In this episode, Editor Will Price joins to talk about the newest–and perhaps least-well-known–type of grill: the pellet grill. (Or to be more precise, pellet grills and smokers.) Will makes the case that pellet grills and smokers, which have been around only since the mid-Eighties and benefit from precision computer controls, are a super low-effort alternative to charcoal and gas grills, particularly if you're slow cooking food like ribs or brisket. Will talks about how the things actually work and how they're best used, the benefits and (very few) downsides to the category, and offers plenty of advice for pellet grill and smoker novices and pros alike. He ends with a rundown of our top three recommendations for pellet grill and smoker shoppers. If you're interested in a "set it and forget it" approach to grilling and cooking out this summer, this one's definitely for you.
Pellet grills have been around only since the mid-Eighties and feature precision computer controls: a super low-effort alternative to charcoal and gas grills.
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Nick Caruso:
This is the Gear Patrol podcast.
Nick Caruso:
In this episode, editor, Will Price, who runs our home and drinks content, joins me to talk about the newest and perhaps least well-known type of grill: the pellet grill, or to be more precise, as I learned from Will, the pellet grill and smoker. Will makes the case that pellet grills and smokers, which have been around since only the mid-80s and benefit from precision computer controls, are a super low-effort alternative to charcoal and gas grills, particularly if you're slow-cooking food like ribs or brisket. Will talks about how the things actually work and how they're best used, the benefits, and very few downsides to the category, and offers plenty of advice for pellet-grill-and-smoker novices and pros alike. We end with a rundown of Will's top-three recommendations for pellet-grill-and-smoker shoppers, all of which I found surprisingly affordable and just really cool-looking. If you're interested in a set-it-and-forget-it approach to grilling and cooking out this summer, this one's definitely for you.
Nick Caruso:
Thanks for listening. If you like what you hear, I hope you'll subscribe to the pod and help us get into more ears with a five-star review. I'm Nick Caruso, and I'm glad you're here. Let's get started.
Nick Caruso:
Okay. So, Will, we are now deep in the throws of grilling season. I almost said, "It is grilling season," but it's been grilling season. And I bet most folks listening are familiar with gas and charcoal grills, but maybe while shopping around or visiting friends have also come across pellet grills or pellet smokers, which, if they're like me, sound really alien. And I'm scared of them because I don't know what is going on. So, my question for you-
Will Price:
I'm always fearful of things I don't understand.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, no, that's my M.O. But that's why you're here. I want to know what the deal is with pellet grills. What are these?
Will Price:
Yeah, yeah. I think lots of people are sort of like yourself at first glance. So, it's not really the third rail of grilling because there's also electric grills and there's some other... there's some wood. There's grills that are specific wood-use rather than charcoal, whatever. But it's kind of the third major rail of grilling or the third that is actually worth pursuing in a sort of more aggressive manner, I guess.
Will Price:
So, basically, a pellet grill is a grill that has a big hopper on the side. And you fill that hopper with a bunch of tiny wood pellets, which are just... they kind of look like what you would throw to fishes at one of those dockside restaurants when you were a kid, you know?
Nick Caruso:
You're like [crosstalk 00:02:51].
Will Price:
Did I say "fishes"? Can you edit that out? Can you edit "fishes" out? Singular plural, fish. Yeah. They sort of look like that. They're small.
Will Price:
And they're packed full of wood saw. Specifically, I think it's a composite of sawdust and little tiny pieces of wood or whatever else. I'm sure there's a very scientific breakdown of what's in there. Basically, it gives you really, really nice wood smoke, wood grill flavor without you having to lug around logs of wood.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. So, it's like an alternative fuel source. My takeaway is that they seem more complex. I know there are computer controls. There's all sorts of other stuff. But that's true, right? What are all those components that kind of make this complex?
Will Price:
Yeah, yeah. So, where a charcoal grill is you have the gut of the grill and you put the coals in it, and you light the coals, or you light the coals, you put them in, whichever order you go by. And then you put the grates over it. And then you do your thing. You grill your steak or you smoke some ribs, whatever.
Will Price:
A gas grill, you just turn the knob. It clicks for a second, sometimes longer than you'd like it. And eventually, it ignites. And a few minutes later, you're good to go.
Will Price:
Pellet grills, there's a lot more moving parts, a lot more sort of like... they're a little less kind of streamlined or elegant as those other two grills. "Elegant" is not the right word. It's a little bit snobby. But you load that hopper up with those tiny pellets. And then through your smartphone or through a control panel on the grill itself, you might select a temperature. And we'll talk about temperature. It's sort of a hot talking point on the subject.
Nick Caruso:
Oh my god.
Will Price:
And it takes 15 or so minutes. But an auger, which is just essentially like a slow-turning screw that's grabbing pellets and slowly pushing them towards a fire pot in the center of the grill where there's a small little fire, and that is the area where you're getting heat as well as smoke from for the pellet grill.
