Temperature Sensor

[onefinefeast]

Seems to me as if the temperature sensor that the Traeger uses to maintain ambient heat is either in the firebox or right at top of cooking zone. I had mine at 275 and used a kitchen thermometer to check - and the heat about a couple inches above the bottom grate was only 240. Made a tri-tip brisket style for my first cook - took 7hrs+ …. It was goddamn delicious though NGL …

 

[Shedd]

I’ve gotten to where I don’t even wonder what my ambient temp is during a cook anymore. Other than my Meter probes I don’t monitor it. If you’ve used the Meters then you know the ambient end of the probe isn’t accurate until later in the cook for some reason. I also know my 780 is all over the place on ambient temperature but as mentioned the grills ambient probe is at my bottom/main grate level. Other than a cooking a spatchcock chicken I don’t go above a low and slow (225) cook so I set my temp at 235 and forget it. I put these butts on last night about 11 pm and went to bed. I left my phone in the den as I usually do and didn’t even think about what temperature my grill was. The worst thing can happen is I throw away a couple butts! I got up this morning, drank my coffee and made some phone calls to my subcontractors (I’m a Homebuilder) and didn’t check these until a little after 7am. They are looking nice as you can see.

 

[BobbyQ]

Temperature sensor posts in this forum are like "What's the best oil to use in your motor?" posts in automotive forums.

OP, If you're opening the lid to read the oven thermometer you're probably not getting an accurate reading as the temperature drops pretty quickly as soon as you open it. Most members use a third party probe (I use Fireboard) to monitor cook temp.

 

[RayClem]

If you measure temperature in the cooking chamber of your Traeger, you are likely to find variations left to right, front to back, and top to bottom. The air circulation through the grill will help minimize such variations, but it won't eliminate them. Those who use offset burners experience similar fluctuations and learn to adapt their cooking procedures to take advantage of these differences. Traeger owners can as well.

If you have ever tried baking cookies in your kitchen oven, you will realize that ovens have temperature variations as well. That is why it is a common practice to move cookies from one rack to another part way through the baking process so the cookies will be cooked uniformly top vs bottom.

Learn how your Traeger operates and learn to adjust your cooking procedures to its idiosyncrasies.

 

[Shedd]

Even though I couldn’t receive updates on my Meters after the butts was wrapped in the foil pans, I used my traeger probe so I would get notifications while I spent a couple hours at a job site this morning. Surprisingly the traeger probe was reading exactly the same as the meter probe that was inserted beside each other.

 

[jrich523]

I had a similar experience, but I feel like 30+ degrees from what the grill says is a bit more than a normal variance. Also I see the grill, when at to 225 go +- 10 which is the sort of variance I expect. when I checked it was 30 off from the sensor reporting. I'm about to do another brisket (last ones was 12lbs 30 hours) that I can hopefully do in under 24 hours. One thing I read and will try is to clean the grill sensor since another user mentioned that helped, but it was a used grill. But yeah still super tasty with that super long cook

 

[Big Man Dan]

I have an Inkbird with 4 probes and I dedicate 1 to the ambient temperature. I place it as close to the traeger sensor as I can.