I do not know what I am doing yet but put a chicken on smoke for a couple hours then turned to high to cook.. a gigantic fire happened! Yikes...finishing chicken in the oven now...what did I do??
Never had my Traeger do that. Colleen, there's plenty of info on this site as well as in the Gallery at BigPoppaSmokers.com. Tell us about your cooker and your process. Lots of folks here who can help.
Colleen - My hubby (HoDeDo) will be on at some point and give you some pointers. We use the Louisiana CS Whole Hog for comps and also have the smaller Tailgator. He knows all the tricks for these cookers.
The CS cookers turn out some really good food. Have fun with it!!
Welcome aboard Colleen, glad your chicken came out unscathed but as you can see when you hit 911 around here everybody answers the call! Hope you can correct your problem and keep on getting great results without the unexpected.
Colleen,
Do you know if you have a series 2 or 3 unit? (Does it have a rubber paddle wheel at the bottom of the hopper, or a short steel auger?)
Could be a couple of things...
1. Meats that have alot of fat (esp. chicken) -- if you run them on smoke, and the grease doesn't burn off or run off the deflector plate; when you turn it up above the flashpoint of that grease, it can catch fire. Once it does catch, you are force feeding air, and creating a grease powered blast furnace. So Unplug, let die, open, clean... and you are usually good to go. It sounds like this was the issue. On the CS units if you have the rheostat (dial) controller... about 1/4" below medium is usually around 230, Medium is 290, 1/2 way between Med and Hi is 350-375, Hi is 475-500, "Preheat" if you leave it there will go up to 600. If you are running on Hi or Pre-heat, you'd better have a clean grill, or a grease fire will ensue
2. If you have a series 2 unit, and your pellets were very small, or broken down, On low, it can shuffle all the small ones in a 1/4 turn at a time, and jam them around the edge of the wheel. when it turns, they all fall through when the next large ones hit... so you get a little bit of a "flash" when you crank it up and let all the smaller wedged in pellets break loose with it running in med/hi... causeing yoru temp to spike, which could have ignited the grease also.
Glad you chicken turned out fine!! You'll love the cooker. And for the record, I dont know why Kim would think I know tricks about burning them up
Since you do have the paddle wheel... anytime that thing gets really, really hot (Grease fires can get it 750+ in there)... check the paddle wheel to make sure it didnt deform at all. I've had a paddle wheel warp on one of the old Series 1 units.