Will Price:
And there's a few more odds and ends inside there. There are fans in there that are increasing smoke output or increasing temperature level, or decreasing smoke output or temperature level. There are all sorts of temperature probes built in that are reading where the machine is at.
Will Price:
And I might add, and I should add, normally, a charcoal grill or a gas grill, you might see those little temperature gauges in the hood. You know what I'm talking about?
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, yeah. They seem sort of chintzy.
Will Price:
Yeah, those are pretty much worthless. The ones in a tray... or excuse me, in a pellet grill are not worthless because they can't be because everything about the grill relies on its reliability and relies on it to accurately monitor itself, which is kind of a subject that we'll talk about as we break them down. Most of them are digital PID-controlled temperature probes. That's just code for they're legit. They're not just in there to look nice.
Nick Caruso:
I mean, you kind of alluded to this, but they, by necessity, are electric grills. They must be plugged in. You couldn't fire one of these up in a field, unless you had generator of some sort or whatever.
Will Price:
Correct, correct, yeah. So, they're not brand new, which is like a lot of electric grills or in this category in general, people see it as something that's, oh, this new, cool thing the kids are doing. It's been around since the mid-80s. The technology, of course, it hasn't been... I would argue it hasn't been a good value or really, really worth investing in for most people until really recently. And that's just kind of the influx of outdoor smart technology and being able to control your grill from your phone while you're sitting on the couch, watching football or whatever you're watching. I'm not going to call it revolutionary because at the end of the day we're talking about smoking brisket or a pork chop or something, but it is a massive quality-of-life improvement and something that I think a lot of people would find pleasurable if they were willing to give it a try.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. I think whether or not they're new or not is relative. I mean, they're as new as I am, but things like fire have been around a lot longer. It's just the-
Will Price:
You could argue the charcoal grill is a little bit older.
Nick Caruso:
Right. Weber grills might be more recent, but caveman technology. So, is it safe to say these are the most precise sort of regular grilling, cooking method in our outdoor spaces?
Will Price:
It's interesting. They do fluctuate in temperature to some degree, like all grills do, and that's because what they're working with, burning a certain amount of tiny pellets, blowing fans, like the fans into the fire pot to kind of move the temperature up and down, it's not necessarily as razor consistent as say a gas grill, which is going to be pretty... if you put all your burners to the same level, unless you have an issue with how your gas is flowing to the machine, those burners will be putting out a pretty similar level of heat, right?
Nick Caruso:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Will Price:
Pellet grills won't be that razor sharp, but the strengths of a pellet grill... and we keep calling them "grills". And this is something that we probably should discuss. They're really more grill smokers. They one, remove a lot of the burden of kind of knowing how to grill. Some people may scoff at that. It's sort of like a lot of people view learning how to grill as some sort of rite of passage towards your growing chest hair or something. So, they kind of remove a lot of that burden. And they kind of, another word I don't really love, but democratize barbecue, smoking meat, low and slow, whatever you want to call it. So, they're not as razor sharp as a gas grill. Definitely more so than a charcoal grill. But their strength is in their ease of use and kind of lowering the threshold of information you need to get into, I don't know, those fun things to cook that are so hard to cook.
Nick Caruso:
Right. It's kind of like this is the set-it-and-forget-it, the cruise control of grills.
Nick Caruso:
So, pellets. You mentioned grills versus smoker. Let's get into that in a second. I want to talk about the actual pellets first though. I have experience with pellet stoves. And they're kind of a hassle to me in a lot of ways. It feels like I have to shovel coal and get these bags and stuff.
Will Price:
You're running a steam train or something.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. Like a locomotive. It's a Casey Jones situation. But I don't know why I think that. It's no more complex in that sense than a charcoal grill, where I have to dump charcoal into a grill. What do you think about the complexity of-
Will Price:
Oh.
Nick Caruso:
That was a...
Will Price:
Yeah. I couldn't tell if it was a prompt or you were really going to tell me about your childhood shoveling coal. I couldn't tell where we were going.
Will Price:
Yeah, no, pellet grills, there's a lot of buttons and doodads on them, but at the end of the day you fill up the side of it with a bunch of pellets that you get that are in a big bag you get at Home Depot or whatever. Most of the hoppers hold 20 to 30 pounds of pellets, which is enough pellets for a very, very, very long smoke or if you're going long. So, 9 times out of 10, you won't have to refill the hopper mid-brisket or whatever you're going for.
Will Price:
So, I mean, like I said, all you're doing is you're understanding, okay, I'm cooking X, let's just say a brisket. I want to cook it at this temperature. Let's say 250, 275, whatever. Maybe 225, a little lower. And I'm going to go 12 hours.
