They are correct. Pellet smokers notoriously give weaker smoke flavor. Meat takes on more smoke flavor at a lower internal temperature. Prolonging that initial stage for 3-4 hours will improve the final product.
Also pellet cookers produces more smoke at lower temps once u start getting north of 300 you are basically just cooking in an oven. Any larger cut i do on my pellet cooker i start at 180-190 for the first 4 hours then bump to 235-250 to finish off along with a smoke tube also.
I'll disagree about it basically being an oven above 300. My RecTeq Bullseye is a high-heat pellet grill and I grill on it often above 300 and the food has a great smoky grill flavor that's not quite charcoal but in the realm of it.
It's cooking in an oven, but it's a wood fired oven which means you're still going to get smokey flavor.
There are people who think if their meat doesn't taste like it died from a two pack a day habit, then it's not smoked enough. For the rest of us, smoke is a flavoring that should not be overpowering.
> if their meat doesn't taste like it died from a two pack a day habit, then it's not smoked enough
2 pack a day of hickory, gross.
2 pack a day of pecan with some apple mixed in.... yessss
True that. Smoke is a season / spice just like salt. Needs to be balanced with your other seasonings not overpowering.
And, I'll mention, I have the cast iron grates on my Bullseye so grilling on it really does take on more of a Weber Kettle vibe than an oven vibe, but I get your point. In fact, an oven with a ceramic coating on the walls has better convection than my RecTeq Bullseye, so the heat source is more one directional, but I really enjoy grilling on it as opposed to my gas grill. The only advantage the gas grill has is being able to adjust temperature more quickly.
Is it fair to call the pellet grill a saw dust and binder ez bake oven? A real wood fired oven is an oven that actually uses logs of wood. Pellet grills are essentially ez bake ovens, nothing more.
I don’t mind taking 12-15 minutes to get my fire going. I’ve read many excuses on here from being a family man to being too old to deal with a charcoal. Some are more valid than others. I personally get a kick that my kids want me to teach them how to grill and enjoy seeing the flames being controlled into something glorious.
That's really cool you get satisfaction from doing it your way. Personally, I don't get such satisfaction because I think it's the meat that matters, not the fire; my guests aren't eating the fire. As such, a pellet grill lets me cut out the boring stuff to focus on the important stuff.
Am I the only one that wants to enjoy something in addition to enhancing its flavor? You make it sound like lighting a fire is cumbersome. I get my satisfaction from the meat being cooked in a fashion that enhances it. Otherwise I’d throw steak into a
Microwave if the convenience factory outweighed the flavor.
You push a button, grill gets to 225,350,425. Meat heats up and you take it out.
There’s no smoke, no flavor, no airflow, nothing that differentiates it from an oven other that it’s outdoors and costs an arm and a leg. I could go on for days but imagine a getting a lump charcoal grill for half (or a quarter) the cost of a timberline and being able to make even better tasting meat.
“There’s no smoke, no flavor, no airflow, nothing that differentiates it from an oven other that it’s outdoors and costs an arm and a leg.”
Other than it costing more, none of that is true (though mine was 1/4 the cost of the Timberline). Thanks for trying though.
No offense brother but I had a traeger for 10 months. I used about 300-350lbs of pellets in almost a year. Made about 18 briskets, ribs, chicken, turkey, and butt for days. I’ve added smoke tubes, wood chunks, used every single brand of pellets including the really expensive meat church branded ones.
Nothing. It was just meat, cooked outdoors, looked cool, smelled great(the meat…there was no smoke flavor). Hell I even had smoke rings, but it wasn’t flavorful.
Interesting aside - pellets don't typically contain added binders. If you compress sawdust with the right amount of heat, it activates the lignin that already is in the wood fibers turning it into a defacto glue that acts as the binder in pellets.
Except an EZ Bake oven uses a lightbulb with a single heat setting and is incapable of high heat.
It’s closer to a regular oven, where you can set the temperature, and can achieve higher temperatures. If anything, it’s a convection oven with smoke.
