Why did I buy a Traeger?

[Shimmy]

Hey all,

Brand new to the forum and brand new Trager owner, but I gotta say, I'm not loving it yet, I've come begging for help, maybe I am just doing something wrong??

I've been an avid smoker for years, I have used my Weber Smokey Mountain for 6+ years now and really love it. But I've been interested in a pellet grill\smoker for the last several years and after reading reviews and going back and forth in my mind on which one to get, I made the decision to go with a Traeger.

I've had it for a few weeks now, and have used it a lot - Rib's, Beer Can Chicken, pulled pork, pizza, brats, burgers, etc. Several times I have followed the recipes found on the Traeger App, or from videos posted by Traeger users on you tube, and I seem to run into the same issue, the times on the app or the videos are much shorter than what I am finding. Example, BC Chicken on the app it says cook time to be 1hr 15min at 350, mine took close to 2.5 hours, towards the end I pushed the temp to 450 just so we could eat before midnight. This past weekend, I cooked a pork butt, the video stated 200 degrees for roughly 12 hours (until the stall), then 225 once out of the stall to the desired 190, after about 15 hours and being stuck at 155, I ended up wrapping the butt, pushing the temp tp 450 and after about 19 total hours it was at temp.

I understand that weight of the meat and altitude can affect the times, I get it, but not this much. Also, I am cooking to recommended temps, I'm not into eating shoe leather.

I really want to enjoy my new grill, but I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong, any helpful tips or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[TheGrumpyGriller]

Hey all,

Brand new to the forum and brand new Trager owner, but I gotta say, I'm not loving it yet, I've come begging for help, maybe I am just doing something wrong??

I've been an avid smoker for years, I have used my Weber Smokey Mountain for 6+ years now and really love it. But I've been interested in a pellet grill\smoker for the last several years and after reading reviews and going back and forth in my mind on which one to get, I made the decision to go with a Traeger.

I've had it for a few weeks now, and have used it a lot - Rib's, Beer Can Chicken, pulled pork, pizza, brats, burgers, etc. Several times I have followed the recipes found on the Traeger App, or from videos posted by Traeger users on you tube, and I seem to run into the same issue, the times on the app or the videos are much shorter than what I am finding. Example, BC Chicken on the app it says cook time to be 1hr 15min at 350, mine took close to 2.5 hours, towards the end I pushed the temp to 450 just so we could eat before midnight. This past weekend, I cooked a pork butt, the video stated 200 degrees for roughly 12 hours (until the stall), then 225 once out of the stall to the desired 190, after about 15 hours and being stuck at 155, I ended up wrapping the butt, pushing the temp tp 450 and after about 19 total hours it was at temp.

I understand that weight of the meat and altitude can affect the times, I get it, but not this much. Also, I am cooking to recommended temps, I'm not into eating shoe leather.

I really want to enjoy my new grill, but I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong, any helpful tips or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

You are not doing anything wrong most likely. I too have found the virtually all of Traeger's recipes are off with times. I've also experienced the pork butt times being much longer than expected. The best thing I can say is that most of the time, the only thing you can do is smoke to IT and simply consider the recipes times to be a very rough guideline.

Of course each recipe's range will be different....pizza is going to take 10 min vs 8 in the recipe, but certainly the range in doing a pork butt or brisket will have a much wider range. The first thing I tried when I get my Timberline 1300 was a brisket and I saw the recipe with 12 hours....it ended up taking 16+.

I would also 100000% make sure you use a reliable (e.g. Inkbird or Fireboard) probe to monitor the ambient temp as Traeger's readings are quite unreliable. I' will adjust the set temp based on what my separate probe reads, and that may also go a long way to why you see discrepancies in the guesstimated timings.

I am sure others will have comments as well, and hopefully that'll help keep you going so you can just enjoy the food!

Good luck!

 

[Murphy's Law]

My Traeger probe is wildly inaccurate so as mentioned above, and like so many here, I use a Fire Board 2 external unit to measure and monitor my cooks. For example, if I want a cook at 225 I will have to set my Traeger app to around 250 to achieve an actual pit temp of 225. I adjust the temp on the Traeger app upward or downward until my Fire Board ambient probe reads a temp of 225.

