BBQ Fans

[dcmidnight]

57 minutes ago, Myherobobhope said:

My old Traeger has frustrated me to the point i don’t trust it anymore… went and looked at gravity smokers yesterday, and pretty sure that is what I’m buying next… 

 

my ultimate goal is a grill that can easily grill or smoke but doesn’t require a ton of tending… I think this fits that bill, but haven’t heard much about them.

 

Curious as to what happened with your old Traeger and why not look at a new one. The double walled insulation of the new Ironwood keeps temp better than anything else I've tried.

[Myherobobhope]

3 hours ago, Hstead said:

Get yourself a Kamado.  I love my Big Joe 3 and will never use anything else.  I can get my Kamado Joe to a temp very easily, and I can literally go to work and not worry about it.  8 hours later it will hold that temp steady as can be.  Not to mention, I can make it as low as 150* or as high as 750*.  Try getting many other grills to 700*+.  Great for searing steaks.

I have a cast iron akorn… my biggest issue was I didn’t have a dedicated spot for it out of the elements (and still don’t)… it’s a great options and definitely does what it’s built to do well… But the setup and cool down phases required too much time for me… especially the cool down portion… having a 600 degree grill 2 hours after seating a steak is a fun party trick, but it’s hard to put a cover on!

[Myherobobhope]

3 hours ago, dcmidnight said:

 

Curious as to what happened with your old Traeger and why not look at a new one. The double walled insulation of the new Ironwood keeps temp better than anything else I've tried.

Here’s my long form write up:

 

Final Traeger Update:

 

In case anyone is still interested, or now interested in my journey with a Traeger, here’s my final update. 

 

I was looking for a grill to replace the charcoal grill I never bothered to light. I love grilling on charcoal, but the time commitment of starting it, and then shutting it down at the end of the night took away from my overall enjoyment of grilling… I wanted something that had the ease of propane but still would give “BBQ” flavor. We can have a conversation about charcoal not being that hard, but I wasn’t using my charcoal grill, so it wasn’t working for me. Ultimately, I think a charcoal grill has all the utility I need, but requires too much overall maintenance. So I started eyeing pellet grills. The overall goal was simply to have a functioning grill, that could also smoke on occasion.

 

Jean found a used Traeger tailgater for $200 and we figured it was worth a shot… I picked it up in December, ran into some issues and ended up replacing the thermostat… It was an interesting process to see how the magic happened, and I’ve made some good things on the grill. Ultimately, though, the problem with relying on a machine to manage your heat is that you are relying on a machine to manage your heat. My Traeger is older, and there have been improvements on the newer stuff, I'm sure. 

 

The Good: It was great for grilling. 300-400 degree temperatures were easy to get and hold, toss some pork or chicken on there, and make a good meal. Startup and shut down were both quick, and it was easy to eat dinner and then put the grill away. As a GRILL is worked great and since cook times were short, and temperatures were hot, I had relatively few problems with the machine part of the grill.

 

Smoking on it was fun. It was nice to set a low temperature and be able to basically walk away. When it worked, I made some decent BBQ. Temperature swings and other issues weren’t a huge barrier to success with forgiving cuts like pork, and in warmer weather, the heat swings weren’t nearly as bad. I turned out a number of things that I was willing to share, and it was well received. 

 

The Bad: The major complaint is the flameouts and coming home to a grill that isn’t working. The grill does not have WiFi or BlueTooth… so I have no way to know when it went out other than paying attention to the grill itself. This is the reason this is a “final” update… I tossed a $12 chuck roast on it today to see if it could go a few hours (after a recent cleaning) and it failed me. Ultimately, not being able to trust the process means this grill won’t work for me in the long term.

 

Cleaning the firebox is also a pain… it’s not easy to get everything out, and then you have to vacuum out ash… It’s not ideal. Once again, I think modern designs have fixed this issue, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind if you are looking at buying one… If you have to clean the fire box, make sure you can do so easily. Different manufacturers have different designs. 

 

Overall, it was a fun experiment with a $200 grill… We had some good meals, and I’ll likely clean it again and use it as a grill as I shop for my next step.