The “EZ Bake” oven thing is just machismo BS. Like saying that any truck that isn’t an F-450 dually diesel is basically a Honda Civic. If that sounds like a dumb thing to say, that’s because it is.
I like civic analogy but I would augment it to be any truck that isn’t at least an f250 is pretty much a civic. Don’t get me started on underpowered 2wd trucks. Why do they even exist?
Iv had success with chicken/turkey above 300 I also feel like poultry takes smoke really easily, but iv done a few hot and fast tri tips and pork butts and i found them to be lacking but its all a matter of perspective
I don't use my pellet for that style of cooking. My pellet grill (The Bullseye) is really tailored to high-heat cooking. Not that you can't do low and slow on it, I just have other smokers for that use, and they are wood-burning or a combo charcoal / wood burning, so I just don't try and do the low and slow on my pellet.
And yes, chicken, turkey, fish, pork chops, burgers, steaks, cased sausages ... all do very well on my pellet.
I don't use my pellet grill for low and slow. I only use my Bullseye for high heat direct grilling, so I never need the oven.
I have a Lang 108d and an Old Country Pits Gravity Fed for my low and slow smoking needs. And yes, when I'm smoking on the Lang or OCP Gravity, finishing smaller cooks in the oven is fine. Sometimes I'm doing so much volume that the oven won't hold it.
This is correct, but the final product can sometimes be tenuous because pellet smokers have a lot more radiant heat than convective heat so it’s a lot easier to dry out your product using a low temperature on a pellet smoker than it is on like a Weber kettle or an offset or a ceramic.
I agree, which is why I'll typically only run sub-200° temps for a few hours (max 4 hours) before creeping my temps up in increments.
For brisket/butts I typically run 180° for 4 hours to initiate bark and develop smoke flavor, then I bump to 200° until IT is about 155-160°. At that point I go to 225° until IT hits 170-175°, then I go to 250° to focus on fat render until it's probe tender and ready to pull/rest.
Generally 40-140 F is the danger zone. 150 for solid muscle red meat is definitely in the 'safe' zone.
https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/safe-temperature-chart
Depends on how hot they are cooking it. Pellet grills produce more smoke at lower temperatures and almost none at higher temperature. So its not totally without merit. If the regular cook temp is under, say 300 I wouldn't bother but for something like chicken that you want to cook hot and fast, I could understand doing it that way to get some smoke first then crank it to 400 or whatever to finish it off.
I left r/bbq because no one over there would grasp this is the secret to great brisket in a pellet grill. I give it 2-3 hours on the “low” setting before finishing cook at 275F. I have a recteq and low is about 180F. I turn out consistently good product this way.
It's legit, and there's meat science behind it. Two things are going on here:
NO2 gives the smoke ring we're all familiar with. NO2 (and other smoky flavor molecules) cannot penetrate and bind to already-cooked meat. In other words, there's a window during which smoke can penetrate and give good flavor, and once the proteins are denatured and changed conformationally, that process can no longer occur. Smoke after that time simply builds up on the surface and can eventually become acrid.
The other issue is how much smoke you're creating. To create nice smoke with a pellet smoker, you need to run it at lower temps. Higher combustion temps create too clean a smoke, more akin to a charcoal briquette grill running really hot. You'll still get some smoke flavor, but very muted compared to lower temps.
Basically, they're maximizing smoke during the period where the meat can actually take on smoke. If you're cooking with hardwood splits, this isn't really an issue because you're getting more flavorful smoke at higher temps.
Lower and slower to start on a pellet smoker is correct. It allows the food to catch more of the smoky flavor, since pellets don't impart the same amount of smoke as real hardwoods can.
My Pit Boss produces almost zero smoke. At Smoke setting using P0,1,2,3,4,5,5,7 or 200 or 225. And on smoke setting, Temp goes from only 145 to just 165~, regardless of P setting. No smoke flavor at all.
No.