Will Price:
9 out of 10 pellet grills nowadays can be controlled through apps on smartphones. You tap that into your phone 10 minutes before you're going to put the thing on the grill. And the grill cranks itself up, brings itself to temperature. You throw the brisket on, wrapped up in tin foil, whatever your procedure is. I won't get too in the weeds. And then you can check on it every few hours on your phone and it'll tell you what the temperature is inside the grill.
Will Price:
Most of these grills even have built-in temperature probes. So, you can plug in a probe like you would... you're testing chicken to see how I've done it is. You leave that in the brisket. So, your phone will then tell you, "Okay, your brisket's at 175." And you know in your head, or you've set it in the grill, that you want to pull it at 225 or 250 or whatever it is. And so, basically it's going to keep reporting you all this information and make it literally as easy as possible for you to go from raw piece of meat to beautifully smoked piece of meat, or in some cases a nice grilled pork chop, steak, whatever.
Nick Caruso:
Right. So, it's a blend of complexity and ease. It's like a high-tech grill, basically. It sounds like it kind of takes away the... you may drink fewer beers while you're cooking because you're not standing around the grill and poking at it.
Will Price:
Yeah, I mean, you could go to the grocery store while you're... I mean, I don't know, there's a million safety features on these grills. So, leaving them alone on your back porch is something... do that at your own risk, but they have plenty of design to make sure that they don't in fact burn your house down. But there are people who turn it on, then they forget something, some side that they're cooking with, whatever they're smoking, run off to the grocery store, come back, and it's still smoking and doing its thing.
Nick Caruso:
That's great.
Will Price:
So, it is a high-tech... it's basically the smart home grill, if you want to look at it that way.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. Almost like a crockpot that you can leave... I am always nervous to leave that cooking on my counter, but in theory it could be done. So, slow cooker alludes to what you mentioned earlier that, technically, these are smokers and not grills. Can you get into that distinction?
Will Price:
Yeah, it's a weird one. So, a lot of pellet grills... and they are widely marketed and sold as a pellet grill, so I'll call them that for now. You think about first, the temperature maximum. So, if you want to grill a steak, and I'm not going to pretend... I'm not going to gate-keep the minimum temperature to grill a steak. If you're fine grilling a steak on a gas grill that maxes at 400 or a pellet grill that maxes at 400, then by all means. But in the opinion of most folks who grill a lot of steaks or review these products or what have you, you really need 500-plus, preferably 600 and above, to get a nice whole sear on a piece of meat before you overcook it. We all know that's the magic of getting a steak right. You want the inside to be a nice medium or medium rare, for the most part. You want the outside to be beautiful, a really nice solid crust.
Will Price:
So, achieving that on a pellet grill can be challenging because most of these grills, they max out at 400 to 500. Very rarely do you see any that will market the ability to go to 550, 600, 650, anything like that. So, that's the first kind of step to cross.
Will Price:
The second is that... sorry, of course, there's a siren going off in my ear. The second is that a charcoal grill or a gas grill, they work with a few different kinds of heat. And I'm not going to get too science teacher, but generally speaking just think of it as you have conductive heat, so you have the heat of the grates themselves touching the steak or touching the pork chop or whatever we're talking about. And then the second is radiative heat. Those are the two. Those are the two big types of heats... two types of heat. Wow. There we go. That are going to achieve a nice brown crust quickly without overcooking the piece of steak.
Will Price:
So, if you look inside a pellet grill, there's grates like a normal grill, and then there's sort of this angled grease catch that's over the fire pot. And this is the case for 9 out of 10 pellet grills. Not every single one, there's some exceptions, but most of them. So, what that means is the heat is coming from the fire pot, which is under that grease catch to the grease catch. And then the grates are above that. So, you have a lot of layers of things in between where the heat source is and where your food is.
Will Price:
So, what that means is you're kind of creating a smoky oven rather than a super high-heat searing zone, if you will. If you think of the nicer Webers or really any nicer gas grill, they'll have an infrared burner somewhere on them. And that's the area that it's going to get up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit at great level, and just gives you the absolute perfect crust really quickly without overcooking the meat. Charcoal obviously doesn't need that. Charcoal is going to be over a 1,000 degrees pretty quickly if it's at full light. So, yeah, pellet grills are limited in that regard that.
Will Price:
There's some innovations done to kind of make this less annoying. Weber had its own try at it with its first pellet grill that came out a year or two ago. But for the most part, I would say if you're grilling steaks all the time I would stick with charcoal or gas.
Nick Caruso:
So then give me an idea of what you say, like steaks are harder to cook like this. Does that mean you can't really sear things on the surface? What can you cook? What are these made to cook?
