Preheating the MES is essential once the temp drop below 45º or even higher for 800 watt MES 40 units like mine. If you stick meat that is at room temp into a MES that sat outside all day or night and the temp is say 32º, very little cooking is going to happen until the internal metal is heated up to 100 degrees over your meat temp. In addition there is heat loss, so a considerable amount of BTUs are going to just maintaining internal temps as well. A thoroughly pre-heated MES, will start cooking immediately, however a certain percentage of BTUs are going to heat loss, so the cooking times will get extended a little.
My MES manual is in bold letters "It is not necessary to Pre-heat this unit". That statement is clearly wrong.
To understand a little better how my MES 40 (800 watt unit) worked, I would keep notes on my cooks, now I only do it if I'm cooking lots of meat. The notes would have the time, internal temp from Mes controller reading, internal temp from external Probe, Meat temp, if I added chips, notes. I would make notes very 10 or 15 minutes, Usually after the cook had been going 2-3 hours I would only make a notation every 30 minute. If I opened the door I would go back to every 10-15 minute notes. Anyway, I noticed that the recovery time to set temp after the smoke had been going 3+ hours was real short, instead of 20 minute recovery times like during first hour +, it was 5-10 minutes recovery. So I started pre-heating my MES40 and I didn't have the recovery issues others complained about before
Masterbuilt increased the wattage on the MES units.
If you do a heat calc on the MES the 800 watts is more than enough BTUs to achieve 300º at 25º outside ambient based on MES 40 cabinet size.
---My perspective on what happened regarding MES wattage increase---
What happened though is so many SMF - MES owners and other MES owners complained about slow recovery and initial ramp up to set temp, that MES relented and increased the element wattage. What most MES owners didn't do is their homework or pre-heat. The MES heating element wattage/per cabinet size was already higher than the competition. Most of the electric insulated cabinet smoker brands for similar size cabinets were using 400-600 watt elements, and of course reading through those brands owner forums there were lots of complaints about recovery. The end result was even several of the popular / more expensive brands had to increase their wattage too because of
Masterbuilt, perspective buyers started comparing the wattage, and the makers had to respond or lose sales. Bottom line, had MES owners pre-heated their MES units properly and ignored the MES manual, there still would be the lower wattage elements.
In addition my opinion, the high wattage has been the source of a number of problems, The smaller chip tray and extra piece of metal to keep the extra heat from quickly burning up the wood chips. I am guessing but I would bet that especially the MES40 with 1200 w element with the retro fit kit or the piece of metal removed on small wood chip tray, can't achieve TBS, because the chips just burn too fast, so owners not wanting to have to add chips every 10 minutes use 2 to 3 times the amount of chips they need, which then for sure will not produce TBS. Some have complained that the frequent on/off cycling prevents the chips from having good combustion which again prevents TBS.
Along comes Todd to the rescue with his wonderful AMNS &
AMNPS, and now the MES owner can go hours without having to tend to adding wood chips every 10-30 minutes.
If
Masterbuilt was smart, they would go back to the basic unit (no window, no meat probe, regular water pan, no wheels), put the $$ savings into increasing the thickness (gauge) of stainless inside the MES, and allow the controller to achieve 350º, you can't do this with the current thin gauge stainless it wants to buckle. Then you could easily cook/smoke chicken and achieve a crisp skin. Also the bark on several of the larger meat we smoke would be drier and not mushy ala more traditional style. The current element wattage can achieve that 350 temp or close too it.
JM2C