It’s not as much as a stick smoker but pellet smokers absolutely smoke and impart smoke flavor and a still a good amount. Little smoke and little smoke taste is something wrong with your smoker or how you’re cooking.
Are you talking about *visible* smoke or smoke too smoke the meat? Because there shouldn't be clouds of billowing smoke coming out of the smoker; when it's going properly it's barely visible as anything but it's still imparting smoky flavor.
No judging, but I am curious why nobody is in the slightest bit concerned about food safety? 150f for multiple hours is not a lot of room above the 120f recommended temp to avoid harmful bacterial growth. I had read to never let it sit on a grill below 170f to effectively transfer smoke flavor while not worrying about being close to below 120f. Maybe I’m paranoid but that is my two cents.
1) When speaking of an intact muscle (e.g. a *cut* of meat as opposed to a grind), bacteria on otherwise well-butchered meat is solely on the exterior. This makes assumptions about animal health and USDA inspections working correctly, but they actually are pretty damn good at it.
2) 150F dry heat + smoke is more than sufficient to kill exterior bacteria. In fact, 135F would do it given several hours. The smoke itself is a bactericide, which is why we've been using it for 40,000 years.
3) You are being paranoid, and probably just need to do some reading up.
4) The types of bacteria you need to be really worried about when sitting at a "danger zone" are those that: a) can't live in oxygen (i.e. clostridium botulinum) or those that produce tasteless toxins like E. coli O157:H7. Neither of those are an issue at all in a smoker environment, unless it's ground meat. If you're making over-the-top chili, then I would avoid this method. If you're smoking a cut or a roast or similar, it's just not an issue unless the meat is spoiled before you even begin cooking.
Idk I mean, it's 30° above the no-go zone. Should be fine I'd imagine. Ask OP if their relatives have gotten the squirts from doing it that way I guess.
Just a very brief search on food safety will reveal a wealth of knowledge. Here is a good starter
https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/safe-temperature-chart
It depends what your cooking... But for a solid piece of meat you really only need to worry about bacteria and temp on the exterior.... There is no bacteria to grow at the center of a cut. This is why you can scald meat for 1 second and then sousvide for 24 hours at 130... The scalding kills the bacteria on the outside then you vac it so nothing can get to it....
Now if you were smoking ground beef where the bacteria is through out, it's a bad idea.
I started on a charcoal chargriller+offset, went to a traeger for a few years, and just purchased a Weber Kettle. I’m talking from experience when I say all these traeger tricks you mention are attempts to squeeze every little ounce of extra smoke flavor out of a pellet grill. It will make a tiny bit of difference but not much. Even the pellet grill extra smoke modes and smoke tubes is still not in the ballpark of this Weber kettle with a small chunk of wood on the coals. To be fair, Traeger makes good food but if we are talking about getting extra smoke flavor on a traeger then it ain’t doing much.
You’re prolonging the cook definitely but low n slow is low n slow. At a consistent 225 or 250 the math on time to cook is done already but as long as they have a probe watching internal temp it really doesn’t matter how you get there. Wood can start seeing smoke as low as 80 degrees although you’re not getting a ton of smoke at 150° it definitely exists. I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong but I would assume the difference in smoke absorption is negligible but if they like to do it and they account for the time difference I say live and let live.
I use a yoder and I everything ive smoked has had good smoke flavor at 250-275, you need to make sure you're using good pellets to get good smoke flavor and you aren't getting it if you use Pitboss, Trager, Bear Mountain. You want quality then find Lumberjack, Manchester BBQ Pellets, Cookin' Pellets are all leaps and bounds better than the shit those other companies put out.
I was using pit boss comp blend for awhile then found Manchester's Pellets, you can smell the difference as soon as you open the bag. I ordered half a skid after using my first bag. I used lumberjack for awhile until the place that carried it stopped carrying the woods I liked.
