Very Disappointed Grilling Experience

[2-RONA]

New griller here. I bought my Traeger 34 pro right around Christmas. It was already put together at Home Depot. Messed with it a little bit but nothing serious.
Today I decided to smoke a pork butt. It's an 8 pound butt. I follow Malcolm Reed for advise, so I cleaned out the smoker with a small shop vac, filled the hopper with fresh pellets and fired it up. I set the temp at 225, just as Malcolm said. Pulled the butt from the fridge, smeared mustard all over it and some butt rub and threw it on the grill. I inserted a temp probe and we're cooking. According to Malcolm, 3 hours in, it was supposed to be at 160 degrees and ready to be rapped. 9 hours later, it was 160 degrees, according to the temp probe. I pulled it off and rapped it in three layers to tin foil and back on the grill it went. According to Malcolm, when it gets to 190, pull it off because it's ready. Shoot, at this rate, it will be tomorrow before its ready. What the heck did I do wrong???? Is there a setup step that is wrong?

 

[Walleye Hunter]

1) Your temp reading might be off but an 8 pounder out of the refrigerator will take a long time. I am not good with times but 12 hours or more would not surprise me.

 

[RemE]

The meat is ready when it's ready. If you read around this forum you'll find that many of us have found the Traeger's temp reporting to be marginal. Your set 225F may actually be lower.

Go by internal temp, not by any recipe time.

 

[Timmy]

Here is a couple of reads that might help.
Post in thread 'READ FIRST ►TRAEGER FAQs & TECH INFO'
https://www.traegerforum.com/threads/read-first-►traeger-faqs-tech-info.2145/post-22161

READ FIRST ►TRAEGER FAQs & TECH INFO

Traeger Forum is dedicated to the knowledge and total safety of all it's Traeger owning members --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My New Traeger Does Not Put Out The Smoke I Was Expecting!! My Traeger built in RTD probe is off, it is...

www.traegerforum.com

 

[Murphy's Law]

Using a calibrated and accurate temp probe (Fire Bord 2) as reference, I have to set my Pro 780 to 235 or 240 to get a real pit temp of 225.

You were probably cooking at ~210 even though the grill was set to 225.

Traeger makes a good grill but their temp probes are not good.

 

[RemE]

Here's a plot of one of my pork butt cooks. It's lower and slower which seems closer to yours.
Almost 15 hours total.

 

[Slimpicker]

I've cooked 50 pork butts and NEVER did one ever reach 160 in 3 hours... not even at temps 275

And I've never had one take under 9 hours either

 

[GrillMeister]

I was not happy with my first pork butt on the Traeger after cooking over 2,000 lbs on Big Green Eggs for a decade, but I have figured it out and the results are favorable with the folks that eat them now.

It take time to learn and fine tune your cooks till you get them down.