beef brisket. It ain't too bad.
Never tried a corned beef brisket, but I've smoked plenty of packer-cut briskets. It ain't bad at all.
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