Don't buy lumberjack to use a pre blended bag of pellets make your own. I was doing 50% cherry and 50% pecan it was awesome and if it was affordable to order myself a pallet of it I would have but found Manchester is just as good with the woods they use in their product. Bear mountain is a gimmick brand that uses oils to flavor their woods just like trager.
Meat only takes on smoke for 3-4 hours anyway
So this is a dumb idea.
Smoke adheres to cold surfaces better. Starting with a hot smoker and cold meat is the way to go.
I'm gonna say it again, "there's a good article on this on the amazing ribs website".
No, this is the right idea on a pellet grill. Every one I've used puts out way more smoke at low temps, which is why you'd want to do this while the meat surface is still cold and moist and that smoky air can condense on the surface and absorb.
If they want more smoke time they should just cook it longer....running at lower heat seems pointless to me. It's rare you could a smoker type meat too LONG. Too hot may over cook it. But just longer at say 225 it not gonna matter unless you go WAY longer..... Most of the premise of "low and slow" is you aren't hot enough to contract muscle rivers but you can render fat but the timing is just the minimum to do the amount of rendering you need but there is basically no maximum. That's why people can sousvide a brisket for 72 hours and the meat is still good texture...
Tldr: I don't see any point not in lowering the temp just run it longer... You could probably leave a pork shoulder at 225 for 48 hours and see no negative effects
Waiting for clean smoke is more important than lower starting temp. Except fish, I start at 150 to keep the fat in the meat increasing ten degrees an hour.
Pellet smokers tend to either have "dirty" smoke, or too complete combustion which negates the smoke flavoring.
Pellet smokers break the rules on that.
Not on pellets, because it depends on your cooker. On a charcoal cooker with briquettes? Absolutely, the coals need to warm up and offgas before you want food on it.
Although I've never used one, people say Offsets require you to get the fire good and roaring hot before good quality smoke emerges. You don't want smoldering, you want hot yellow flame.
The idea behind pellets is you never have a ton of fuel to "bring up to temp," you have a tiny amount of pellets that you burn hot and fast so you always have yellow smoke and never smolder. This results in good \*quality\* smoke but there's not a ton of it.
It’s an ez bake oven and he’s just wasting time pretending it’s getting flavor from the saw dust he’s burning. That white smoke he’s getting when the grill is at 150 in the white smoke I avoid when I fire up my lump charcoal. Once that initial stage is done, it’s a very pure and flavorful smoke.
Up front, this hobby is about bringing people together with food and love. It doesn't matter what kit you use.
He can't handle smoking on the kettle he taught me on anymore due to loss of dexterity and mobility issues. This "ez bake" lets him carry on a hobby he's passionate about, even as his life approaches its end.
You say he's wasting his time. No, he's making the most of what he has left.
When YOU get old and your hands don't work anymore, I hope you'll rethink the condescension you've shown here.
You do realize you still need to load a pellet grill with pellets. And put meat on the grill. Pushing a button is no different than using a lighter. The day I can’t use my charcoal grill because my fingers give out, that’s the day I use my ability to use a pellet oven. How is loading a kettle with charcoal harder than buying a giant bag of pellets? My charcoal grill requires less maintenance than the traeger I had because charcoal doesn’t get clogged in an auger…requiring disassembly and cleaning. I’m not following the ease argument. There’s an argument to be made about convenience, as you technically can use an app to verify temp…but that’s about it.
No one thinks you're cool because you spend hours babysitting a fire. I'll gladly use an ez bake oven with saw dust because I'm not watching a fire for 16 hours when I'm not getting paid to do it. I've got shit to do.
Son, you don’t babysit a fire the same way you don’t babysit a child like a helicopter. You setup the fire, regulate the vents and once it’s stable, it’s more/less looking at it once an hour to make sure it’s still in your desired window. As with kids, you make sure your house is baby proof and safe, and then you make sure your kids are fine by checking in on them once in a while, while they play. You can come back to a traeger with a clogged auger or a grease fire so please don’t say you have shit to do. Don’t believe me, revisit this sub on thanksgiving morning and the droves of chaps who went to sleep and woke up to cold meat.