Will Price:
So, we called them pellet grills. I view them as pellet smokers. So, to me, the absolute best things you can cook on these devices are anything that you would cook or you would get at a barbecue restaurant: smoked chicken, beef brisket, ribs are incredible, smoked sausage is amazing, Boston butt. Whatever your preferred barbecue is, it will cook it and it will cook it well.
Will Price:
And the thing is, you could, if you have an extra, let's say a really, really, really thick-cut steak. I'm talking two-inches thick, extra large, whatever. You could make it work on a pellet grill. Absolutely. You absolutely could because that's the steak that's going to take a little while to get to a higher internal temperature because it's so large. But if you're dealing with a more average-sized steak, one-inch thick, what have you, I really think you'll struggle to hit that nice 115 degrees internal Fahrenheit while the outside is appropriately charred.
Will Price:
That's my opinion. People will argue with me all the time in my email, on Twitter, and elsewhere about this. So, take it for what you will. Ask somebody who has one, but that's my take on the matter.
Nick Caruso:
Well, that sounds like an invitation for anyone listening to hit you up in email or-
Will Price:
Wprice. Gearpatrol.com. [crosstalk 00:17:44].
Nick Caruso:
Wow. Just giving it out. And yeah, you can also comment on articles on the site. And you can get in touch with Will all sorts of ways. You can DM me for his address. There's all sorts of stuff.
Nick Caruso:
So, I don't mean to stick on this point, but it's not recommended then that I would grill burgers on a pellet grill, pellet smoker? Is that true?
Will Price:
Yeah. I mean, yeah. Okay. You could. A better tool for someone who's going to... if you have a pellet grill, a pellet smoker, whatever we want to call them, and you want to do burgers or hotdogs or a steak, whatever, every once in a while, I think that's perfectly fine. But I think if you're somebody who thinks of having a cookout as that, and that's what you're going to do more often than smoke a whole chicken or ribs or whatever, then I think you'd be better served by a gas grill or a charcoal grill. Just better results, more convenient for those shorter-cook-time foods. That's kind of my take on the matter if. Of course, it can cook all those things we mentioned, but it's not necessarily best at them.
Nick Caruso:
Got it. Something I meant to bring up when we were talking about pellets earlier, and you did mention it, but I let it go, as I so often do with things you say, Will. Pellets, you talked about the wood flavor of pellets. As I understand it, isn't that kind of a feature of these, that you can get all sorts of... kind of you can with charcoal to a degree, but with pellets especially you can get a lot of different sort of mesquite flavors and wood flavors.
Will Price:
Yeah. You could do mesquite, applewood, cherry. There's probably dozens of different wood pellet flavors. And I will say that it's one of the more fun parts about it because you can kind of... maybe you mix them, you do a little apple, a little cherry. My dad has a pellet grill. And he'll mix two-thirds one type, one-third the other type, and just kind of play with it in that way, just like you would if you're doing a barbecue with proper wood, not even necessarily charcoal. So, it gives you that ability and kind of that feeling like, I don't know, you are a pitmaster without having to go through decades of sitting inside a barbecue pit, which is a hot, sweaty and very, very sort of humid existence.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. It sounds terrible. So, sort of to sum up then, the pellet grill smoker is maybe the most nuanced of the three. Is that true? The three being gas, charcoal, pellet.
Will Price:
Yeah, yeah. Let's just stick with that. Let's exclude electric grills. That's where they belong: excluded. Yeah, I think it's probably the most nuanced. It's just an interesting one because the other grill types, yeah, they're making efforts to become more smart-home friendly, more modern, what have you. But at the end of the day, having a grill that you can just tap around on your phone to change all the controls and set a guided cook like you would an instant pot or whatever your other smart cooking appliances may be, I think that's kind of special. And I do think it's kind of cool. Bar taking a course in smoking meat on a proper smoker or trying and failing for years, it's kind of a shortcut to reaching really nice pull-apart whatever.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. This is the get-rich-quick scheme of making food, right?
Will Price:
There you go, yeah.
Nick Caruso:
It's the silver bullet everyone's looking for. So, this would have probably served us well to do upfront because it's chronology-related, but you mentioned that the sort of genesis of pellet grill smoker machines was the mid-80s, which is now coming up on 40 years ago. And that's courtesy of the company Traeger. Is that true? We'll talk about a few picks in a second, but is there anything significant to sort of talk about the development, or where these came from, and the early years of Traeger's existence?
Will Price:
I think the early years, and Traeger would probably say this themselves, and they are at this point probably the biggest brand name in pellet grills. So, there is some justice in the world. They were first and they are still at the top. And they were first by some time. In fact, I think they only started seeing competition in the last, I don't know the exact number of years, but once a patent on the pellet grilling technology expired, which is why there's a lot more players in the game nowadays.
