getting my bradley 4 rack digital smoker up to temperature

[parksdo]

Yesterday I smoked pork tenderloin. The instructions called for oven temp 225 deg, 2 hours, internal temp 140 deg. I did 8 tenderloins, I trimmed off the small ends to cook separately. I like doing a lot and freezing it so we have some nice, easy meals.

I heated the empty oven to 225 deg.
I loaded the meat – the open door while loading caused the temp to drop to about 130 deg.
I waited and waited to get the temp back up to 225, never did get back up to 225, got up to around 170.
Meanwhile the internal temp was rising so I turned on the smoke at about 160
When the internal temp got up to 147 (oven temp 170), I opened the door and double-checked the internal temp – it was done so I took it out.

Of course when I opened the door to remove the meat, the temp dropped again.
I put in the small ends and closed the door.
Surprise! The temp quickly went up to 225 deg

CONCLUSION
The oven heater is not big enough to raise the temp to 225 with a large amount of meat out of the fridge loaded.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

1)   Just do small (one meal) quantities
2)   Pre-heat the meat in the kitchen oven so the smoker does not have such a hard job.
3)   There are solutions on You Tube for modifying the smoker with a more powerful heater

Any ideas/suggestions?

Donlondon

[Wildcat]

A few things here. I have the original instead of the digital but I am confident that if you are using the smoker's temp gauge, it is woefully inaccurate, at least while it has a load of cold meat in it. On the original the gauge is in the door. This puts the meat squarely between the heat source and the gauge. Until the meat gets hot, the cabinet temp will read much lower than the temp the meat is being exposed to. Another point is that you are essentially cooking with a light bulb like the old easy bake ovens. It will make it get hot enough to slow cook anything very successfully but the cabinet temp will vary considerably during the process. For most things this is not a problem. You simply can not cook by cabinet temp and time. You need to make sure the food is being subjected to heat in the 180 to say 230 degree Fahrenheit range until the meat reaches the desired temperature.

I recommend that you obtain a reliable dual probe thermometer so that you can measure the internal meat temp and the cabinet temp at the same time without opening the door. Place the cabinet probe underneath near the meat so that juices do not drip on it but far enough so that the meat has little temp influence over the probe. Also, always go by meat temp instead of time when possible.

[GusRobin]

Also, if you are going to cook at 225*, pre-heat the cabinet to 240 then put the meat in.
If you are not going to mod with a bigger heat element, then here are some tricks:
1) Pre-heat a brick (or 2) wrap them in foil and keep in the cabinet. They will act like a heat sink and keep the temps a big more stable.
2) Make sure you start with hot to boiling water in the water bowl.
3) Why wait to start the smoke? If you leave the smoke generator on the whole smoke it adds 25% more heat (wattage). Don't smoke the whole time but leave the generator on.

Hopes that helps

[tskeeter]

Parksdo, sounds like you had a couple of challenges.  A lot of meat (by my guess 16 - 20 pounds worth).  The meat was cold, right out of the fridge.

Some suggestions that would help:

Preheat your smoker to about 25 degrees warmer than your cooking temp (250 in your case).  Reduce the temp to your cooking temp (225) after you've put the meat in the smoker.

Place a couple of foil wrapped bricks in the bottom of your smoker before you preheat the smoker.  (A brick is a permanent fixture in the bottom of my smoker.)  These will act as a heat sink and help the smoker return to temp more quickly after you load the smoker with a lot of meat or open the door.  (In extreme cases, I have heated my smoking bricks to 400F in the oven, then moved the hot bricks to the smoker to help deal with a turkey breast that was still slightly frozen.)

Use boiling water, or as close as you can get to boiling, in your puck bowl.  No sense using the limited heating capacity of a Bradley to try to heat water at the same time you are smoking/cooking meat.

Leave your puck burner on.  It adds 25% to the heating capacity of a stock Bradley and doesn't hurt the puck burner.

Make sure your vent is at least 1/2 open.  The more meat, the more the vent should be open.  Moisture that is trapped in the smoker by a mostly closed vent will actually keep the cabinet temperature down.

And, probably most importantly, temper the meat before putting it in the smoker, rather than taking it right from the fridge.  An hour or so on the counter at room temperature will allow some pellicle to form (helps collect smoke) and allow the temperature of the meat to rise by about 10 degrees.  That's 10 degrees that your Bradley won't have to raise the temperature of the meat.


The fact that you had a pretty good load of meat in your smoker isn't really an issue.  I've had up to about 30 pounds in my six rack at once.  However, it's going to take a while (maybe a long while) for the smoker to get back up to temperature.  And if the meat load is big enough, it may be completely cooked before the temperature returns to your temperature set point.  Not the end of the world.  But, it will take some patience if you've really loaded up the smoker.