What temperature should I maintain?
What temperature you should use in your barbecue depends on a lot of factors (type of meat, bone or no bone, diameter, amount of fat, humidity in your BBQ, etc.) and can therefore only be estimated approximately. If you keep an eye on the core temperature of your meat, which you can measure exactly, you can’t really go wrong (I’ll come back to that). The higher the temperature in your barbecue, the shorter the cooking time. With direct grilling you have to think in terms of minutes and with smoking in terms of hours.
You can read the temperature inside your barbecue on the thermometer mounted on the lid. So that is NOT the temperature of the food you are cooking. To find out that temperature, use what is known as a core thermometer. Note: Due to the location of the thermometer (at the top of the barbecue), it gives an indication of the temperature inside the barbecue, not the exact temperature in the center at the level of the grill grate. It is not unwise to purchase a so-called oven thermometer for a modest amount of money.
Core thermometer
You can’t barbecue without core thermometers. These range from very simple and cheap, to very sophisticated and not even overly expensive.
If you are rarely or never going to cook anything larger than a pork chop, then a set of simple thermometers will suffice. You stick those into the meat and that’s all. On the dial you can see what the core temperature is. Actually only works well for direct grilling with the lid open.
For indirect grilling and smoking, a digital thermometer that you can read remotely is much better. Then you don’t have to constantly open your lid to see how far along the meat is. You insert the pen(probe), which is connected by a thin wire to a charging station, into the meat. On the holder you can read the temperature and, if desired, set an alarm for when the desired temperature is reached. That cradle does not need to be constantly in the charging station (works on batteries) and has a range of about 30 meters.
