Hey! New Traeger owner...this isn’t a big dea because I LOVE my Smoke Meat thermometer. Has anyone else noticed a consistent 7° difference between the Traeger meat probe and a separate thermometer?
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Club Member
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- Near Richmond VA
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Weber Performer Deluxe
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Cookshack Smokette Elite
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lots of probes.
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That's not unusual. I have seen much greater variances posted here. One thing you can do is place your Smoke probe in boiling water. It should read ~ 212°, (depending on your elevation).
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Club Member
- Mar 2016
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- Sunny SoCal
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Cooking gadgets
Weber Summit Charcoal Grill Center
Weber Summit Platinum D6
Blue Rhino Razor
Dyna-Glo XL Premium Dual Chamber
Camp Chef Somerset IV along with their Artisan Pizza Oven 90
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Thermapen Mk4 - ThermaQ High Temp Kit - ThermaQ Meathead Kit - ThermaQ WiFi - ThermoWorks IR-GUN-S - ThermoWorks Signals & Billows - ThermoPop -ThermoWorks ProNeedle - ThermoWorks TimeStick Trio x2 - and a Christopher Kimball timer - NO, I do not work for ThermoWorks...I just like their products.
Other useful bits...
KitchenAid 7-qt Pro Line stand mixer
A Black & Decker food processor that I can't seem to murder
A couple of immersion blenders, one a "consumer" model & the other a "high end" Italian thing. Yes, the Italian one is a bit better, but only marginally
Instant Pot Duo Evo Plus 8-qt + accessories like egg-bite & egg holders
All-Clad pots & pans, along with some cast iron...everything from 7" Skookie pans to 8.5qt Dutch ovens
Weber GBS griddle, pizza stone, and wok
Knives range from Mercer to F. Dick to "You spent how much for one knife? One knife?!" LOL
Well, 7° isn’t that much variance... More important IMO is that it’s consistent. 7° is easy to account for.
And depending on who did the calibration...yeah, it might not be 100% accurate. I imagine the Traeger is also a thermistor device... The smoke is accurate to within about 1.8° under around 250° but that accuracy goes down as the temps go up... Knowing that...they could both be well within their specs.
Which is why I think consistency can be more important than dead on accuracy...at least for a leave in probe. If I need serious accuracy, or when I think I’m getting close to pulling food, I’ll grab my Thermopen.
That said...
I’m a fan of ThermoWorks and find that their calibration is pretty spot on. I’d do an ice water bath test on both. I prefer that to boiling water because I don’t have to figure out my barometric pressure & elevation.
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my rex tec is the same way. it is 9 degrees high. my probes are calibrated so i just set it to my probes.
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How do you calibrate them yourself?
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Take a glass and fill it up 3/4 of ice and than fill it with water and stir it and let sit for 5 min, then take a pan of water and place on a burner and let it come to a boil. take your probe and put it in the ice filled glass and see if it close to 32 degrees (+ o r- 2 degrees)and in the boiling water it should be close to 212 degrees (+ or - 2 degrees). this is how i do it. maybe a better way out there or somebody has a better way but this way i can see if my probes are good. hope this helps
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Club Member
- Mar 2016
- 1626
- Sunny SoCal
-
Cooking gadgets
Weber Summit Charcoal Grill Center
Weber Summit Platinum D6
Blue Rhino Razor
Dyna-Glo XL Premium Dual Chamber
Camp Chef Somerset IV along with their Artisan Pizza Oven 90
Anova WiFi
Thermometers
Thermapen Mk4 - ThermaQ High Temp Kit - ThermaQ Meathead Kit - ThermaQ WiFi - ThermoWorks IR-GUN-S - ThermoWorks Signals & Billows - ThermoPop -ThermoWorks ProNeedle - ThermoWorks TimeStick Trio x2 - and a Christopher Kimball timer - NO, I do not work for ThermoWorks...I just like their products.
Other useful bits...
KitchenAid 7-qt Pro Line stand mixer
A Black & Decker food processor that I can't seem to murder
A couple of immersion blenders, one a "consumer" model & the other a "high end" Italian thing. Yes, the Italian one is a bit better, but only marginally
Instant Pot Duo Evo Plus 8-qt + accessories like egg-bite & egg holders
All-Clad pots & pans, along with some cast iron...everything from 7" Skookie pans to 8.5qt Dutch ovens
Weber GBS griddle, pizza stone, and wok
Knives range from Mercer to F. Dick to "You spent how much for one knife? One knife?!" LOL
To calibrate, the easiest method is an ice water bath...
Fill a cup/beaker/measuring cup/whatever with ice...preferably crushed ice.
Next, fill the container with water...the colder the better. (No sense in melting all that ice quickly.)
Slowly add the water up to about a half inch or so BELOW the crushed ice. Too much water and it all floats up. The idea is to keep the ice saturated. Ideally, you don’t want any of the ice to float.
Let it sit for a minute or two...
Now go ahead and insert the thermometer probe. Do NOT let it touch the sides or bottom.
Also, do not let it fully penetrate the ice and push into the water below. In a cup/mug/measuring cup...there will be a layer of water below the ice. That’s not where we want to be. Somewhere in the middle of that ice layer is ideal. It should read 32° f / 0° c. If not, adjust the calibration if possible...or make a note of the variance if not.
Boiling water is a bit more tricky because in order for that to really be accurate...one must know their elevation. And the local barometric pressure also impacts that a bit. It’s only 212° f / 100° c at sea level. (Basically it drops ~1° for every 500ft gain in altitude.)
Today I’m in El Paso, TX...the elevation is ~3840 ft and the barometer is reading 29.95 Hg.
That means water is going to boil at 204.97° f / 96.09° c.
OTOH, my likely destination tomorrow is in SoCal...at an elevation of ~1263 ft and a current reading of 29.91 Hg. That gives a boiling point of 209.75° / 98.75° c.
Neither of which is 212° and could mean the difference between "close enough" for some things and seriously under/over done for others.
That variation is only going to matter when calibrating. I imagine that most high quality thermometers are pretty accurate...but it’s easy enough to check, and often easy enough to adjust if needed.
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