The One Grill Solution For Backyard BBQ: A Pellet Grill

If you could have just one outdoor cooking appliance, what would it be?

Backyard grilling has always been a big American pastime, but in recent years this has been joined by an explosion of interest in slow smoked barbecue, the traditional Southern or Texan style of cooking meats slowly at low temperatures with indirect heat and plenty of smoky flavor. This has led to a boom in smoker sales, but for most people that means a second unit, and usually a big one, since many smokers are of the offset variety and require a lot of space.

The problem of multiple grills is confounded, because when most people say they are having a “barbecue” they really mean grilling, or cooking over flame, the most common form of backyard cookery. Most of us use our smokers for a limited number of specific slow cooked BBQ specialties such as ribs, brisket and pork shoulder, but grills do everything from a single steak to hamburgers for a crowd, hot dogs, chicken, pork chops, vegetables, seafood and so on and soon. Some smokers, especially vertical ones, can double as wood or charcoal burning kettle-style grills, but this is not typically a solution for the frequent griller, and in summer, or year round in warm weather climates like Arizona, lots of people cook out several nights each week.

Cookshack’s Fast Eddy residential pellet grills come in two sizes, and both do double duty as conventional grills and BBQ smokers.

Because grills typically get used more often than smokers, convenience becomes a big factor: while it is well worth lighting a hardwood charcoal fire to cook ribs for six hours, few people want to bother with this to make a couple of hot dogs, or burgers for two. This typically reduces grill selection to a choice between more convenient propane or more flavorful wood fired cooking, two very different types of grills, and some people want both – along with a smoker (there is also a very limited niche of dual-fuel grills that can burn wood and propane).

In a perfect world, where space is unlimited, a backyard chef would never have to compromise, and since I live in the countryside, where square footage is cheap and plentiful, I have a standalone wood fired smoker, a large propane grill for quick cooking, a large stone open air wood fired grill for cooking Argentinean style, plus a few specialized toys like a Brazilian riodizio grill with multiple rotisserie skewers, a pig box for whole hogs, and a portable gas grill for cooking on the go.

But many Americans live in an urban or suburban world of limited outdoor space, a single patio or even balcony, and if you have to choose just one grill that truly can do it all, the choice is simple: it is almost impossible to argue against a pellet grill. These can slow smoke or grill, do both very well, and easily, with real wood and real fire but without hassle or time constraints, lighting quickly with no mess or chimney starters, and then cooking accurately with minimal supervision.

Pellet grills burn small hardwood pellets about twice the size of a pencil eraser, which you buy in bags. Like wood chunks, they come in different “flavors” like hickory, oak and mesquite. They are not brand specific and are readily available in stores or by mail order. Different brand grills work differently, but at the higher end, better pellet grills generally have a storage hopper for the pellets and an electronic auger which feeds them into a firebox. This typically has an electronic igniter, an element that heats up when you start the grill, and when pellets are dropped onto it, they catch fire. Once it gets going, new pellets are ignited by the old. The whole thing is computer controlled, and you set the temperature with a digital thermostat, just alike a wall oven, then the computer and auger feed pellets as needed to precisely maintain the temperature. That’s pretty much it – whether you are slow smoking at 215° for 12 hours or searing steaks at 500° for two minutes per side, you turn it on, set the temperature, and wait for it to heat up, which is slightly slower than propane and much faster than a wood fired smoker or grill.

Some backyard aficionados look down at pellet grills because of their idiot proof nature, which largely eliminates the many mishaps common in outdoor cooking, and to them this is seen as less challenging and somehow less rewarding. Before ovens and stove burners people had fireplaces in their kitchens, but when it’s time to bake a cake or boil a pot of water for pasta or make a stir fry in a hot sauté pan, no one complains about how ovens and burners have made cooking too easy.

For most of this season I have been testing a high-end pellet grill from Cookshack, a family owned company that does all its manufacturing in Ponca City, Oklahoma and has been making smokers and grills for half a century, mainly for commercial and barbecue restaurant use. Ten years ago Cookshack partnered with “Fast Eddy” Maurin, a retired Kansas City firefighter and barbecue cook who has won many prestigious titles on the competition BBQ circuit, to design and produce a line of wood fired smokers for home and competition use. In 2011 the Fast Eddy by Cookshack line was expanded to include pellet grills. While the Fast Eddy by Cookshack competition and restaurant pellet grills can run twenty grand, the residential model I’ve been using, the PG500, is just $1,595.