 

My next step, I think, is going to be a Gravity Fed Charcoal Grill. Right now, the two “retail” options are CharGrill and MasterBuilt (MasterBuilts are prominently displayed at Bass Pro / Cabelas, if you want to see one). I haven’t figured out which size or brand I want. I’ve been reading reviews, but reviews for this sort of stuff are always hard… Most people don’t buy both and most reviewers have tons of experience using grills… The gravity fed concept is also relatively new on the consumer market. From what I’ve read, they are very popular on the competition and catering scenes… 

 

Here’s my basic breakdown of them, and why I think it’s going to be my next grill. In some regards, they are the same as Pellet Grills, but instead of an auger pushing pellets into a fire pot to create heat and smoke, it’s basically a charcoal tower and a fan controls the oxygen to generate heat and smoke (you can add more wood smoke flavor with chunks of wood either in with the charcoal or down in the ashtray, allegedly). So there is less risk of flaming out, as the burning charcoal falls through the grates as it burns up, while keeping the charcoal above it lit. Since it’s charcoal, it also can get to 700 degrees, something most pellet grills can’t do. 

 

I’ve read some reviews of mechanical issues with the MasterBuilt, and that seems to be the major issue… They have some switches on the grill to keep things from catching on fire all over, and electronics and heat don’t always mix… I’m also not sure how much “smoke” flavor they will generate and the low temperature is 225, so low smoking isn’t an option. 

 

Overall, I enjoyed the pellet grill experience, and I’m glad to see the grill market is ever expanding. I’m hoping the gravity fed grill will allow me to do everything I want with minimum hassle, but I haven’t even figured out which one I want to buy. I’m also hopeful more will be coming to market soon, but who knows!

[Hstead]

1 hour ago, Myherobobhope said:

I have a cast iron akorn… my biggest issue was I didn’t have a dedicated spot for it out of the elements (and still don’t)… it’s a great options and definitely does what it’s built to do well… But the setup and cool down phases required too much time for me… especially the cool down portion… having a 600 degree grill 2 hours after seating a steak is a fun party trick, but it’s hard to put a cover on!

I had an Akorn kamado before the Joe.  It is way more difficult to operate than the Joe.  Joe warm up literally takes me ten minutes from the time I light the starter cubes.  It is way cooler to the touch even when I get it to 700* than the Akorn.  I throw my cover on it and put it inside my garage within 30 minutes of cooking with it.  

[Myherobobhope]

18 minutes ago, Hstead said:

I had an Akorn kamado before the Joe.  It is way more difficult to operate than the Joe.  Joe warm up literally takes me ten minutes from the time I light the starter cubes.  It is way cooler to the touch even when I get it to 700* than the Akorn.  I throw my cover on it and put it inside my garage within 30 minutes of cooking with it.  

Ha, I’ll add it to my list of things to consider.

[J13]

I have a newer Traeger Timberline with Wifi and its amazing.  Makes smoking a breeze with minimal tending.  Best part is I can set my meat temp and when it hits the mark I get a text on the phone that says my meat is done.  Doesn't get much easier.  Plus I can get temps over 500* but I still prefer to sear steaks and such in a cast iron skillet with a little cowboy butter.  

 

Side note: With steaks, I've tried propane, skillet, smoker, charcoal, ect... and the absolute best way I've found to make a steak is sous vide.  I rarely cook a steak another way now.  Comes out perfect every single time and I still finish with searing in the skillet.

[Myherobobhope]

1 hour ago, J13 said:

I have a newer Traeger Timberline with Wifi and its amazing.  Makes smoking a breeze with minimal tending.  Best part is I can set my meat temp and when it hits the mark I get a text on the phone that says my meat is done.  Doesn't get much easier.  Plus I can get temps over 500* but I still prefer to sear steaks and such in a cast iron skillet with a little cowboy butter.  

 

Side note: With steaks, I've tried propane, skillet, smoker, charcoal, ect... and the absolute best way I've found to make a steak is sous vide.  I rarely cook a steak another way now.  Comes out perfect every single time and I still finish with searing in the skillet.

