It’s small, and pretty expensive, but you can smoke or grill anywhere. I talked to the guy grilling burgers and dogs on it for a while. He’s very happy with it, battery claims 15 hours of operation on a charge and he said he’s gone over 12 hours without a problem. The 256 sqinch cooking area includes a rack over the grill, good for smoking but grilling space is not much more than 1 sqoot (144 sqinches). He says the sear mode over direct flame works great too. His only caution was to clean under the grill frequently to stop flare ups. He says he brushes it out while hot and pours some water in the bottom to steam it out when he’s done cooking.
The price is quite high for a little grill. Don’t know how long a pound of pellets lasts and they’re not free either. OTOH my outdoor kitchen is hardly worth using for anything short of a party. I could easily use this to smoke a single rack of ribs or a small piece of brisket, cook a few burgers or dogs, and do that anywhere. I want one, but probably not going to spend 500 bucks right away on one. It’s about half that price for the same thing without a battery. It could easily be powered with an inverter hooked to a car battery. I don’t think it uses that much juice, might not even need the car running, and I’m not going camping anyway so I might settle for the old fashioned type of pellet smoker that has to be plugged in just like they used in the olden days.
Ok, looks all too good to be true but this will be on my mind for a while. And no, it’s not real smoking or grilling because it doesn’t use lump charcoal or wood, but I’d still have some fun faking it occasionally.
I use lump charcoal. Briquets are more consistent and last longer. But i am very comfortable dumping the ash from my lump charcoal into the compost heap/mulch pile. And I’m not completely comfortable doing that with the ash from briquets. So i put up with the less convenient fuel for ease of clean up.
(I dump the ash can before i begin, not after. So the ashes are quite cool, and not a fire hazard.)
Ordinary briquettes need only be made of charcoal and starch for a binder, but the major brands use some questionable additional ingredients, including coal. It seems fast lighting is the primary concern of briquette users. It’s also mostly softwood charcoal, that doesn’t get as hot or burn as long as hardwood also.
I’ve run across hardwood briquettes occasionally. One brand adds only corn starch as a binder but it’s usually even more expensive than lump when I can find it. If you need high heat it’s hard to beat dense hardwood briquettes though.
I bet you can produce some fantastic BBQ using a pellet smoker- the consistency of the fuel I imagine produces very even heat so you have no surprises. And I wouldn’t call it ‘not real smoking or grilling because it doesn’t use lump charcoal or wood’: I did a couple minutes of research and, while wood is turned to pulp and extruded in the pellet production process, the natural lignin in the wood is the only binding, so it’s essentially 100% real wood (at least in the highest-quality pellets).
The reason why I wouldn’t be interested in pellet smokers is, I wouldn’t want the expense of a pellet grill and having to buy pricey pellets for it. It’s too easy to get natural hardwood cheaply or for free (I’ve had a few apple trees fall on my property, so I pretty much have a lifetime supply of seasoned applewood). But if I was traveling for BBQ competitions and needed something portable, I might consider something like the Pit Boss pellet smoker.
Though surprisingly, it appears pellets are cheaper than briquets (which I typically use in combo with wood chunks) by weight. No idea on the burn rate of (X) amount of pellets by weight vs. the same amount of briquets, though- the pellets may burn more quickly.
Traeger Smoker was a COVID purchase. I have gotten plenty of use out of it, but mostly when ribs are $3 a lbs. or less, that’s the price point I can work with and try different things and make them in bulk. More than that and buying ribs at a restaurant makes more sense. I am not ready for Brisket and have not cared enough to smoke anything else.
Hickey and Applewood pellets, not necessarily the Traeger brand.
I did add a postscript paragraph after that-- I looked it up and pellets were surprisingly cheaper than I had thought. Still, I don’t need the expense of yet another grill / smoker (and my wife would surely agree )
I wouldn’t use the first type of pellet-- I hear they can leave unsightly blemishes on your food
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