British BBQ Society Forums

Hi everyone

I am experiencing an issue with my Maverick ET732. I think a few on here use them so I wanted to ask some advice. When I used it yesterday to check the temperature of a fore rib of beef, I had the probe inserted into the meat whilst it cooked. Initially I must have had it against bone as the temperature shot up to around 90C after just a few minutes. I removed the lid and pulled it out a bit and it started to read a more normal 40C or so. The rib was just a single fore rib so it wasn't very big, but after about 20 minutes it was reading very close to the 60 degrees that we were aiming for. We took it off when it reached 65C which was for rare, but it was actually extremely rare. Is it possible that the thermometer probe could be taking on some of the heat from within the BBQ (we used a Weber kettle so the lid was on) and thus providing a false reading? When we took the rib inside and measured the temperature with the probe it was down at around 40C, and my trusty old metal meat thermometer wasn't anywhere near the correct temperature. We left it off and resting and then carved it up and finished it off in the oven. After about 30 minutes of resting it was still a bit underdone for rare which is why we finished it in the oven.

I'm planning on smoking again, my first time doing a pork shoulder went horribly wrong due to an issue with my previous ET732 (this one is the replacement that I got under warranty) and now I seem to be getting false readings again. Do those here that use it keep it in the meat with the lid on the kettle / smoker, or do you just insert it when you want to measure the temperature?

Ok, there's no polite way to say this so I'm just going to come right out with it...

How far into the meat did you manage to stick your probe? (tee-hee!)

*ahem*

The point being, a single forerib is what, 2 inches thick? If you stuck the probe into that thickness of meat, you'd be leaving a good 3/4 of the probe exposed to the heat of the grill which might affect the readings.

However, if you stuck the probe in lengthways then I got nothing.

Also, as an aside; 65c is medium, 54c is rare so you got off lucky there

Haha! I probed the meat not quite lengthways but toward the bone to get that reading. I also ensured that the probe had been inserted as far as it would go but not enough to hit bone. In hindsight I should probably have put the probe in fully lengthways to get the reading. Is it ok to keep the probe in whilst the meat cooks? Essentially that's the whole point of the Maverick system, right?

Anyway, to be entirely safe in the future, I have just invested in a Thermapen

Yes leave the probes in while cooking. Just use it as a guide, I use a Thermapen for my accurate measurements, although my Maverick isnt far off.

Thanks for the reply Derek. I forgot to mention that I did test the ET732 in a pot of boiling water and both probes read 101ºC so I know that they were accurate when tested. I just can't explain why the reading when in the meat was so wrong. This exact same thing happened to me when I smoked a pork shoulder last year. I am going to smoke something this weekend and I don't want it to be wrong. I should hopefully have my Thermapen by then so I can compare readings

is it possible you might have been close to the bone anyway and as the meat shrunk the probe has been 'pulled' closer to the bone ?

might be talking rubbish but thought id suggest it lol