So basically, if I didn't know this I would have set my Traeger app to 225 but in reality I'm cooking at ~200 so the cooks would be much longer than expected.

 

[tommyb50]

I'm pretty new to a pellet smoker as well. Did a pork butt for the first time this past weekend with new grill, traeger set to 225, took way too long, upwards of 14 hours, I like you ended up turning up the temp because I had guests waiting to eat. I'm ordering a Fireboard so I can tell if 225 is really 225. I suspect it is not...

 

[Murphy's Law]

If you can’t afford a Fire Board, or simply don’t want to spend that much money, look at Ink Bird. You can get a wireless for $100 or less and a Bluetooth for around $50 on Amazon.

Just a FYI!!

 

[TheGrumpyGriller]

If you can’t afford a Fire Board, or simply don’t want to spend that much money, look at Ink Bird. You can get a wireless for $100 or less and a Bluetooth for around $50 on Amazon.

Just a FYI!!

I love my Ink Bird IT4 - I am actually planning to get a second one as 4 probes isn't enough

 

[CMTiger]

So I literally just got my Pro575 last week and cooked my first bird on it Monday.......are you guy saying that while the Traeger will do an admirable job of holding the temp, it just may be the wrong temp?

How about the probe that goes into the meat? Is that one off too?

 

[Shimmy]

Wow, thanks to all that responded. I have the Century 885 and was excited to learn about the on-board features, but based on these comments it's a little disappointing to learn that those features do not function well. I'll check out both the Fire Board and Ink Bird options. I really do appreciate the responses.

 

[traeger860]

So I literally just got my Pro575 last week and cooked my first bird on it Monday.......are you guy saying that while the Traeger will do an admirable job of holding the temp, it just may be the wrong temp?

How about the probe that goes into the meat? Is that one off too?

It depends. My 22 series was off, but after learning how much it was off, I was able to account for the difference and make the necessary adjustments to the cooking temp. My Ironwood has been pretty spot on.

 

[TheGrumpyGriller]

So I literally just got my Pro575 last week and cooked my first bird on it Monday.......are you guy saying that while the Traeger will do an admirable job of holding the temp, it just may be the wrong temp?

How about the probe that goes into the meat? Is that one off too?

I rarely use the included probe at all - the Ink Bird (for me) or the Fire Board probes are much better. With my grill at least, the grill temp was pretty close at lower temps (< 250), but had a larger disparity at the higher temps. Sometimes I'll use it as an additional ambient temp monitor and compare it with the Ink Bird, but the other advantage of a separate ambient probe is that you can place them closer to whatever you are cooking. The built-in monitor (on mine at least) is in the upper right of the grill and may not reflect the actual temp on the other side of the grill.

Since I typically have more than one thing cooking at a time, even if it were spot on, I'd still need to use a separate set of probes, so at that point, I'd rather have them all in one place rather than switching from the Traeger app to the Ink Bird to monitor things.

Enjoy!

 

[CMTiger]

Dang....that's a pretty big bummer for an $800 grill

 

[JamesB]

Dang....that's a pretty big bummer for an $800 grill

That’s true! But you really need more than 1 probe anyway, sooo, may as well just spend a few extra bucks and get an accurate probe set. I like to say a FireBoard is just about the same price as two ruined prime whole packer briskets, and will save you a lot of time and hassle in the long run.

 

[CMTiger]

My Treager was a work gift.......my wife has already said that while the Traeger was free, she knows I'm going to start spending money on it......so I may hold off on asking for more probes for awhile

She bought me a meater pro for Christmas.......so may I can at least use that and the meat probe that came with the Traeger to see how they mesh.

 

[Murphy's Law]

Dang....that's a pretty big bummer for an $800 grill

I paid $800 for my Weber and all I got was 5 knobs and a push button!

Traeger is a lot of grill but some tools are just better when they’re designed for the job!

 

[CMTiger]

I paid $800 for my Weber and all I got was 5 knobs and a push button!

Traeger is a lot of grill but some tools are just better when they’re designed for the job!

Well.....when you put it like that I paid way more for my Weber Genesis