Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

I like the idea of the BGE, but I can buy a metric shitton of coal for that price.

 

I love my Traeger but have to say I was worried about the cord also since I used to run gas and a lot of charcoal. Now that I have it I can't see myself going back, too many pluses for me now. I thought about a BGE but the things are silly heavy, super expensive and I have used them in the past and while I enjoyed cooking on it (was my m-i-ls) it still didn't offer me the convinces I have now. One of these years maybe I will build a huge outdoor kitchen and I can have all them plus my wood fired pizza oven, oh and this cool smoker that I saw on Bizarre Foods where they cooked a whole pig.

 

Exactly. Just buy them all This is the camp I'm in

 

I don't go to the pellets anymore they come to me.

Amazon has them from the manufacturer so I just get them on there now. 2 days later they arrive in a beat up 40+ lb box from Lumberjack. lol

 

@scottalot this is right up your alley.... http://bbqlumberjack.com/

You can get a pallet delivered, aka 1 ton! Comes out to less than $20 a 40# bag.

I bought a GMG. It runs up to 500*, unlike trager that is a puny 450* I have several friends that started out with a trager but sold 'em and went to GMG. And you can use any brand of pellets and not void the warranty. Customer service is top notch too.

Not knockin' guys with trager, they just don't know better.

 

I’ve run around 7,000lbs of charcoal through my BGE. As it turns out just like shotgun sports the equipment isn’t the expensive part it the consumables.

I buy lump 200lbs at a time several times a year.

 

1 ton ain't enough for @scottalot would need at least 2 to 3 times that amount.

As for Traeger/GMG/RecTec and so on, they are all pretty close unless you got one of the Traeger from when they first moved production, heard of lot's of issues in that timeframe. I'm pretty sure the new Traeger goes over 450 (which I'm also sure mine has run over that also). To be honest though most of the time I don't have it anywhere near that temp because I'm smoking most of the time. I ended up going with them over the others due to local availability, I was really looking at the RecTec but wasn't real fond of the bulls horns and I wanted it NOW not 2+ weeks lol. Traeger had local vendors most of the rest did not. Can't have instant gratification (not to mention didn't want the wife changing her mind on the buy in) without being able to get it instantly.

 

Key thing... if you get clearance to buy it, gotta move fast

 

Yeah, on my BGE I have never had to add any lump during a cook. I don't have a temp control, just a wireless thermometer and set an alert for both grate level temp and meat temp, then go to bed. I rarely get any alarms while I'm sleeping as long as I let the temp stabilize before going to bed.

 

does your local town FB have a swap and shop page? We have one close by that people sell their stuff, sometimes a deal is to be made. And your local craigslist

 

The only downside to buying a used ceramic grill is, most of them are warranted to the original purchaser.

 

You got it once you have that buy in you jump on it. Had I ordered something I think she would have changed her mind. She was still iffy with what I paid for it up until the first meat came off it and we ate dinner. From that point forward it was all good.

 

Mine got deposited yesterday. Time for a new roof.

 

Ya I just got the last of mine. Hopefully I can get them filed this weekend or next week at the latest. Would like to get my money back lol.

 

All of our stuff was in last week, so I did them.

 

So I purchased a Kamado grill last night, I am pretty excited to get it!

 

I just saw this post, What are you thinking of buying?

 

Kamado Joe?

 

Accepting it is really the biggest part I think lol. My wife on more that one occasion has basically said "get it" when I've looked at BGE, Kamado, or Traegers. But I can't make up my mind what I want, or more importantly IF I want to spend the money haha