That’s funny… I’ve been using sous vide for awhile, and have mostly stopped cooking steak in it… I’ll usually just go 1.5 inch thickness and hit it with a hard sear… you get some grey zone between the crust and the medium rare goodness, but the sear is excellent…

 

any thicker and I’ll reverse sear it…

 

one of my plans with the next grill is to have the ability to reverse sear on the grill… 225 to 120, then up to 700 to finish…

[J13]

1 hour ago, Myherobobhope said:

That’s funny… I’ve been using sous vide for awhile, and have mostly stopped cooking steak in it… I’ll usually just go 1.5 inch thickness and hit it with a hard sear… you get some grey zone between the crust and the medium rare goodness, but the sear is excellent…

 

any thicker and I’ll reverse sear it…

 

one of my plans with the next grill is to have the ability to reverse sear on the grill… 225 to 120, then up to 700 to finish…

 

Yeah i'm usually not doing such thick cuts, mainly because i'm feeding a bunch of kids so it's more NY strips, stuff like that.  If i could create the perfect grill I would want the same things.  I like the newer hybrid grills that can use pellets or propane.  Makes things easier for sure.

[dcmidnight]

Have heard the Timberlines are great, we have an Ironwood. Agree though, the Wifi is fantastic.

 

Have definitely heard horrible reviews overall of the Tailgaiter model.

[Soloman1]

Y'all need to post more photos. You can never have enough BBQ photos. 🙂

[betarhoalphadelta]

IMHO when you're looking at a smoker / grill / etc, you need to ask yourself "what do I need it to do, and what tradeoffs am I willing to make?"

 

Per that, I'll tell the story of how I ended up with the Kamado Joe Big Joe...

 

It was 2014. I had a gasser that I'd owned for over a decade that had seen better days. I had used a Masterbuilt 40" propane smoker to learn BBQ, but it wasn't what I really *wanted* -- I bought it explicitly as a starter smoker. So the gasser went to the curb and the Masterbuilt was sold, and I was without either a grill or smoker of any kind.

 

At the time, I really didn't want to buy multiple pieces of equipment. I wanted one grill to rule them all. Which means it had to handle smoking and indirect cooking well. It had to handle direct heat grilling well. It needed to be able to reach searing temperatures. And it needed to be large enough to cook for a family of 5. I wanted enough room for a full packer brisket or three slabs of ribs (w/o rack). 

 

Beyond that, there were tons of options. Convenience was important. Ease of use was important. Ability to do extra things (like pizza) was a nice bonus. 

 

The "one grill to rule them all" concept immediately excluded most "smokers". UDS, offset stick-burner, WSM, etc. None of them are easily configurable to be grills, can't sear, etc. It also basically excluded gassers--they're just not good enough "smokers" to really be a smoker.

 

I ended up looking between pellet poopers and kamados. 

 

• Pellet: Huge advantages were the "set and forget" ease of use, the fact that there are models with pretty high capacity (I was looking at the largest of GMG's grills at the time), and that they are true wood-fired cookers so they're good for BBQ. The only real negative that I could find was that unless you got up into VERY expensive models, you had tons of trouble generating enough heat to sear. They're great smokers, and they're good grills, but they're not great grills. They are great for indirect cooking otherwise, though, so they are a makeshift oven when you need one. 
• Kamado: Upside was versatility. They're great smokers, they can be an oven, but they also have the direct grilling capability and can hit crazy temps for searing. They're good at being a wood-fired pizza oven as well. An additional upside is that they're very fuel-efficient, and once you learn your vent settings, they'll literally hold a solid temp for hours with no change. The downside was cost, weight, and a lack of ease of use in dealing with any sort of charcoal-fueled grill/smoker. My wife always asks me to "turn on" the grill, because she's dealt with gassers in the past. Nope. You don't turn on a kamado, you light it, and then you have to have spent the learning curve knowing how your grill is going to operate. The last thing you want is to put on an 18 lb piece of brisket late at night and wake up to find your fire at 350... Or your fire has gone out. Also a big downside was price. The XL BGE was $1100 where I was looking without ANY accessories, and you require a decent number of them to configure a BGE well for everything you want to to do, both for smoking and for indirect/direct cooking. For comparison, I believe the biggest GMG was $799 at that time.

What tipped the scales for me was the Costco road show. The Big Joe was being sold there for $1200, and the nice thing about Kamado Joe is all the extra stuff it comes with. The divide & conquer grate / heat deflector system is really what makes it versatile and easy to set up for smoking, baking, direct grilling, or direct/indirect configuration if you want a hot side and a not so hot side.