Will Price:
But yeah, it was mid-80s. The idea was, you mentioned wood pellet stoves earlier. It came from how wood pellet stoves have been heating houses for a long time before that. And seeing it as, like it is today, perhaps an easier path to low-and-slow smoking and perhaps a little grilling. There's a little more to it. There's some interest, if you're kind of into the old patent disputes and everything, it's fun to read about that stuff at that period.
Will Price:
But yeah, I wouldn't say it's a grill type that has some storied history. It's really only become mainstream, I think in the last maybe three, four years.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. The pellet stoves in homes remind me sort of the reason that I was around them at least is that they're cleaner burning than the wood fireplace that they replaced. There's not smoke pouring into the room. They're safer, I guess. You don't have to reach into a fire. What about the ecological impact of this kind of thing?
Will Price:
It's interesting. Yeah. It's one of those things. It's always the deeper you dive, the more complex and kind of nuanced this subject gets. So, with pellet grills, the first thing that pellet grills require to run of course are pellets, which are made of wood. So, I imagine, and there are plenty of organizations, lobbying organizations and whatnot, fighting against this, but if you've talked to the folks who live in or around the forests in the Southeastern and Eastern United States where these trees are getting mowed down and turned into pellets for both wood stoves in the US and in Europe as well as now growing demand for wood pellet grill fuel, those folks would not be super enthusiastic about the increase in demand for the product. And then there's also the fact that turning a felled tree into a pellet also consumes a pretty incredible amount of energy. There have been some studies that show that the process of creating pellets themselves is dirtier than the process of refining coal. So, I'm not going to pretend like I have every single paper on the subject, but I can tell you it's something that's worth Googling, looking around at yourself if you are indeed concerned about the ecological and carbon footprint of the things you buy and the things that you're playing around with in your backyard.
Nick Caruso:
Right. I mean, on that point, if you're grilling steaks, there's a big ecological impact there. What about recycled woods? Can you cook with recycled wood? It seems like a dangerous prospect.
Will Price:
Perhaps, perhaps not. I'll let somebody Google and tell me that I should have known that before the podcast in my email.
Nick Caruso:
I'm going to second that. Anybody, you can copy me on that email. I'd love to see it.
Will Price:
BCC our boss.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, exactly. The pellets, like recycling pellets and stuff, the source of them reminds... all I can think of when I think of compressed wood is Ikea and sort of flat-pack furniture. So, to me, in my mind, the pellets, kind of like kids think clouds come from factories, the pellets come from the little holes where you stick the dowels, like those holes have to be drilled out.
Will Price:
Oh my god, yeah. And then you find that you've completed whatever piece of furniture you're assembling. And one of them is not full. So, you haven't put a screw in it or nothing is attached to it. And you just know that it's about to collapse. Is that what-
Nick Caruso:
That's right. That's right. Those are the ones.
Will Price:
Another podcast.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. Another, another, another. So, something that surprises me... this is a kind of a good segue into talking about your top-three recommended products here. But something that surprises me about these pellet grill, pellet smokers, which is just a really awkward thing to keep saying over and over, is the price because they are very complex. There is electronic and digital technology. There are a lot of, like you say, moving parts. They are more nuanced in a lot of ways. They are wifi-connected. They run on electric. There's a lot of different stuff. And they're even... oh gosh, let me see here.
Nick Caruso:
I think the most expensive one you recommend is like $800. Whereas charcoal and gas grills, particularly gas grills, I mean, at the high end are astronomical, but the really good one, it could cost way more than that. What's your insight on that? Why is that? That's confusing to me.
Will Price:
It's a good question. I don't know if I have the absolute perfect answer to it. At the end of the day pellet grills are, even though they have sort of entered the mainstream as a much smaller but now existent third rail of grilling, they're still a much smaller category. So, being really competitively priced is important for brands in this space. And at the end of the day of course there are luxury and higher-end pellet grills, but there are far fewer of them than there are luxury or higher-end gas grills or charcoal grills just simply by the fact that there are just fewer people shopping for pellet grills, which just means there's a smaller group of people searching for those luxury options. So, you have a lot of brands in the space now. And they're almost all competing for around the same price points.
Will Price:
There might be a thousand-dollar pellet grill in our guide of grills we've tested. And it goes as low as I think for a full-size pellet grill, 500 or something. So, that's a pretty small range when you think about... like you said, in our equivalent guide for gas grills, we have a grill that's $250 and then we have a grill that's like $15,000. So, $500 to $1,000 is-
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. The Kalamazoo. Yeah.
Will Price:
Yeah. $500 to $1,000 is a much smaller gap, relatively speaking.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. This reminds me... some listeners may remember our chat about bourbon prices. It seems like maybe there's going to be a boom. People are going to look back and be like, "These were such valuable products. Why did I get this for $600?"
Will Price:
It could be.