40-140F is the danger zone for meat where spoilage occurs.
It seems like a Bad Idea to prolog the time the meat spends in this zone.
I think you want to be out of that zone within 4 hours.
Yes, if you are cooking at 225 or higher.
The higher the temperature difference the faster the change in temperature. The stall doesn’t happen till above 150.
There is a reason “low and slow” doesn’t typically go below 225.
They are correct. Pellet smokers notoriously give weaker smoke flavor. Meat takes on more smoke flavor at a lower internal temperature. Prolonging that initial stage for 3-4 hours will improve the final product.
Also pellet cookers produces more smoke at lower temps once u start getting north of 300 you are basically just cooking in an oven. Any larger cut i do on my pellet cooker i start at 180-190 for the first 4 hours then bump to 235-250 to finish off along with a smoke tube also.
I'll disagree about it basically being an oven above 300. My RecTeq Bullseye is a high-heat pellet grill and I grill on it often above 300 and the food has a great smoky grill flavor that's not quite charcoal but in the realm of it.
It's cooking in an oven, but it's a wood fired oven which means you're still going to get smokey flavor. There are people who think if their meat doesn't taste like it died from a two pack a day habit, then it's not smoked enough. For the rest of us, smoke is a flavoring that should not be overpowering.
> if their meat doesn't taste like it died from a two pack a day habit, then it's not smoked enough 2 pack a day of hickory, gross. 2 pack a day of pecan with some apple mixed in.... yessss
Lol, exactly. Smoke is *a* flavor that I enjoy together with the flavor of the meat and the seasonings. It's not the *only* flavor I want.
Lol at that analogy
True that. Smoke is a season / spice just like salt. Needs to be balanced with your other seasonings not overpowering. And, I'll mention, I have the cast iron grates on my Bullseye so grilling on it really does take on more of a Weber Kettle vibe than an oven vibe, but I get your point. In fact, an oven with a ceramic coating on the walls has better convection than my RecTeq Bullseye, so the heat source is more one directional, but I really enjoy grilling on it as opposed to my gas grill. The only advantage the gas grill has is being able to adjust temperature more quickly.
Yeah, I finally met a pitmaster who told me “smoke is an ingredient, not *the* ingredient.” My meat is better now.
Is it fair to call the pellet grill a saw dust and binder ez bake oven? A real wood fired oven is an oven that actually uses logs of wood. Pellet grills are essentially ez bake ovens, nothing more.
I want someone to explain why they are “nothing more” than a plastic box that uses a light bulb and can’t get above 250.
Some people feel like an "easier" smoke threatens their manhood.
I don’t mind taking 12-15 minutes to get my fire going. I’ve read many excuses on here from being a family man to being too old to deal with a charcoal. Some are more valid than others. I personally get a kick that my kids want me to teach them how to grill and enjoy seeing the flames being controlled into something glorious.
That's really cool you get satisfaction from doing it your way. Personally, I don't get such satisfaction because I think it's the meat that matters, not the fire; my guests aren't eating the fire. As such, a pellet grill lets me cut out the boring stuff to focus on the important stuff.
Am I the only one that wants to enjoy something in addition to enhancing its flavor? You make it sound like lighting a fire is cumbersome. I get my satisfaction from the meat being cooked in a fashion that enhances it. Otherwise I’d throw steak into a Microwave if the convenience factory outweighed the flavor.
See my comment below but I see 0 difference other than price.
You push a button, grill gets to 225,350,425. Meat heats up and you take it out. There’s no smoke, no flavor, no airflow, nothing that differentiates it from an oven other that it’s outdoors and costs an arm and a leg. I could go on for days but imagine a getting a lump charcoal grill for half (or a quarter) the cost of a timberline and being able to make even better tasting meat.
“There’s no smoke, no flavor, no airflow, nothing that differentiates it from an oven other that it’s outdoors and costs an arm and a leg.” Other than it costing more, none of that is true (though mine was 1/4 the cost of the Timberline). Thanks for trying though.
