Traeger Jr Brisket

Long story long, father-in-law finds an open box Traeger at a garage sale.
Before my UDS build I had dreamt of a Traeger. I joked I would buy it off him for 20 bucks more then he paid.
I think he was afraid to put it together, and I found a couple of pieces missing so he sold it to me.

I told him he had one week to return the money and I would return to him the Jr. That way I'd get to try it out.

Then I found this marked down packer at WallyWorld


So I test fired the Traeger, found it to be in working order, trimmed the brisky the night before and tossed the 11 pounder, by now, onto the Jr at 5am, prior to leaving for work.

A giant leap of faith, I took off to work. Left behind instructions for wife to deal with it after she got home.


Well she found it 7.5 hours later, brisket IT at 168, so she foiled it and put it back on until IT at 195.
She then coolered it until I got home.
I cleaned up, found a coworker had stuffed a Guinness in my lunch box, and sliced the flat




Sliced great, pulled with little or no give, plated up nicely




A few things I learned.
Wife loves the Traeger("That I can do")
Best brisket(out of five) I have ever done
I don't need it in my arsenal, but I do want it
I'm splurging for the digital controller if I get to keep it

K-JUN said:

In the infamous words of Ron Popeil "set it and forget it." Nice of the wifey to pitch in. Good luck to her dad trying to get it back now.:boxing: The brisket looks great.

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In laws don't have much and I've been searching for a good used gasser for them(last one deteriorated). I thought the Traeger would be great for them until I cooked burgers on them. No complaints from the crowd but every other apparatus I have would have done burgers and dogs better. As stingy as the Jr is on pellets for the "smoke" setting it devours them on the higher settings.

Either way that's my story. FIL was shocked by the price of pellets. Maybe he forgets that I usually fill his gas bottle for him.

Pole D said:

I want to hear more about this coworker that stuffs Guinness i your lunch box.

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Our shifts complement each other, we rotate night and days, and at the end of our second day week(which falls on Friday) we often reward the other guy for putting up with all the companies BS and surviving for another day. He's a Guinness man, I usually give out some local IPA. Its really a fun tradition.

Yes we're breaking some rule somewhere but nothing gets drank on company property. That's the beauty of working for a smaller company.