 

I figured that for everything I wanted, I could justify the extra price and the hassle of charcoal because it would truly be good at everything I wanted to do. 

 

I should point out that it's had its downsides, which is why I now have three grills.

 

1. The original Big Joe is my general workhorse. It still does everything I bought it to do, and does it well. 
2. I got a Joe Jr for smaller cooks--the speed at which it comes up to temp and its fuel efficiency are huge advantages. Bringing 70# of ceramic up to temp and shutting it down after cooking is much easier than 200+#. I happened to luck into one secondhand at a 40% discount, so it was worth it. 
3. I had been thinking about a gasser for weeknight / quick cooks where I don't want to fire up the charcoal, and my FIL just happened to be downsizing his patio grill footprint and gave me a Traeger. It still has all the limits that I knew about when I was looking at pellet grills, and it frankly justified my decision to go with the kamado, but it's damn convenient when I just want to throw something quick on and I don't *need* a hard sear. 

So consider me as seconding the idea of a kamado--but much like a bag of golf clubs, only if it fits the right "gap" in your set. For me I was replacing everything, so I needed something that did everything. If I had some really nice gas grill that I loved, I probably would have gotten something more like a dedicated smoker (WSM, offset, UDS) to fit the gap. If I had a Weber kettle just sitting around I could use for searing and direct cooks, I might have gone pellet because it fits the gap. 

 

So ask yourself where your current gap is, and what grill/smoker adequately fills it...

[betarhoalphadelta]

5 hours ago, J13 said:

I have a newer Traeger Timberline with Wifi and its amazing.  Makes smoking a breeze with minimal tending.  Best part is I can set my meat temp and when it hits the mark I get a text on the phone that says my meat is done.  Doesn't get much easier.  Plus I can get temps over 500* but I still prefer to sear steaks and such in a cast iron skillet with a little cowboy butter.  

 

Side note: With steaks, I've tried propane, skillet, smoker, charcoal, ect... and the absolute best way I've found to make a steak is sous vide.  I rarely cook a steak another way now.  Comes out perfect every single time and I still finish with searing in the skillet.

 

I love sous vide, but not for steak. I really like ribeye and you just can't get anywhere near as good of a rendering of the fat with sous vide as I'd like. I've found a blast at REALLY high heat over coals [for me I like to use the Joe Jr] to get the sear to my liking and then tossing it in either the oven or the Traeger at 225 with a leave-in temp probe until I get to resting temps to be the way to go. See my description posted below for more.

 

The one exception is filet... Because filet is so lean, it's the one cut that I find really takes well to sous vide. 

 

3 hours ago, Myherobobhope said:

That’s funny… I’ve been using sous vide for awhile, and have mostly stopped cooking steak in it… I’ll usually just go 1.5 inch thickness and hit it with a hard sear… you get some grey zone between the crust and the medium rare goodness, but the sear is excellent…

 

any thicker and I’ll reverse sear it…

 

one of my plans with the next grill is to have the ability to reverse sear on the grill… 225 to 120, then up to 700 to finish…

 

I don't reverse sear, either. Below is something I wrote recently on another message board:

 

You know, for a long while I've been a "reverse sear" guy when it comes to steak. I learned it from Amazing Ribs, where I've learned a lot of great things about cooking--and it helped me get my steaks from novice to very good. But it's time to graduate to a better method.

I believe the reverse sear is targeted at people who don't know that much about cooking, don't know that much about how to finish a piece of meat, and thus it helps them to avoid overcooking. However, by getting the temp up to near-done levels and then blasting it with high heat to sear, it makes it extraordinarily difficult to make sure that you get a perfect sear and perfect doneness. You're always playing a dangerous game that if you sear it as strong as you want, are you going to be above, at, or below your target internal temp? 

For a novice, I think too many of them just throw steaks on a hot grill and cook over direct heat, which means the outside is charred black to get to appropriate doneness, or the inside is raw to get to appropriate color outside. For those folks, reverse sear is an improvement.

But there's a reason no serious chefs or steakhouses use the reverse sear, and I think it's because of the problem I mentioned above of having to time it perfectly to get the color and doneness perfectly right. 

So I'm back to the sear-then-finish method. 

