5 Reasons To Buy a Pellet Cooker
What smoker should I buy? When I get recognized as a “BBQ guy”, I’m often asked this question. Typically it's from someone that has a gas grill or no grill at all. For this reason, I am careful when answering not to intimidate or insult someone who is curious about the world of BBQ and smoked meat. To that end, if we get more people cooking BBQ, the world would be a better place. Majority of the time I recommend a pellet cooker and I emphasize that the purchase is only the beginning to this amazing style of cooking. A pellet cooker can be a very valuable addition to your backyard for cooks of all skill levels. Here are my 5 reasons why:
1. Clean Smoke
Cooking with charcoal and/or wood can be very fun but also very difficult. Trying to maintain a certain pit temperature and clean smoke in different types of weather takes a lot of skill, practice and patience to achieve. However, pellet cookers get right to the point and produce clean, blue smoke by thermostatically controlling the temperature set by the user. Basically, it's a cheat code just like: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, B, A, Start was used to give you 30 lives playing Contra on Nintendo. Extra Grill Coach points awarded if you remembered that code.
2. Consistency
If you ever smoked a pork shoulder then you know that there are so many steps and factors that may negatively affect the outcome of your food. It starts with purchasing the meat, then prep, then cook for 12 hours plus, then resting and then serving. Point is, there are a whole bunch of things that can go wrong cooking bbq, but when working with a pellet cooker, temperature control is not one! Once you learn your cooker and its tendencies you will know that the temperature will remain constant throughout the cook as long as you keep pellets in the hopper. This leads perfectly into my next point, sleep.
3. Sleep
Most traditional bbq cooks hate pellet cookers with a passion. It's easy to find plenty of jokes and memes about pellet cookers on social media. This “hateration” from traditional cooks has to be about sleep, no sleep = crankiness. I remember at my first KCBS competition, I spent all night next to the cookers because I needed to make sure that all the temps stayed where they needed to be so I got very little sleep. The next day, I was like a zombie all day. It was difficult to finish the cook and prepare the meat entries for turn in. Staying up all night managing and watching temperatures was a typical occurrence during long cooks at home but the meat payoff was always worth the lack of sleep. When a pellet cooker entered my life, that all changed. Sleep greatly improved and I started smoking meats during the week. Put something on in the morning, go sit in a cubicle for 8 hours then go home to a great Tuesday night dinner that the family loves.
4. Maintenance
Pellet cookers are not only easy to use, they are easy to clean up. First of all, the pellets do not produce much ash so you don't have to clean it up after every cook and secondly you simply vacuum the ash up with shop vac. I do this on my pellet cookers about every 5 to 7 cooks, sometimes even longer. You should cover the cooking surface that is directly under the grill with foil. The foil will catch all the fat, sauce and small chunks of meat that fall through the grill grates. This surface is typically slanted so that it would lead the liquified grease to a bucket or trough that can be emptied periodically. When servicing your cooker simply roll up, throw out and replace that foil before your next cook.
5. It's Trending!
About 5 years ago, I would hear that a lot of competition cooks were using pellet cookers for certain meats and/or processes, especially chicken. I like the fact that competition cooks are always squeezing the grape to get more juice. There is humility in trying to better your craft to gain every edge possible. It's not only competition cooks that took the leap. The grilling giant of the industry Weber Grills developed and released a pellet cooker in February 2020 called the SmokeFire complete with WiFi controls. I also learned in the last couple years, (2) giants in BBQ are putting pellet cookers in their restaurants! Dr. BBQ, Ray Lampe (BBQ Hall of Famer; Yes there is such a thing) and Myron Mixon of Jack’s Old South have both put pellet cookers in their new restaurants. They seemed to agree with the competition cooks that this is a consistent way to produce great BBQ. If it works for them, it can definitely work for you!
Technology has been invading the world of BBQ and there are a lot of useless gadgets out there but pellet cookers are legit. Too legit to quit! ….. yeah, kind of a weak reference. The good news is that there are many manufacturers putting out quality cookers these days and it is a buyer's market. Healthy competition is great for us BBQ cooks. The quality cookers can be pricey but very well worth the cost, and as production increases pricing should come down. Simple fact is most Americans own gas grills due to price and convenience and a natural affinity to cook outside. Now with the popularity of smoking meats, it's only a matter of time before people change out that gasser for a pellet cooker and start cooking the best product on their block.
Get outside and grill!
