Quote:
Originally Posted by Hanni
Smoking snobs or traditionalists will tell you that pellet grills are blasphemous, the fact is they work quite well. You can cook low and slow and get a pretty good smoke flavour or crank up and sear steak. I know 2 people with them and have had some really great smoked meat, brisket, whole chicken, beef ribs and pulled pork from them.
I own a Weber charcoal smoker so I went the more traditional way and really enjoy it, but if you want easy temperature control and the versatility of a smoker and a BBQ pellets seem to do both quite well.
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I don't think its trivial snobbery, its just about the physics behind how the sawdust pellets burn under a plate. The big knock against pellet "grills" is not about smoking, its in the context of actually trying to grill - you can't have high heat
and generate lots of blue smoke, because they're inversely proportional. The higher the heat the less good smoke the pellets produce, and vice versa, so you really aren't adding much smoke flavor when grilling. Furthermore the heat from pellet grills is almost exclusively convection, not the radiant heat required for a desirable sear, which is one of the main reasons to grill something in the first place.
Its more accurate to think of them as solid slow cook smokers like a Bradley, rather than a decent grill.