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The Good-One Is A Superb Grill And A Superb Smoker All In One
The Good-One Open Range is dramatically different from a traditional offset smoker. By placing the heat source behind and under the smokebox instead of off to the side, Open Range produces even temperature from left to right, something almost impossible to achieve with a standard barrel shaped offset.
The flat top does the burgers and the fryer does the fries. Use the griddle for bacon, eggs, and home fries. Or pancakes, fajitas, grilled cheese, you name it. Why stink up the house deep frying and spatter all over? Do your fried chicken and calamari outside. Blackstone's Rangetop Combo With Deep Fryer does it all!
The PBC has a rabid cult following for good reason. It is absolutely positively without a doubt the best bargain on a smoker in the world. Period. This baby will cook circles around the cheap offset sideways barrel smokers because temperature control is so much easier.
Genesis II E-335 A Versatile Gasser That Does It All!
Weber’s Genesis line has long been one of the most popular choices for gas grillers. The new Genesis II E-335 offers solid performance, a sear burner for sizzling heat and an excellent warranty.
GrillGrates(TM) amplify heat, prevent flareups, make flipping foods easier, kill hotspots, flip over to make a fine griddle, and can be easily rmoved from one grill to another. You can even throw wood chips, pellets, or sawdust between the rails and deliver a quick burst of smoke.
The PK-360, with 360 square inches of cooking space, this rust free, cast aluminum charcoal grill is durable and easy to use. Four-way venting means it's easy to set up for two zone cooking with more control than single vent Kamado grills. It is beautifully designed, completely portable, and much easier to set up for 2-zone cooking than any round kamado.
The amazing Karubecue is the most innovative smoker in the world. The quality of meat from this machine is astonishing. At its crux is a patented firebox that burns logs above the cooking chamber and sucks heat and extremely clean blue smoke into the thermostat controlled oven. It is our favorite smoker, period.
This is the first propane smoker with a thermostat, making this baby foolproof. Set ThermoTemp's dial from 175° to 350°F and the thermostat inside will adjust the burner just like an indoor kitchen oven. All you need to do is add wood to the tray above the burner to start smokin'.
Digital Thermometers Are Your Most Valuable Tool And Here's A Great Buy!
A good digital thermometer keeps you from serving dry overcooked food or dangerously undercooked food. They are much faster and much more accurate than dial thermometers. YOU NEED ONE!
FireBoard Drive 2 is an updated version of a well-received product that sets the standard for performance and functionality in the wireless food thermometer/thermostatic controller class.
The Cool Kettle With The Hinged Hood We Always Wanted
Napoleon's NK22CK-C Charcoal Kettle Grill puts a few spins on the familiar kettle design. In fact, the hinged lid with a handle on the front, spins in a rotary motion 180 degrees. It's hard to beat a Weber kettle, but Napoleon holds its own and adds some unique features to make the NK22CK-C a viable alternative.
Green Mountain's portable Davy Crockett Pellet Smoker is one mean tailgating and picnic machine. But it's also gaining popularity with people who want to add a small, set it and forget it pellet smoker to their backyard arsenal. And with their WiFi capabilities you can control and monitor Davy Crocket from your smart phone or laptop.
This is a review of the new probes for use with the previously reviewed Tappecue Touch. For info on the main unit, see the review here. Older versions of the Touch will work with the new probes after a user-applied firmware update is performed.
Two new probes have been introduced: a familiar wired probe with two sensors to read both the food temperature and the cooker temperature, and a wireless probe called the "AirProbe" that communicates via Bluetooth with the main unit and also measures the food and cooker temperatures.
When either of these two-sensor probes is in use (via cable or Bluetooth), the display shows two temperatures per probe. With two AirProbes and two dual probes, you could take eight independent temperature readings simultaneously.
