Posted by Grill With Bill on June 12, 2004 at 14:41:47:
In Reply to: Re: Traeger grills posted by Ron on June 12, 2004 at 13:48:33:
I was having some hot spot issues even with the metal deflector cross bar which sits over the fire pot so I placed two fire bricks on top of it and that seemed to help.
Because of the nature of the pellet feeder it doesn't hold to a consistant temperature but rather a range. It heats up, the mechanism shuts off, it slowly cools down, when it gets below a certain point the mechanism starts up again, it heats up and the cycle continues. For low and slow, I almost always set it to 225 and it cooks in the range of about 210 to 240 or so.
Also, because the heat is coming from directly below, the bottom will burn if you let the temp get too high (that's why I rarely set it for anything above 250 for slow cooking). I find it helps to flip the meat over every once in a while to help it heat more evenly. Burning isn't much of an issue when you cook ribs low and slow standing up in a rib rack because only the very tips of the ribs are close enough to the heat source.
I'll set it higher (350) for whole chicken. Since it's not on the cooker for more than 90 minutes burning isn't a problem.
Bill
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