Dial Thermometers

[mlmartinet]

Was smoking my turkey for thanksgiving. I Used a RediCheck ET-733 mounted at grate level and noticed that temp varied all sorts of different. I was wondering if any one new the accuracy of the dial thermometers that are mounted on the Lang. Some points they were reading close enough to say it was GTG bu a lot of times I noticed that the redicheck was showing lower than what the gauges were showing.

 

[zotie]

The dial style thermometer are notoriously inaccurate.  Its just due to their design.  Tel-Tru's are supposedly the most accurate of that class.  It's more of a temperature indicator.  Also the placement of it isn't on the grate which is where your food sits. So I use it during the fire up process to get in the ball park and then I throw my Maverick on after I steam clean and use that to pin point.  I've noticed that my Gauge runs about 25-50 degrees hotter than the maverick.  On my old Weber the maverick would say 225 and the Weber dial would be 300+ due to its placement and inaccuracy.  More reading: http://amazingribs.com/BBQ_buyers_guide/thermometer_buying_guide.html

It's also not the end of the world if you are shooting for 225 and you bounce up to 235 or even 250F for a little bit.  I've been super anal and sat next the lang for an entire 8 hour cook and made sure it sat within +/- 5 the whole time and I've also just kept an eye on it and thrown a split on every 30 min or when I notice on the remote the temp is starting to fall.  In each case the meat turned out great.  It's been my experience that poultry and ribs and especially pork butt are forgiving on temps as long as you don't exceed 275 for a long time, Poultry IMO whats a higher heat to crisp skin and avoid drying out.  Brisket is where I think you would want to pay attention to your temps I'm still working on that.

My temps:

PB 250

RIBS 250

Poultry 300+

Have fun with the lang.

RZ-