Two ways to do it:

 

• Grill: This method either requires two grills, a grill that can easily support two-zone cooking with one portion indirect, or searing on the grill and then moving inside to an oven. To do this, you need one grill ripping hot--hotter than many grills support unless they are a kettle with a bunch of coals piled up, a kamado, or a grill with a dedicated searing station. Many gassers aren't good at this, and pellet grills even worse. At this point you want extreme direct heat. Cook on all sides until you get the right color. Feel free to flip as many times as you need to avoid burning the meat--don't be a "I only flip ONCE" guy or you're likely to burn it if the grill is hot enough. Once the color is right, remove to a MUCH lower temp grill or the oven--in this case the pellet grills are great because they're automatically indirect and you can set them to a low temp like 225. Stick a leave-in meat thermometer in the grill and let the steak slowly come up to temp until you get to your desired temp MINUS 5 degrees which will carry over during resting. So for medium rare (130-135 IT) I'll pull at about 127 degrees and wrap in foil on a cutting board / etc to rest. 
• Stove/oven: Preheat the oven to 225 and get a cast iron pan on top of a flame on HIGH heat. Get some oil and butter sizzling in the pan, and set the steak(s) down in the pan. You can optionally add some herbs/garlic to the pan. Depending on the shape and thickness of the steak, you may or may not want to sear the sides; a thinner steak it won't matter. If you sear the sides, do the sides about a minute each before the top or bottom. You don't need to worry about the same level of color as the top or bottom, and if you do, you risk overcooking. But once the sides are lightly seared, put the steak face down in the pan and sear 4-5 minutes, basting the top with the butter/oil mixture as you go. After 4-5 minutes, flip the steak, insert a leave-in remote thermometer in the center, and put it immediately into the oven--the opposite side will sear nicely due to the hot pan. Leave in the oven until your IT reads your desired temp minus 5 degrees, and then remove to foil and a cutting board / etc to rest. Do NOT leave the steak resting in the hot cast iron pan or it will overcook. 

Reverse sear is a great method to learn for cooking steak... But this is better. 

 

 

[Myherobobhope]

2 hours ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

I don't reverse sear, either. Below is something I wrote recently on another message board:

 

Agree to disagree... I've had consistently great results with it, and don't see any reason to change... Once you have the system down, it's mostly foolproof and makes a fantastic steak... I might have to try a different technique but don't expect it to make a better steak... I've never had a problem getting a good crust and the correct internal temperature, though.

 

On the grill front, agreed with understanding what exactly you are looking for and what you want to use it for... that's why I have my eyes set on the gravity smoker... It theoretically does everything I want it to do without the startup times of a "real" charcoal grill / ceramic grill. Whether or not it's as useful as I want it to be is a different question.

 

My parameters are:

Quick start up. A charcoal starter is relatively easy, but only the first step in the process of firing up a regular charcoal grill... It's not a major hurdle, but has stopped me from grilling before (maybe I'm just lazy).

 

Easy shut off. I want to be able to TURN OFF the heat and roll the grill inside after finishing dinner... This is where the ceramics are a problem... I don't have a dedicated grill space in my backyard, so it has to be easy to put away.

 

Capable of holding temperature with little maintenance (most grills do this)

 

Charcoal / BBQ flavor (rules out propane for the most part)

 

Capable of searing (rules out pellet grills)

 

Easy to GRILL on... burgers, hot dogs, chicken thighs... sometimes I just want to knock out a meal in 30 minutes.

 

Capable of smoking... I don't make a ton of BBQ but might just start... I like the concept, I just haven't had the right tools.

 

For me, I'm leaning towards the gravity smokers... I think a good ceramic grill might do everything I need as well, but has slightly more "outdoor" maintenance... In my ideal world, I'd build an area for grills and have a komodo, a smoker and a regular old Weber Kettle grill... maybe in some ideal world, I'd have an outdoor kitchen setup with a propane "fire box" to start charcoal that also worked for smoking... 

[Myherobobhope]

I should note, that I ONLY reverse sear thick steaks... and I mean 2" or more... if it's less than that, I just sear them on high heat until they get a crust i like and let them coast to a good internal temperature... 

 

I do really want to smoke a thick ribeye on my non-existent charcoal grill to battle test it... but it's only in my imagination at this point.

