True truth on reading temps


 
M

Michael L B

New member
So this weekend I fired up the WSM 22 , and smoked 40 chicken thighs/legs for my daughter and her buddies. The recipe called for me to get the smoker to 300, then put the chicken on. When it hit 300, I put 20 pieces on the bottom rack and 20 on the top. I put the lid on, and the temp went to 250, and really, it never got much over it. I used close to a bag of Kingsford to try and get the temp to read 300. Never did. after about 90 minutes, I probed the thighs, and they were actually a bit OVERDONE ---- the temp read 175. The good news; they came out great, everybody loved them, but I'm frustrated that I could never get the temp back up. The original recipe called for the chicken to cook an 1h 40min, so I was thinking they would be under cooked , but it reality, I could have pulled them earlier . But bottom line, why coujldn't the WSM get any hotter once the food got put on there ??
 
IMO, 175 is the perfect temperature for legs and thighs. Mine have always been moist and tender at that temperature, and no pink around the bones. Never used a WSM, but I'm sure you'll get plenty of responses on why you couldn't get the temperature to recover. Glad to hear everyone was happy with the end result.
 
What are you measuring the temp with? The dome thermometer will read different with food in there vs not. I have to open all my vents and sometimes stick a skewer under the lid to get higher temps on my WSM 22. Starting with a lot of lit charcoal helps. I put a full unlit chimney down then a full lit chimney on top. I let a lot of that unlit get lit before I assemble the wsm if I want serious high heat. Also taking out the water pan can help you if you want to do Chris's high heat chicken recipe.
 
When I want my 22 to run hotter, I prop open the lid slightly with my BGE ash tool. Only cracks it by about an 1/8" but lets a lot of oxygen in. You probably just needed to have more lit coals though when starting up. That's quite a bit of chicken and it acts as a big heat sink. I always deliberately over-shoot the temp a bit at first, knowing that it will come down when I add the meat. Also, 175 on dark meat isn't overdone at all. That's the minimum that I'll pull dark meat, usually let it go to 185 or so. Glad it turned out well, sounds like it all worked out well in the end.

Charlie
 
When it hit 300, I put 20 pieces on the bottom rack and 20 on the top.

An empty cooker at 300F is not the same thing as a full cooker at 300F. Which is why I never wait for the temps/cooker/smoke/whatever to "stabilize" before I start cooking. Because putting many pounds of cold meat into the cooker will always de-stabilize it.

If you want to cook at 300F, get the fire raging. Don't even look at the temp. Then put the meat on. Then add all the water (if using water). Then let the loaded cooker come up to temp. Only when the fully loaded cooker starts to approach your target temp do you start dialing things back.

The WSM is designed to run below 300F. So to get a fully loaded WSM to stay above 300F, you have to do something to make that happen: (i) use a lot of lit charcoal, (ii) no water, (iii) probably no water pan either, (iv) all vents completely open, (v) crack open the lid, (vi) crack open the door.

If you are cooking chicken in the WSM, you do not worry at all about running too hot (absent chicken incineration). You can cook chicken meat just fine at a lower temp. But to get bite through or crisp skin, you need the cooker as hot as possible.

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Good stuff — appreciate . What resonated was 1) didn’t get enough coals lit up before putting her back together 2) don’t get bent up about the temp on the hood going down . Somebody said to take the temp down below — that makes perfect sense !!! So I will do that next time . It was a great time , and they turned out great , so we’re good .
 
I put 20lbs on my pellet smoker and set the temp, it had a hard time reaching what I had it set on due to the load, 10lbs no problems 20lbs soaks up a lot of heat and renders a huge amount of fat that causes grease fires at high temps lol , I dont attemp to crisp large amounts of chicken on the pellet smoker now, low-slow skin so so
 
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