Nick Caruso:
Could be. I'm going to say that right now. And anybody listening to this in 10 years from now, in 2031, you can email me and call me out.
Nick Caruso:
Okay. So, using that as a springboard, let's talk about the guide. So, we've got this buying guide that you've assembled. In it, there are 10... yeah, 10 pellet smokers and grills. And of those, you have three top picks.
Nick Caruso:
So, regular listeners and readers will recognize our buying guide format. This one's a little different. We usually have a sort of pricier option, a less pricey option, then a middle pick. Because of the product here, we approach it differently. And correct me if I'm wrong there, Will. But we have a best overall, a more accessible price point, and then a best portable pellet smoker. So, it's just a different way to categorize your top-three picks.
Will Price:
Well said.
Nick Caruso:
Thank you very much.
Will Price:
Let's do it.
Nick Caruso:
Let's see, we've been recording for, what? I've learned a lot. Let's say that. Last 25 minutes.
Nick Caruso:
So, let's go through these. Let's actually start... I suggested earlier that we go in a different order, but let's save the best overall for last-
Will Price:
Oh sure.
Nick Caruso:
... as they say so often, and talk about the best, what did you say, cheap pellet smoker, but sort of the affordable price, which is the Green Mountain Grills' Daniel Boone.
Will Price:
The old Danny Boone. Yeah. So, Green Mountain Grills is one of the other big competitors to Traeger. They're a little bit strange. I shouldn't say they're strange. They're just a little bit different in that if I... for the most part, they're only available through buying them through a licensed dealer. So, just on their website, it's kind of like how Big Green Egg works, if anyone's ever tried to buy one, new that is.
Will Price:
This specific one, it's $500 or $499. It's got plenty of grill space. Its temperature range is pretty standard, but a little bit better than pellet grills on the cheaper end, which is 150 to 500. That's plenty of range for any smoking of course. And 500, you could do a really big steak or a nice thick pork chop or some of the other not-lightening-fast, high-heat grilling dishes in it as well.
Will Price:
The reason we went with it at 499, there are a lot of other pellet grills at that price point and even some that are a little bit below. They get down into the low 400s and maybe even high 300s. This grill was pretty much exactly like Green Mountain's other more higher-end grills that are $150, $200 more, but this one does not have wifi or app connectivity. So, basically, in my mind, I was like, "I would rather have a well-built grill." And I know that weight does not always equal quality, but some to some degree, it actually does line up. This thing is like 150 pounds of steel. It might be even a bit more than that. The grates are a really high quality. The auger is really consistent. Kind of the guts of it are what you would want from a pellet grill.
Will Price:
Because there are so many moving parts in these, when you want... I actually think I might say this in the guide itself. When you're looking for something more on the budget side, you really don't want to go too cheap because they can, and I won't say will, but they are more likely to break down on you than say a... certainly than a charcoal grill, but even then a gas grill. So, it's a good option for people who want a pellet grill and don't mind going out and tapping the up and down button on the temperature gauge every couple hours.
Nick Caruso:
Sure. Yeah. That's not a way I'd thought about that, but it's something to keep in mind since these are more complex. There are more things that could break, like you say. Not will, but things break eventually.
Nick Caruso:
You also mentioned that the... so, this can burn at different temperatures than other grills. What determines that? Why would some grills not be able to achieve a temperature that the others do?
Will Price:
There's probably a number of reasons. I think a lot of the ones that hit up to 500... 500, it's my own personal benchmark for like... it needs to hit at least 500. It's just my opinion. If it doesn't hit that mark, it's less capable in grilling some of those other foods that we talked about.
Will Price:
So, I think a lot of it probably comes down to fans inside the grill and how quickly they can kind of get the fire going and keep the fire going consistently without burning through too many pellets. Fuel efficiency is a big thing with any grill: how much gas, or rather how much propane or natural gas you're burning through; how much charcoal, not as much, most charcoal grills are going to be burning at the rate that the charcoal itself will burn. But pellet grills, some are really, really, really big pellet-eaters, like driving a semi-truck in grill form. It's just churning through pellets. And some are quite effective and aren't going to cost you an arm and a leg in just buying bags of pellets themselves.
Will Price:
Green Mountain, I think makes grills generally speaking that are quite efficient, which is another reason why this is a really good buy for someone looking on the budget side of things.
Nick Caruso:
Right on, yeah. And speaking of pellets again and price, as I recall the pellets that my family has bought and that I bought for my family are something like $40. I mean, something like... does that sound right to you?
Will Price:
Oh, even less than that normally.
Nick Caruso:
Are they?
Will Price:
Yeah, yeah. So, there's some specialty woods. Or sometimes brands maybe they hike up their prices. I don't know. But most of the time, in the $15 to $30 range.
Nick Caruso:
Oh good.
