Working without a net

jerryb78 · October 2014

I've had my egg since around April and had really good results on everything that I've made. No total flubs yet. Tomorrow will be the first time I'm cooking for a bigger group of people, so I went with pulled pork since I've done it a bunch of times and it seems pretty bulletproof. Right? Not really. I set an alarm to get the grill going around 10PM tonight so that I could get it going stable before I headed off to bed, but I had people over at the time. Set up my maverick so I could keep an eye on the temp and thought that I had turned on the alarm on it, but I hadn't. I got distracted and by the time I got back to the egg it was pushing 800 and belched fire at me when I very carefully tried to take a peek. D'oh.

I managed to get it down into the 300s by midnight and got my two pork butts on, only to find that the food probe on my Maverick has apparently crapped out on me. As soon as I inserted it into the cold pork shoulders it read 200+. Yeah, that's helpful. So, I pulled out my thermapen which cracked sometime earlier this year but has worked perfectly fine up until now. Dead. I'm *hoping* that the barbecue probe on the Maverick is still accurate after my nuclear incident. It seems ok after comparing it to the dome temp and I really have no choice but to run with it. Maybe I'll dash out tomorrow morning and pick up whatever thermometer I can get locally so I at least have something, otherwise I'm just going to have to hope for the best and go by feel.

Wish me luck!

stemc33 · October 2014

You better stay up all night and check on it every 5 minutes

just kidding. Once it settles in you should be good all night. Don't worry so much about the thermometer for this cook. Ultimately your gonna go by feel anyway with butts. Everythings gonna go well. Enjoy.

nolaegghead · October 2014

The Maverick probes only handle 500-600 before they start crapping out. Don't know why your food probe died, I assume you didn't have that in the egg. You don't need any thermometer with a butt. Just use your dome and check for the "butter" consistency of the meat (stab it with a skewer) when it looks like it's near done. Sorry about your thermapen - that makes me sad.

You can put a pan of water in the egg to cool it down quicker. No worries if you put the butt in and just set the vent low, especially with the water pan, you'll just knock an hour or two off the cook and the temp will come down.

Carolina Q · October 2014

You don't really need any of that stuff. A dome thermo would be nice, but you can fake it even without that. Assuming you know the approximate vent settings for you target temp. You don't need a Tpen either. You know about how long the cook should take so you know when to probe for doneness. Use an ice pick or a fork, or your dead Tpen probe.

You might have to check the egg a couple of times tonight, but you should be fine otherwise. Try not to run out of lump.

Good luck!

jerryb78 · October 2014

Thanks for the advice. It settled in pretty nicely once I got the cold meat in there. I'm not too worried about judging when it's done. It'll be more of a trick trying to estimate how much long it's going to take. People aren't coming until noon tomorrow so we should be good. I'll just need to keep a closer eye than usual on it tomorrow morning. I'm kind of spoiled by being able to sit in the house working on other stuff and glancing at the Maverick occasionally.

Carolina Q · October 2014

Putting the meat in will drop the temp, but if the egg wasn't sable before that, the temp will settle where ever it wants once the meat starts to warm up. You'll just have to pay attention.

Me? I'm going to bed now. And I'm not setting my alarm.

stemc33 · October 2014

@jerryb78‌, did the egg settle in and get stable yet?

jhl192 · October 2014

It's a dog eat dog world and tonight you are wearing milk bone underwear! You should be fine but I would get a meat thermometer in the morning so you will know if you need to bump the temp to meet your dinner time. Lastly, keep and eye on your lump level, that 800 degree period and cool down could have cost you some lump time. Good luck!

jerryb78 · October 2014

8AM. The egg ran stable for the most part overnight. I went with a little higher temp than usual just to make up for time lost at the beginning. Strangely, the food probe gradually went back to what seems normal although I'm not quite sure how much I trust it now. It dropped from 200 down to 84 in the first hour, leveled off, then gradually started climbing like a normal cook. It's showing 183 now which seems pretty close for 8 hours in. (Two 7.5# butts).

I'm going to let it ride for now and finish it in the oven if I run out of lump. I had loaded it up with a big fresh batch of RW so my guess is that it'll be fine.

Mattman3969 · October 2014

You should check the batteries in the maverick. Mine has done that before and when I changed the batteries all was happy in the kingdom. You can also unplug & replug the probe & that helps sometimes. Like mentioned above you can check the accuracy of the probes in boiling water.

Skiddymarker · October 2014

Mattman3969 said:

You should check the batteries in the maverick. Mine has done that before and when I changed the batteries all was happy in the kingdom. You can also unplug & replug the probe & that helps sometimes. Like mentioned above you can check the accuracy of the probes in boiling water.

+1, when the probes were reading something ridiculous and should be at room temp, I changed the batteries and poof, problem gone. My 2 year old 732 often reports a really crazy temp, but then levels off - bad thing is it triggers the alarm when there is none. New probes seemed to fix it.

jerryb78 · October 2014

All's well that ends well. The maverick continued to behave normally but I replaced the batteries in it for good measure. Testing it in boiling water showed 214 on both problems, which I'll call close enough.

The butts ran a little late but so did the people showing up for lunch, so it worked out perfectly. They probably weren't my best work since a lot of my smoke wood probably got wasted during the nuclear burn, but they were still damn good. It just figures that this sort of **** happens the one time when I'm really counting on things turning out well.

Hopefully Santa will bring me a new Thermapen this Xmas.

Carolina Q · October 2014

Glad it worked out!

Did you try a new batt in the Tpen? They supposedly last forever, but might be worth a shot. And if I ever have to replace my Tpen, it will be with a Tpop. Couple of seconds longer is fine for me.

Carolina Q · October 2014

Also, thermoworks can repair your pen for, I think, a small fee. Cheaper than a new one anyway!

henapple · October 2014

Another reason to drink bourbon all night.

anton · October 2014

jhl192 said:

It's a dog eat dog world and tonight you are wearing milk bone underwear! You should be fine but I would get a meat thermometer in the morning so you will know if you need to bump the temp to meet your dinner time. Lastly, keep and eye on your lump level, that 800 degree period and cool down could have cost you some lump time. Good luck!

Haven't heard that expression in 20 yrs! Thanks for the laugh!!

)

Working without a net

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