Rib failure


 

TCarpenter

New member
So I received a lot of accessories for my kamado joe for Christmas and I was anxious to fire up the grill and smoke some ribs. I hooked the heater meter up and put my 3 slabs of baby backs on. I decided to do no foil for the first time.

I set the heater meter to 225 degrees and said I wouldn't peek. At about three hours in I was messing with the top damper to open it some so the fan wouldn't have to kick on to get temp back up. I went inside to sit down and saw the pit temp falling fast as if the lid was open. I thought I accidentally hit the lid open button and the HM closed off the damper. A while later I went outside to the grill. The drome thermometer was around 400 degrees. I quickly plugged in a food thermometer and stuck it in from the top damper and realized the temp was around 400.

It turned out that my pit probe was close to my ribs in the rib rack. I believe the meat shifted and when I checked inside the probe was touching the meat which caused the pit temp to fall drastically and told the HM to turn fan on. The ribs were mostly tough and I was ****ed. At least I know the cause and it was just user error.
 
Live and learn I guess, never let your pit probe lean up against cold meat! That same exact thing happened to me one time....
 
I've done it too, both in having the temperature go bananas because the meat was sitting on the probe, to even having it ride 50 degrees high just from from being less than 1/2" away! That's why I eventually moved to alligator clipping the pit probe to the existing dial thermometer. Also keeps the wire out of the way!

 
Thats exactly how I have my pit probe rigged now (after seeing you post about it some time ago). Frankly I prefer to have it on the grill grate right where the food is, but that is a PITA to deal with, taking on and off when you load the coals, keeping food off it etc. I am still getting used to reading the dome temp rather than grate temp, but it is VERY convenient to have the probe tucked into the lid like that.
 
I like that idea. I found some aligator clips on bbqguru's site and I just hope it will fit over my new pit probe. Im going to try to open my KJ top damper and route the cable through there and clip it on the dome thermometer.
 

 

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