Will Price:
Yeah. And one more thing about this Green Mountain grill because I do like it for the price. But another thing I think, and I think this should be translated to every grill that exists with wheels, it has two wheels that are basically extra large rollerblade wheels. And I think we even talked about this subject when we talked about-
Nick Caruso:
Office chairs.
Will Price:
... task chairs and office chairs. Yeah. It is such a small, but healthy thing to add to any product that needs to move at some point in time, to have wheels that A, work, and B, aren't a total pain in the ass to move around. And for a cheap product to have... I keep saying "cheap." Inexpensive, affordable, budget-minded, whatever, to have it is just, I don't know, I think it's a small thing that speaks to, they didn't just mail this in.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. For sure. I love a rollerblade wheel on a product. Just love them.
Will Price:
Yeah. I think it's like a very Gear Patrol... you test so many things. And all of a sudden you just start keying in on like, "But how are the wheels," you know?
Nick Caruso:
Yes, exactly.
Will Price:
Temperature, whatever, yeah. But does it roll?
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, exactly. Oh yeah. The Vacheron or the Rolex? What's the class? Is it... yeah. And I mean, the green details on this one are cool. Hearkening to the name.
Nick Caruso:
And it should also be said, I don't know why I haven't commented on this yet, but these grill smokers look really serious. They look bad-ass because they necessarily have these chimneys. And the electronic guts are a separate section of the whole thing. They look pretty serious. Something to show off to your friends when they come over for that slow-cooked Boston butt.
Will Price:
Male bonding. That's what's it all about.
Nick Caruso:
Okay. Next up. Sort of contradicts the idea that these have to be plugged into an outlet. And yet it exists. And we recommend it. The best portable pellet smoker.
Will Price:
Don't cast doubt on my well-reviewed selection.
Nick Caruso:
Well, I don't know. I mean, you're going to have to explain yourself right now. We swore you in before we started recording. And this is the Traeger Ranger. Good name for a portable device.
Will Price:
Yeah. We'll talk about another Traeger in a second. This is $400. You do still have to plug it in. And if you're thinking of like, how is a pellet grill portable? There's a lot of things going on. It's a really good question. This is the size of probably a medium or small-sized luggage you would check on an airplane. It kind of looks like that too, without the wheels or the handle. And you're definitely not going to bring it backpacking through the wilderness, but you could absolutely bring it car camping. You could absolutely bring it to a campsite where you either have a generator or plugs handy.
Will Price:
I have used this on the rooftop of apartments in New York City. Had a few friends over and made six chicken halves, whatever you... what am I thinking of? Chicken quarters. There we go. Leg and thigh combos.
Nick Caruso:
One and a half chickens.
Will Price:
One and a half chickens. And it did it perfectly. And it's not the absolute ideal grilling experience, but you're not always going to have a big patio with tons and tons and tons of space. And I'm still very impressed with this specific product years after testing it.
Nick Caruso:
Cool. And yeah, this goes for... we have a link here. $399.95. It's $400. So, you're still paying a significant amount, but you're paying for convenience. It should also be said, definitely be careful if you're going to be grilling on the top of an apartment building in New York City.
Will Price:
Yeah. I wouldn't recommend doing that. But that is the extremes I will go to, to deliver first-person takes on products. I will break probably the law. I'm pretty sure that was illegal.
Nick Caruso:
You will put literally an entire block of apartments on the line. So, any fire marshals can feel free to also email Will.
Will Price:
Wprice. Gearpatrol.com.
Nick Caruso:
Great. So, the third and final of the top-three recommendations we have for our best pellet smoker and grills. I'm going to use something I was just thinking of while you were talking about the last one. I'm going to say this is a Traeger warning. Another Traeger. The OG, if that makes sense. The best pellet smoker overall you've awarded to the Traeger 575. Tell me about it.
Will Price:
This was actually pretty difficult because most of the best pellet grills are right at this price point or right above it. I went with-
Nick Caruso:
Which is $800.
Will Price:
800. Yeah. There you go. Thank you. This one, I went with because it has I thought an excellent combination of features, price, and customer service, and a company that... they've been making them since they were invented. Well, they invented the grill itself. So, sort of track record.
Will Price:
To me, you can kind of view Traeger as the Weber of the pellet grill world. They just kind of do it really, really well for reasonable prices. And they're constantly innovating and coming out with new features that are helpful. So, the reason I like this one, or the reasons I liked this one on a fundamental level are fuel efficiency, which I found it didn't chew through pellets nearly as quickly as some of the other grills that we've tested for this. It does have excellent wheels, which we've already talked about. We love a good wheel on the Gear Patrol podcast.
Nick Caruso:
Love wheels.
Will Price:
It has I think probably the most robust and well-supported app system of any brand in this space. Traeger, I think they call it the WiFIRE system.
Nick Caruso:
That's clever.
