41
One or both of these are true:
- The temperature is actually different at those two locations.
- One or both thermometers are wrong (broken, miscalibrated, etc.).
It's the first one. I can tell you for sure that there is a huge temperature gradient inside the grill from the distance from the cooking grates to the inside of the lid. The lid thermometer is somewhere between 10-14" away from the grates, in most models.
That's also why the upper rack is a "warming" rack and not a "cooking" rack (despite some manufacturers - coughweber - trying to include it in the cooking area total).
And the lid thermometer is usually on the lid. Where there's cold air on the other side.
Yeah but OP is saying the thermometer on the lid shows a higher temp.
Eh. The probe is inside the air, more or less away from the lid (which is still very quite hot)
Most of the built-in thermostats on barbecue grills are garbage. Before speculating on what might be behind the temperature difference, get a thermometer that is accurate with two probes and measure again.
Heat rises, cheapo thermometers aren't super accurate.
If you can get access to the probe itself, try the two easy extremes.... boiling water and ice water. See how far off they are. They will be off, it just depends by how much.
Of course the important metric when it comes to cooking food isn't the air temp, but the temp inside the food, which is why an internal thermometer is what most people go by.
Could be calibration or hot air rising? Where are you putting the other thermometer in the grill? What happens if you stick them in boiling water?
Heat rises.
The thermometer in the lid is at the top of the thermal stack. The one on the grill near the bottom.
Thermometers, like most measurement devices, are always accurate until you get two of them. Each device has a specific tolerance (or should, otherwise it's probably a horrible tolerance), for a grill thermometer this will look like -/+5C/10F. Additionally, everything used to read a measurement needs to be calibrated regularly to ensure proper function, otherwise readings cannot be trusted. For a thermometer, the easily accessible way to calibrate are to use ice water (does it read 0C/32F) and boiling water (does it read 100C/212F). Using these constants will allow you to adjust your thermometer and get a (more) accurate reading.
The thermometer on my last cheap grill worked once and then always said 300°.
Ouch. Sorry to hear that
I suspect it has something to do with how far away the thermometer is from the actual heat source. you can hold your hand over a flame and be relatively fine, but if you stick your hand directly into flame, you will be burnt.
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
41 points (97.7% liked)
No Stupid Questions
35833 readers
1006 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS