Your Journey

To pellet cooking that is.....

Spent a long weekend on the coast for a little R&R and the place we stayed at only had a 22" Weber for outdoor cooking.

Slumming it with the Weber I was reminded what a great cooker they are. It brought back memories of my first grill. It also got me thinking about the different grills I've had over the years and how I ended up with a pellet cooker.

Right out of college I picked up a Weber and it was the centerpiece of my apartment patio. I loved cooking on it and all my freeloader friends really loved eating off of it! I was cooking A LOT in those days and decided to figure out what charcoal was costing me each year. It came out somewhere north of a grand! Wow!

For me that was mucho, so I decided look into a cheaper method of outdoor cooking and I jumped on the Gasser bandwagon. Went all in with a New Weber Genesis. Back then I was mainly grilling, didn't mess with the low and slow at all. I started doing rotisserie chickens and larger cuts of meat on the grill and the flavor just wasn't there. Wanted more wood flavor so I bought the smoker box attachment, not bad but you really couldn't get good even smoke using chips. The more I learned, I found what I was really wanting was to cook was BBQ style foods and the gasser wasn't cutting it. I needed a smoker.

With so many options out there I dipped my big toe into the smoking waters and picked up an ECB (El Cheapo Brinkmann). This was definitely a learning experience! While not bad I couldn't cook consistently on it. Also it required way more attention during cooking than I wanted to give it. It was a pain and it became an occasional use item and the smoking thing went on the back burner.

Then it got interesting, I visited an old college buddy in the Bay Area and he showed me his new grill, it was called a Traeger. The food off it was amazing! I definitely was impressed. The gasser was getting on 10 years old and it was time for a new grill and I was determined that the next one would be Pellet fired. Jumped online and started researching and was going to pull the trigger on a Traeger Pro but they were now made in China. Didn't like the thought of this so I went back to the drawing board. Kept looking, and looking, and even got the wife to ask "Are you ever going to buy one?"

So finally after 6 months of searching I found the MAK, they had just come out but everything about them screamed quality and innovation. I was sold and decided to take the plunge. Greatest choice I could of made! I am doing things with outdoor cooking I never dreamed of and can't wait to see where it goes!

So how about you, what was your journey?

BTW, This is what I had to Endure all weekend......................

was this monterey area of north of san fran? looks nice. i need a vacation. badly. small waves, need to bring a longboard. some nice left to rights out there. looks like the tides are coming in.

i started with a weber kettle too. love it. still love it. i used it for so many parties and family cook outs. it is starting to fall apart. had it for along time. thinking of getting a weber performer or maybe a small hasty bake. not sure yet.

sparky said:

was this monterey area of north of san fran? looks nice. i need a vacation. badly. small waves, need to bring a longboard. some nice left to rights out there. looks like the tides are coming in.

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Central coast, Morro Bay - Cayucos area. One of the best spots along the CA coast IMHO.

my old stomping grounds.... I started with all the usual stuff Santa Maria style which is still great....Viking gassers...hate them now...BOut an orion rib cooker and was blown away ...then called my old cusomter fred at freds music and bbq and had him send me a traeger and a primo and I was hooked...that was 23 months ago...wow.

Very similar path as you Carter. Started with an hibachi -> cheap grill -> 22 Weber kettle -> Charbroil Cooking Zone from Costco ($436) -> Meco water smoker (frustrated me and threw it away)......

15 years later.....

Aug 2009 - Traeger Lil Tex
Dec 2009 - MAK 2 Star and sold the Lil Tex
Mar 2010 - 18" WSM
Apr 2010 - acquire electric ECB from sis in law who never used it
Oct 2010 - 22" Weber Kettle (here we go again! )
Feb 2011 - Stoker system to control the WSM
Mar 2011 - Turkey fryer base burner for lighting charcoal chimneys
Apr 2011 - 22" WSM

Six cookers on the back deck. No where near BPs numbers but easily the most cookers on a deck in my neighborhood!!

The gasser sits covered in the corner of the deck and gets zero love these days. Maybe once in a while a very quick sear job.

Actually I started getting serious about outdoor cooking/BBQ with a Weber WSM. It amazed me that I could produce BBQ of the same or better quality than I'd ever tasted before.

From the WSM I moved up to a Stump's smoker. Worst BBQ decision I ever made. The concept was good, but way to many flaws, and no customer service. Best day of my BBQ life was when I sold it.

Still wanting to move up the ladder in BBQ Cooking, I went all in for a stick burner. Got me a custom-made Gator Pit out of Houston. Lots of my friends had Gator's at the time. Great cooker, but I really wasn't in to all the time spent baby-sitting the cooker. Dang!!

In the meantime a good friend of mine decided there were ways to improve on the gravity feed system that Stumps used. He got input from every gravity-feed smoker owner and proceeded to build a new smoker, the Superior Smoker. Outstanding smoker. I got one of the prototype units, and sold it about 6 months later, because I wasn't utilizing it as much as I should have.

I started looking for more convenient ways to cook BBQ. Got a Cookshack Smokette. LOL!!! That was a one and done smoker for me. It was about the size of a postage stamp. Sold it the second week.

Went back to my friend at Superior and had a custom built unit made on a trailer. I use that for cooks that I do locally for the volunteer Fire Dept, the Senior Center and other cooks. Great cooker for events.

Then I started looking at pellet smokers. Read about the GMG grills. Got a GMG Daniel Boone. Nice cooker. I really like it.

Soon after I started reading about the Yoder grills... Got that on my front deck right now, along with a Weber Genesis I picked up along the way. I think pellet smoking is what I was searching for all along. I recently purchased a small Traeger for a friend who has been on the fence about smoking. He spent last weekend putting it together and bought some pellets today, so he's ready to go.

Current inventory is the original WSM, Weber Genesis Gasser, Superior Trailer mounted, GMG Daniel Boone, and the new Yoder YS-640.

Life is good.

We started with a Weber kettle and still have one and will most likely always have one. Like Big Poppa we have a Viking which can get hot enough to clean the grates drip pans etc from the pellet grills and Weber, so I keep it around for those duties. We have a 18 WSM, Had a 22 but it had to go to MAKe room for the second MAK. The 22 WSM is a good rib cooker, Once we had the MAK Grills we didn't really need the 22. The 18 WSM I still think can make some good pork butts and briskets and you have some control on the amount of smoke.I will agree with Sparky a Hasty Bake would be a nice addition.Just no Room.

I think that Hasty bake, Weber kettles and wsm's are classics that you can never go wrong with. Also my drums are awesome cookers.....

In my early 20's I tried gas grills; They were just missing something. Then remembering, as a kid Dad always cooked on charcoal & Boy Scouts taught me campfire cooking. There was just something about the flavor & the fire that stuck with me. I switched back to charcoal, BUT NO LIGHTER FLUID (YUCK).

Living in North Carolina at the time, I grew to love low & slow cooked pulled pork, my smoking adventure began...

My co-worker introduced me to smoking so I started using my Weber Kettle grill to cook/smoke things using indirect heat. I was immediately addicted. My Weber has been a tried and true friend. A year ago I spent the $65 or so bucks to replace the worn out parts and he stills sits in my back yard cooking away!

I started using pellets for smoke flavor years ago when my wife brought me home some BBQer's Delight Hickory pellets. I was skeptical that they'd work as well as chips or chunk, but was pleasantly surprised.

Got a Brinkman Horizontal Offset smoker. UGH! It was horrible: inefficient, leaky, performed horribly in cold weather... the amount of modifications I had to do cost almost as much as the grill itself. But with the modifications its a pretty decent cooker that holds a lot of food & is portable enough to take places for bigger BBQ's and such.

Well, if you watch this forum you know I just recently got my first pellet fired cooker. Its a combo Weber Performer Grill/Stoven Pellet attachment (both made in the good old U.S.A.). So far I am liking the convenience of the pellets, yet I still get that wood fired flavor that I love.

Big Poppa introduced me to the pellet world. Thank you again for that Sterling. You've really opened up a whole new world to me, and I've met so many nice people as a result. Thanks!

Carter, your pics aren't showing right now but I will check back. I'm sure they are beautiful!!

Very similar to Scooter again.
Started with a Hibachi in the driveway in 1970. Worked my way through a variety of charcoal burners through the 80's. (Still have a 22" Weber) In the 90's it was gassers and still have a four burner Kenmore on my lower patio. In the mid 2000 picked up a Cookshack 08 @ Cabelas. Actually I had very good results with it. Got a turkey fryer as a gift and have yet to use it for turkey. May 2010 I picked up a MAK TwoStar General and have been marching to the beat ever since. Weber, Kenmore, & Cookshack still sit & don't get uncovered.
I am very

Great Thread...

I have always liked to grill but never had the patience for a charcoal set up... I went through the basic step ups in the propane world - 2 Sears (burned the crap out of them ... the 48 hour "forgot to turn it off" actually happened to both on two different occassions). Went from the Sear's to a Ducane... about 6 years ago I re landscaped my back yard and put in a built in Altima w/ Infared burners - cost me a bundle - and still had this "empty" feeling that my stuff of the grill had no "soul"....

My wife, for a 20th anniversary corporate gift, was given a catalog of tacky watches, stationary bikes, electric griddles - just crap that no one wants... except for one of the last pages that had a CharBroil SRG propane turkey fryer that could smoke... hummm...

it wasn't costing me a dime, it was small, and my wife didn't have a need for any of the stuff in the catalog, so we pulled the trigger on the SRG. The SRG used a small 'smoker box' that for best results recommended 'wood pellets'. I actually ordered 1 lb bag of pellets ($ 4 plus $ 10 p&h) and it was nirvana. That smokey "soul" was apparent in chicken, port tenderloin, steaks... from that instant forward the $3500 built in gas Altima was history... the $200 MSRP, free corporate 20th anniversary CharBroil was giving me great results...

Four months later, I came across Big Poppa, MAK pellet smokers etc... what a great find... I think I'm still the only MAK owner in NJ.

I still use the SRG since it is absolutely fantastic for quick grills, but for great "low and slow" pork, ribs, tenderloins the MAK has been great... and the $3500 Altima Gasser, in its field stone island... I used it 4 times in the last 18 months.... I'm actually looking at pulling it out and putting in a wood fired Pizza oven (damn that field stone was expensive)...

Well I started when I was 9 years old and I built a smoker that was 1966 out of a old fridge put a smoke stack out and used a old heating element from a oven lived in the country and had our own creek for salmon, deer,elk and my dad hunted with dogs and always had bear meat and raised our own beef,pork and chickens so I alaways had things to smoke. and then on my own I had hibachi was my first I took a 6 year break while in the Army but always had all kinds of electric smokers, charcoal cookers gassers of all kinds and about 3 years ago bought a traeger and then my Mak a few months ago so I have always like to bbq.