Maverick temp probe question

[smoke jenson]

Hey everyone,
I need a little help/opinions.
Im smoking some ribs in my vertical smoker and i felt like my smoker probe wasnt reading correctly, so i placed the meat probe in there and there is a pretty big difference. Has anyone else run into this problem? In the pic the meat probe temp is on top. Im thinking that the meat probe is accurate.

 

[olaf]

I'm having an issue with mine today with ribs I'm trusting the probe near the ribs for now and just manually plugging in the heating element.

 

[Chasdev]

Happens ALL the time but it's easy to find out what's what.
Boil some water and place each probe in the water, see if they agree.
If they do, you just discovered a variation of the internal temps in your cooker.
Another angle to consider is that one probe is touching the grate more than the other and you may be sampling the grate temp rather than the air temp on that one.
I used to obsess on temps and at one time ran 8 probes in my stickburner.
Funny thing is that during a 10 hour cook at one point in the cook ALL of them would agree and then after a few hours, NONE of them would agree.
I gave up sampling temps and now just aim for 325/375 and check the meat temp every three hours.
Less work, less worry and way less money spent on fancy temp testing rigs.

 

[smoke jenson]

Yea I moved it several times. Not touching the grate. I do plan on boiling water when its done. Ribs been in for almost 2 hours and i dont see any charring so Im gonna stick with the meat probe temp.

 

[Colin1230]

The first few years I had my WSM 18 I only used the lid thermometer to cook by and fork test to know when the meat was done. Admittedly, my cooks have gotten better with time but I don't contribute it to more accurate temperature measurement. I learned that if I keep it in a range all will be fine. My motto is "If you have one thermometer you have good measurement. If you have two thermometers you have an argument". Just say don't get obsessed with temperature accuracy, it's a rabbit hole.

 

[Chasdev]

Another commercial for the Maverick gravity 560, that baby holds whatever temp you set like a rock.
Makes smoking meat at the desired temp a joy rather than a head scratcher.