[Hstead]

There is a teacher on this site, @lv_2_hack, that has the reverse sear down to a science.  One of the best filets I have ever had, he cooked on his skillet indoors.  He has given me the "process" but I cannot for the life of me get the crust on the outside like he does.  This Friday I am going down to get a golf lesson/steak crusting lesson.  Maybe Chase will chime in on this thread and show you some pictures of his reverse sears that come out perfect.

[dcmidnight]

I've cooked steaks all my life on a variety of grills and smokers. But I cant come near the steak that my wife cooks now in the cast iron skillet. My steaks are damn good, I would serve them to anyone and be happy - but my wife cooks them 10x better. I like mine a shade over rare and its perfectly cooked with an incredible crust - it could be the constant spooning of the juice/butter back onto the steak, I have no idea.

[betarhoalphadelta]

@Myherobobhope Yeah, sounds like a kamado isn't for you, especially since you don't use it for smoking (much). I'm not that familiar with the gravity charcoal grill/smoker options. But they definitely look intriguing. Seems the "ease of use" factor will be WAY ahead of a kamado or kettle.

 

[Myherobobhope]

12 minutes ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

@Myherobobhope Yeah, sounds like a kamado isn't for you, especially since you don't use it for smoking (much). I'm not that familiar with the gravity charcoal grill/smoker options. But they definitely look intriguing. Seems the "ease of use" factor will be WAY ahead of a kamado or kettle.

 

Yeah, that’s my hope… if I get into smoking, I might buy a secondary grill… but I’d rather just start with something I know I’ll use and then try the other features.

[Myherobobhope]

1 hour ago, dcmidnight said:

I've cooked steaks all my life on a variety of grills and smokers. But I cant come near the steak that my wife cooks now in the cast iron skillet. My steaks are damn good, I would serve them to anyone and be happy - but my wife cooks them 10x better. I like mine a shade over rare and its perfectly cooked with an incredible crust - it could be the constant spooning of the juice/butter back onto the steak, I have no idea.

It’s hard to beat the crust made in a cast iron skillet… the butter baste helps cook it and form a crust. Delightful.

 

made a compound blue cheese butter and finished the steaks under a broiler last night… good time.

[betarhoalphadelta]

6 minutes ago, Myherobobhope said:

Yeah, that’s my hope… if I get into smoking, I might buy a secondary grill… but I’d rather just start with something I know I’ll use and then try the other features.

I just read the AmazingRibs review of the Masterbuilt charcoal gravity grill and it seems like a really good concept...

 

 

I like that the fire is indirect, but that it can actually hit temps even beyond most gassers for searing, and that pellet grills will never touch. Looks like it'll be a great smoker, on par with a kamado or pellet grill. And it looks like the process of lighting and using it is dead simple.

 

One drawbacks is a lack of convenient two-zone cooking with an indirect area. It's good that the fire itself is indirect and will be an oven at lower temps, but it seems that it evenly heats almost the entire grate surface area from underneath so you might have trouble having a direct side and an indirect side at lower temps. I'd also worry about scorching the bottom of something if you wanted to use it as an oven for a longer cook in that 350-400 range like a turkey. That said, it doesn't sound like that's your typical cooking usage, so probably not an issue for you. 

 

My other concern is build quality and reliability. As an electrical engineer, there's a part of me that just cringes at mixing electronics and fire--even though I do have a Traeger outside lol. This actually seems less of a safety risk than a pellet grill as a fan failure will likely snuff out the fire rather than any chance of some of the horror stories I've heard about with pellets (fire traveling back up the auger to the pellet box). But it sounds like from the Amazing Ribs review that there are already known quality issues on these grills. So I'd recommend doing the research there and making sure they're all sorted by now. 

 

That said, this might be the answer for me when the Traeger dies and I need a new weeknight/easy grill. I'm already regularly buying charcoal anyway, so I won't need to keep charcoal AND pellets on hand, and it will let me hit temps the Traeger can't even dream of without needing to light the kamado. 

 

If you pull the trigger on it, I'd love to hear your experience over time. 

 

[Myherobobhope]

1 hour ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

y other concern is build quality and reliability. As an electrical engineer, there's a part of me that just cringes at mixing electronics and fire--even though I do have a Traeger outside lol. This actually seems less of a safety risk than a pellet grill as a fan failure will likely snuff out the fire rather than any chance of some of the horror stories I've heard about with pellets (fire traveling back up the auger to the pellet box). But it sounds like from the Amazing Ribs review that there are already known quality issues on these grills. So I'd recommend doing the research there and making sure they're all sorted by now. 