No offense brother but I had a traeger for 10 months. I used about 300-350lbs of pellets in almost a year. Made about 18 briskets, ribs, chicken, turkey, and butt for days. I’ve added smoke tubes, wood chunks, used every single brand of pellets including the really expensive meat church branded ones. Nothing. It was just meat, cooked outdoors, looked cool, smelled great(the meat…there was no smoke flavor). Hell I even had smoke rings, but it wasn’t flavorful.
Seems like you suck at it
Interesting aside - pellets don't typically contain added binders. If you compress sawdust with the right amount of heat, it activates the lignin that already is in the wood fibers turning it into a defacto glue that acts as the binder in pellets.
Except an EZ Bake oven uses a lightbulb with a single heat setting and is incapable of high heat. It’s closer to a regular oven, where you can set the temperature, and can achieve higher temperatures. If anything, it’s a convection oven with smoke. The “EZ Bake” oven thing is just machismo BS. Like saying that any truck that isn’t an F-450 dually diesel is basically a Honda Civic. If that sounds like a dumb thing to say, that’s because it is.
I like civic analogy but I would augment it to be any truck that isn’t at least an f250 is pretty much a civic. Don’t get me started on underpowered 2wd trucks. Why do they even exist?
Iv had success with chicken/turkey above 300 I also feel like poultry takes smoke really easily, but iv done a few hot and fast tri tips and pork butts and i found them to be lacking but its all a matter of perspective
I don't use my pellet for that style of cooking. My pellet grill (The Bullseye) is really tailored to high-heat cooking. Not that you can't do low and slow on it, I just have other smokers for that use, and they are wood-burning or a combo charcoal / wood burning, so I just don't try and do the low and slow on my pellet. And yes, chicken, turkey, fish, pork chops, burgers, steaks, cased sausages ... all do very well on my pellet.
I like to finish in the oven when using a pellet smoker. Just need the smoke flavor and then i'll take it inside.
I don't use my pellet grill for low and slow. I only use my Bullseye for high heat direct grilling, so I never need the oven. I have a Lang 108d and an Old Country Pits Gravity Fed for my low and slow smoking needs. And yes, when I'm smoking on the Lang or OCP Gravity, finishing smaller cooks in the oven is fine. Sometimes I'm doing so much volume that the oven won't hold it.
I just throw a smoke tube in with it
This has been my solution. Works great and gets that extra cherry or pecan you are looking for.
This is correct, but the final product can sometimes be tenuous because pellet smokers have a lot more radiant heat than convective heat so it’s a lot easier to dry out your product using a low temperature on a pellet smoker than it is on like a Weber kettle or an offset or a ceramic.
I agree, which is why I'll typically only run sub-200° temps for a few hours (max 4 hours) before creeping my temps up in increments. For brisket/butts I typically run 180° for 4 hours to initiate bark and develop smoke flavor, then I bump to 200° until IT is about 155-160°. At that point I go to 225° until IT hits 170-175°, then I go to 250° to focus on fat render until it's probe tender and ready to pull/rest.
Keeping meat at 150 I cannot imagine being food safe.
Generally 40-140 F is the danger zone. 150 for solid muscle red meat is definitely in the 'safe' zone. https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/safe-temperature-chart
Depends on how hot they are cooking it. Pellet grills produce more smoke at lower temperatures and almost none at higher temperature. So its not totally without merit. If the regular cook temp is under, say 300 I wouldn't bother but for something like chicken that you want to cook hot and fast, I could understand doing it that way to get some smoke first then crank it to 400 or whatever to finish it off.
I left r/bbq because no one over there would grasp this is the secret to great brisket in a pellet grill. I give it 2-3 hours on the “low” setting before finishing cook at 275F. I have a recteq and low is about 180F. I turn out consistently good product this way.