One third of the PG500 cooking surface sits right over the firebox for direct grilling, with a cast iron grate for sear marks, while the rest is indirect heat and perfect for smoking or cooking more delicate foods like chicken.

As I suspected, the Cookshack pellet grill does most things really well, and while it has a couple of minor shortcomings, if I had to have just one grill, this would be it. I’ve been cooking, writing on and judging BBQ for a long time, and this past weekend I made spareribs in the PG500 that were as good as any I’ve gotten out of my more laborious conventional smoker, and better than the vast majority of BBQ restaurants could produce – and it was amazingly easy. Here is my full review:

PROS: Convenience – To make my ribs, I turned the smoker on to 220° with the flick of a switch and the push of the temperature control arrows, and less than 15 minutes later the ribs went in. With my regular smoker, it’s 15 minutes in the chimney starter just to ignite hardwood charcoal, than another 25-30 minutes to get the smoker itself going and settled down after the initial weave of excess smoke. And while it’s never a good idea to leave a fire burning apparatus unattended, this is largely a case of “set and forget.” Once the ribs or brisket or wings go in, you can do something else until it’s time to check, spritz or sauce them, no refueling or tinkering required.

Efficiency – As long as you have pellets on hand you never have to unhook a tank and take it to the gas station again, and the pellets are cheaper and much easier to ship and store than hardwood charcoal. A 20-pound bag (from $12) takes up very little space, and one bag easily got me though three 4-6 hour smokes and several high-temperature grilled dinners.

Accuracy – Once lit, the temperature never fluctuates by more than 2-3 degrees with zero supervision. My regular smoker requires a constant eye and adjustment of vents and fuel and even using a remote digital thermometer to monitor it, I consider it pretty good if the temperature is kept within a 10-degree band – most of the time.

Versatility – The PG500 is just as adept at grilling as slow smoking, can go up to 600°, and for a wood grill, the high temperature is even harder to regulate steadily than the low, but here, you punch in 450° you get 450°. The interior is physically divided in two, with an indirect grilling side for smoking and a direct grill over the firebox for live flame cooking, with cast iron grate for sear marks. I’ve made steaks, burgers, corn on the cob, and more direct grilled, all with great success. It also has a warming drawer, a nice extra feature found on very few grills or smokers.

Quality – The construction is bombproof, heavy gauge 100% stainless steel. It came almost completely assembled.

CONS: Electricity – Unlike a propane grill or wood smoker, a pellet grill needs power to work. In most places that is not issue, but where I live in a rural area, the power tends to go out during summer thunderstorms, more of a concern during an all-day smoke than a steak grill.

Rain – The PG500 needs for the doors to be left open for about 10 minutes when starting it up, and the design ensures that if it is raining, water is going inside. Also, it is imperative that the pellets not get wet or they can swell and clog the auger. The hopper itself is well sealed when closed, but if you need to add pellets mid-cook in the rain, use an umbrella.

Layout – The cooking surface is divided into direct and indirect zones with about two thirds given to the latter, plus an upper shelf that also works for smoking. Still, it does not hold as much as my Weber Smoky Mountain (large size), so if I was doing ribs for a crowd (more than 3 racks), or more than one brisket, I’d use the old fashioned smoker. More importantly, the direct grilling space is small for crowds. For a family it’s fine, you can squeeze four T-bones or burgers at a time onto the direct grill, but you can’t cover the usable space with burger patties or sausages the way you could on a propane grill or wood fired kettle. That’s a drawback if you entertain a lot outdoors for crowds, but then again, even on a normal gas or wood grill, you would usually set up the fire with hotter and cooler/indirect sections and move things around as they cooked, and that’s what you have to do here, searing burgers and then moving them to the indirect side to finish.

Instructions – Documentation was surprisingly sparse and not very clear, with no recipes or tips and limited information.

Overall, the PG500 pellet grill is a very good smoker for real barbecue, a good grill for household use, and offers an amazing combination of convenience, consistency and quality at a very reasonable price.