Will Price:
Yeah, very clever. They do a ton of work with this. I really hope it is the WiFIRE system. And I didn't just-
Nick Caruso:
It is. I just saw that, yeah.
Will Price:
Thank you. But it's failed on me exactly zero times in my times testing Traeger grills, which has been across three or four generations of their grills at this point.
Will Price:
And to kind of top it all off, it has a really, really sturdy warranty for a category where warranties are not usually that strong. So, look at the grill for more specifics on length because I think it's like 10 years for some parts of it, five years for other parts. You know how warranties work. But it's significantly better than other grills you will find in the space.
Will Price:
And I did want to say, even though this is our pick, also I really love a prep table attached to a grill. I think all grills should have them.
Will Price:
But I also wanted to say, this is my top pick, but do a little Googling. There's other great companies out there. Recteq makes a lot of really, really cool grills. And they also have some fun kind of design flourishes. I think their handles are designed to look like bullhorns, which if you're into that you're into that. But they're really nice. They work really well. Also, insane warranties with that company.
Will Price:
Z grills is a nice budget-minded brand. Look into them, if you're looking for something that's not nearly as expensive and still has a pretty robust wifi and smart control setups.
Will Price:
Weber has their own pellet grill that's extremely well-made and is very, very worth looking at. Just the build quality itself sort of stood out when we tested it.
Will Price:
Point is, this is a space where, unlike perhaps charcoal and gas grills, there's a lot of good products being made because there's so much competition and the market is only growing. So, do a little Googling.
Nick Caruso:
But start with our guide.
Will Price:
But use my guide. Yeah.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah.
Will Price:
Wait. Yeah, nevermind. Just look at my guide and nothing else.
Nick Caruso:
Right. Just type in gearpatrol.com. I mean, in all fairness, you do recommend inside this guide several of those brands. Actually, I think all of them you just mentioned. So, that is a great place to start and/or end your journey, anybody who's shopping for the smoker/grills.
Nick Caruso:
So, then, Will, we've not really touched on your history with making smoked meats and grilled meats and all that. We don't necessarily need to, but suffice it to say that if I were making a buying guide of just people I know making food, you would be in the top recommendations.
Will Price:
Just get this pick of people who cook in your backyard.
Nick Caruso:
Definitely Will Price. So, that is to say that you do a lot of this. You are well-versed. Pellet or not, what are you cooking on, maybe this summer?
Will Price:
Yeah. I've got a few products specifically that are coming in that we're getting testing notes on. Some of the bigger ones I'm outsourcing the testing to other folks who are lucky enough to have large backyards.
Will Price:
I'm actually running through a few more small, and I'm going to call them park-sized grills. Weber had a new one come out this year called the Traveler that we're getting a little hands on with. It's a small gas grill. Pretty good firepower, all things considered.
Will Price:
If I had a beautiful, large backyard and all the space and time in the world, I would probably be cooking mostly charcoal, if I'm being honest. It would probably be on a, I don't know, maybe a PK Grill. If you're a big charcoal grill fan or if you want a charcoal grill that's good for a nice steak and also good for smoking, look at a PK grill. It's a good size. Actually, Nick, I think we've actually grilled on one together.
Nick Caruso:
In fact, I'm looking out my window at mine right now. So, yeah.
Will Price:
Wow. This podcast not brought to you by PK Grills, believe it or not.
Nick Caruso:
All right. Can you imagine? Well, Will, that's a ton of information. Hopefully, folks out there who are curious about grilling and also, who did we say? The fire marshals, the people in the future, all the people who know-
Will Price:
Shout out, fire safety, for sure.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, yeah. Their ears are perking up. But thank you for your time and for going through all the testing for all of this information.
Nick Caruso:
And anybody listening, thank you for listening. We really appreciate you tuning in and hope that you like the Gear Patrol podcast enough to subscribe. And if you like it that much, we hope you also like it enough to throw a five-star review our way because it helps us get into more ears, thanks to algorithms. Slow cook that algorithm and... you see there? Traeger warning.
Will Price:
Oh god.
Nick Caruso:
So, yeah. As we've mentioned several times, you can hit us up in all sorts of ways. You can email Will. You can hit us up on social. Our handle is "gearpatrol". One word. Everywhere. You can comment on our articles on gearpatrol.com. And you can email me directly at podcast@gearpatrol.com. So, once again, thank you to Gear Patrol's very own pitmaster, Will Price.
Will Price:
Thank you, guys. Or thank... not... well, thank you and whoever edit... whatever. Thanks, everyone who's listening not Nick.
Nick Caruso:
I edit it. Okay. Well, really appreciate your time, Will. And hopefully you'll be grilling something for me soon. And everybody else, hope you are well. Enjoy your summer. Good luck grilling. I'm Nick Caruso. And until next time, take care.