Brinkmann Charcoal Smoke'N Grill

The reason…

I just found a sweet deal at Wal-mart for a Brinkmann charcoal smoker and grill at Wal-mart. They had it accidentally marked at $28.88 instead of their normal $37 (over $60 at Lowe’s on the same day, I checked). I have been wanting a replacement to our cheap $25 Wal-mart gril special from a few years ago and I still had money left from Christmas . After I took it home and assembled it and then did it curing process, I decided that I really need a wireless meat thermometer. I have been wanted one of those two for both indoor and outdoor useage and I still had Christmas money left.

Finding a Wireless Meat Thermometer

Finding a wireless meat thermometer is like anything, you have to start with the research first. I know, I’m buying it after buying the smoker without research but that was a deal. There are many choices out there and finding the right one is a manner of figuring out the most important features and then comparing them against those features.
The features I’m looking for in a wireless meat thermometer are:

• Wireless (I want to be able to be inside doing other things while the meat is smoking.)
• I want it to be reliable (temperature accurate)
• I want to monitor the temperature more than the time. (I can always set a timer, I cannot set a temperature especially with charcoal.)
• I want it the work indoors and in the grill
• I want it to have a large temperature range.
• I want it to be affordable (<$40)

I know with a feature list like that I’ll be luck to find one that even exists! I check America’s Test Kitchen to see what they recommended. America’s Test Kitchen is great. I like their experimental and no nonsense approach to cooking, plus their recipes so far have all come out great (But this is really a topic for another post). They suggested (Reviewed)

• Maverick RediChek Remote Wireless Smoke Thermometer
• Polder Dual Sensor Thermometer and Timer

According to America’s Test Kitchen the Polder one takes a long time to measure an accurate temperature so that one is out. At Amazon the Maverick that is the #1 in the BBQ remote thermometer is Maverick Remote-Check ET-7 Wireless Thermometer with 2 Probes. After reading the product description it appears to meet all of my feature list  and has two probes. However, I’m a little worried that the feedback on Amazon is semi bipolar. There are over 70, 4&5 stars, and over 40 1&2 stars. Seems that the two biggest problems are dead units (not surprising as I suspect people who get dead units comment as a higher percentage then those that do not, I would), and poor range. Well range is affected by many things so that o.k. by me. I would have been more worried about bad readings or units burning at temperature below the stated 500F degrees. So, I think I might get this unit. Oregon Scientific and Grill Alert have talking units but that seems like an overkill and pointless feature for me. There was also a Weber Style unit but the reviews were more bad than good. Accurately it seems that most units on Amazon have more bad the good reviews. It is not as big of field of products as I would have thought.

Well I did it.

I decided on the Maverick Remote-Check ET-7 Wireless Thermometer with 2 Probes and bought it. I’ll let you know how it works once I use it.

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