The wired dual probe works in the usual way. The AirProbe comes with a charger that is powered by a single AAA battery. When not in use, the probe is inserted into its charger so it will be ready for the next cooking session. The AirProbe will run for about four hours on a single charge, according to the manufacturer. (I ran one for nine hours without recharging.) Because it connects via Bluetooth, it has range limitations: the probe should be within 10 meters of the base unit. However, with the main unit near the cooker anyway, this should not be a problem. The free smart phone app allows you to monitor all probes, and there is also an app for your computer to save and plot your temperature profiles, as well as a web portal where you can monitor the status of your cooking session in real time.
The following table shows the accuracy of both probe types. For this test, I used a conventional wired thermometer of known accuracy. I monitored the cooker temperatures displayed by the reference unit and the two Tappecue probes. To simulate food, I used a rolled up cotton sock that had been soaked in water. The food probes were inserted into the sock and wrapped tightly together. The sock was then placed in a Breville electric oven and I allowed the temperature to stabilize at 225°F (107°C) and took readings. I repeated the test at 325°F (163°C). As you can see, the new probes accurately measured the test temperatures of the oven and displayed good consistency with the "food" temperatures. As with all probes, the user must be careful not to exceed the temperature limitations of the hardware. Read the directions carefully or you might damage your thermometer. (Click on chart to see a larger view.)
Whether it's four or nine hours, the AirProbe's charge life might be an issue in certain cooking circumstances, like doing a brisket or a pork butt, which can each take upward of 12 hours in the smoker. You could always use a wired probe in this case, and save the wireless probes for shorter cooking sessions. The manufacturer states that the probes will recharge in five minutes, but it's not clear if this is a full charge or a stopgap measure. The charger does not indicate the state of charge of the probe, unfortunately, so there is no way to know whether the probe is fully charged or nearly depleted.
We liked the previously-tested Tappecue Touch, and these two new probes add functionality to a nice product. I found the phone app and the web portal to be somewhat difficult to use, and I couldn't figure out how to delete old hardware and session data. The manufacturer could do a better job of documenting the software product, IMO. However, most will find their way around without too much difficulty.
Bill McGrath is AmazingRibs.com's Thermometer Maven. He has sophisticated equipment, an electrical engineering degree from Cornell University, and an MBA (almost) from UC Berkeley. Despite being mostly retired, he is still the person responsible for developing and updating all of ExxonMobil's electricians' training modules.
Many merchants pay us a small referral fee when you click our links and purchase from them. On Amazon it works on everything from grills to diapers, they never tell us what you bought, and it has zero impact on the price you pay, but has a major impact on our ability to improve this site! And remember, we only recommend products we love. If you like AmazingRibs.com, please save this link and use it every time you go to Amazonhttps://tinyurl.com/amazingribs
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Millions come to AmazingRibs.com every month for quality tested recipes, tips on technique, science, mythbusting, product reviews, and inspiration. But it is expensive to run a website with more than 4,000 pages and we don’t have a big corporate partner like TV network or a magazine publisher to subsidize us.
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If you help us, we’ll pay you back bigtime with an ad free experience and much more!
Millions come to AmazingRibs.com every month for quality tested recipes, tips on technique, science, mythbusting, product reviews, and inspiration. But it is expensive to run a website with more than 4,000 pages and we don’t have a big corporate partner like TV network or a magazine publisher to subsidize us.
Our most important source of sustenance is people who join our Pitmaster Club, but please don’t think of it as a donation. Members get 21 great benefits. We block all third party ads, we give members free ebooks, magazines, interviews, webinars, more recipes, a monthly sweepstakes with prizes worth up to $2,000, discounts on products, and best of all a community of like-minded cooks free of flame wars. Click below to see all the benefits, take a free 30 day trial membership, and help keep this site alive.
Post comments and questions below
1) Try to post your question to the appropriate page.
2) Tell us everything we need to know to help such as the type of cooker and thermometer.
3) If you are a member of the Pitmaster Club, your comments login is probably different than your membership login.
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