This is my biggest concern… it appears to have multiple safety switches, I’d assume to make sure the charcoal hopper doesn’t become a chimney starter… so if they go bad, the grill won’t work (fail safes are like that)… I read the same reviews… it looks like they have some of the issues sorted out, but who know how long the new switches will last…

 

I managed to change the temperature probe in my traeger with minimal hassle, though… so maybe I’ll be OK.

 

Im somewhat waiting to pull the trigger, but would like a functional grill right now! 

[dcmidnight]

I will say this - I over-researched the heck out of all these grills...like I do just about everything else LOL. The *only* Traeger "failures" I saw on YouTube were guys who kept their grills absolutely FILTHY and caked in sawdust - and seemed to want to create the failures for the sake of YT. I never saw one perfectly clean grill that "just blew up". Not one. Not saying it cant happen - but I think they are just as safe as any other option out there.

 

3 hours ago, Myherobobhope said:

It’s hard to beat the crust made in a cast iron skillet… the butter baste helps cook it and form a crust. Delightful.

 

made a compound blue cheese butter and finished the steaks under a broiler last night… good time.

 

Its legitimate restaurant quality, its that good.

 

[Myherobobhope]

9 minutes ago, dcmidnight said:

I will say this - I over-researched the heck out of all these grills...like I do just about everything else LOL. The *only* Traeger "failures" I saw on YouTube were guys who kept their grills absolutely FILTHY and caked in sawdust - and seemed to want to create the failures for the sake of YT. I never saw one perfectly clean grill that "just blew up". Not one. Not saying it cant happen - but I think they are just as safe as any other option out there.

 

 

Its legitimate restaurant quality, its that good.

 

Oh, I’m not concerned with modern pellet grills… I just think the gravity fed grill will do what I’m looking for better (and reach a higher temperature)

[TiScape]

4 hours ago, Myherobobhope said:

Its hard to beat the crust made in a cast iron skillet… the butter baste helps cook it and form a crust. Delightful.

Agreed. I’ve cooked steaks all of the ways mentioned in this thread. My favorite is the good old high heat cast iron skillet method. 

Edited June 29, 2021 by TiScape

[Myherobobhope]

I'm currently pretty set on the Char Griller 980. Not to spoil the end of the YouTube video, but... I'm going to spoil it... Seems like the CharGriller does most of the things that are most important to me well... I wish it had better grates, but I bet I can upgrade those.

 

 

 

[TiScape]

Put this Costco prime 13 pounder on at 4am PST.  🤞🏼 

[TiScape]

Came out great! Daaang, I just love that bark! #blackgold 🤤 

[JeffreySpicoli]

@Myherobobhope, FWIW, given what you’re looking for, you might consider both a pellet grill and an Otto Grill.

 

https://www.ottogrills.com/ottos-grills/

 

if you happen to consider pellet grills, MAK and Yoder are well worth it. I have a MAK 2 Star and I’ve been nothing but pleased with it. (The MAKs and Yoder’s can get quite hot—600 degrees plus. You can reverse sear but you have to wait for the grill go from the lower temp to the higher temp. That’s why an Otto is a better solution if you have the budget.)

 

Edited July 25, 2021 by JeffreySpicoli

[Myherobobhope]

7 hours ago, JeffreySpicoli said:

@Myherobobhope, FWIW, given what you’re looking for, you might consider both a pellet grill and an Otto Grill.

 

https://www.ottogrills.com/ottos-grills/

 

if you happen to consider pellet grills, MAK and Yoder are well worth it. I have a MAK 2 Star and I’ve been nothing but pleased with it. (The MAKs and Yoder’s can get quite hot—600 degrees plus. You can reverse sear but you have to wait for the grill go from the lower temp to the higher temp. That’s why an Otto is a better solution if you have the budget.)

 

That’s amazing… going with the gravity fed charcoal grill… 750 degrees should be hot enough to sear steaks for me! We shall see… 

[Baitkiller]

Webber kettle. Cherry and black olive. Corn was done husk on during wrap. Blackened mangrove snapper from the flat top. Groceries. 

Edited July 26, 2021 by Baitkiller