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My smoker probe went haywire during a 14-hour brisket cook
Last Saturday I was doing a brisket for a family gathering, about 8 hours in, and my temperature probe started jumping around wildly. One minute it said 180, next minute it said 210, then back down to 170. I thought the meat was stalling but it was just the probe failing. I ended up switching to an instant read thermometer for the last 6 hours and babysat the smoker the whole time. Has anyone else had a probe just quit on them mid-cook like that?
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ray5626d ago
Traded my bad probe for a cheap instant read halfway through a pork shoulder once, and honestly it saved the whole cook. I get what you're saying about the brisket being a brisket, but when a probe jumps from 180 to 210 and back in five minutes, that's NOT normal meat behavior. What worked for me was keeping a glass of ice water next to the smoker and testing the probe in it every hour or so. If it reads 32 degrees consistently, you know it's still good. That way I caught the failure early before it wrecked my meat. I also started keeping TWO probes in the same cut just as a backup, one for the temp and one to cross check the other. Saved me from babysitting a whole 12 hour shift again.
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grantc806d ago
Wait, you sure the probe was the problem and not just the meat doing its thing? I mean, brisket stalls and temps can bounce around like crazy during a long cook, especially when the collagen starts breaking down. Maybe the probe was fine and you just panicked a little early. I've had probes that seemed to go wild but after I let them sit for ten minutes they leveled right back out. Swapping to an instant read mid-cook sounds like a hassle but honestly it might have just been the brisket being a brisket and not a faulty probe.
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