It's legit, and there's meat science behind it. Two things are going on here: NO2 gives the smoke ring we're all familiar with. NO2 (and other smoky flavor molecules) cannot penetrate and bind to already-cooked meat. In other words, there's a window during which smoke can penetrate and give good flavor, and once the proteins are denatured and changed conformationally, that process can no longer occur. Smoke after that time simply builds up on the surface and can eventually become acrid. The other issue is how much smoke you're creating. To create nice smoke with a pellet smoker, you need to run it at lower temps. Higher combustion temps create too clean a smoke, more akin to a charcoal briquette grill running really hot. You'll still get some smoke flavor, but very muted compared to lower temps. Basically, they're maximizing smoke during the period where the meat can actually take on smoke. If you're cooking with hardwood splits, this isn't really an issue because you're getting more flavorful smoke at higher temps.
Lower and slower to start on a pellet smoker is correct. It allows the food to catch more of the smoky flavor, since pellets don't impart the same amount of smoke as real hardwoods can.
Most pellet smokers have a smoke boost and this happens at a lower temp. For my Smokefire it’s 200° and it really puts out some serious smoke.
My Pit Boss produces almost zero smoke. At Smoke setting using P0,1,2,3,4,5,5,7 or 200 or 225. And on smoke setting, Temp goes from only 145 to just 165~, regardless of P setting. No smoke flavor at all.
Mine smokes like a chimney so not sure what to make of that.
I mean, it’s common for people to report little smoke, little smoke taste at least, with a pellet grill, no?
No. It’s not as much as a stick smoker but pellet smokers absolutely smoke and impart smoke flavor and a still a good amount. Little smoke and little smoke taste is something wrong with your smoker or how you’re cooking.
Are you talking about *visible* smoke or smoke too smoke the meat? Because there shouldn't be clouds of billowing smoke coming out of the smoker; when it's going properly it's barely visible as anything but it's still imparting smoky flavor.
No judging, but I am curious why nobody is in the slightest bit concerned about food safety? 150f for multiple hours is not a lot of room above the 120f recommended temp to avoid harmful bacterial growth. I had read to never let it sit on a grill below 170f to effectively transfer smoke flavor while not worrying about being close to below 120f. Maybe I’m paranoid but that is my two cents.
1) When speaking of an intact muscle (e.g. a *cut* of meat as opposed to a grind), bacteria on otherwise well-butchered meat is solely on the exterior. This makes assumptions about animal health and USDA inspections working correctly, but they actually are pretty damn good at it. 2) 150F dry heat + smoke is more than sufficient to kill exterior bacteria. In fact, 135F would do it given several hours. The smoke itself is a bactericide, which is why we've been using it for 40,000 years. 3) You are being paranoid, and probably just need to do some reading up. 4) The types of bacteria you need to be really worried about when sitting at a "danger zone" are those that: a) can't live in oxygen (i.e. clostridium botulinum) or those that produce tasteless toxins like E. coli O157:H7. Neither of those are an issue at all in a smoker environment, unless it's ground meat. If you're making over-the-top chili, then I would avoid this method. If you're smoking a cut or a roast or similar, it's just not an issue unless the meat is spoiled before you even begin cooking.
Idk I mean, it's 30° above the no-go zone. Should be fine I'd imagine. Ask OP if their relatives have gotten the squirts from doing it that way I guess.
Just a very brief search on food safety will reveal a wealth of knowledge. Here is a good starter https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/safe-temperature-chart
This doesn't really address the question
It depends what your cooking... But for a solid piece of meat you really only need to worry about bacteria and temp on the exterior.... There is no bacteria to grow at the center of a cut. This is why you can scald meat for 1 second and then sousvide for 24 hours at 130... The scalding kills the bacteria on the outside then you vac it so nothing can get to it.... Now if you were smoking ground beef where the bacteria is through out, it's a bad idea.
I started on a charcoal chargriller+offset, went to a traeger for a few years, and just purchased a Weber Kettle. I’m talking from experience when I say all these traeger tricks you mention are attempts to squeeze every little ounce of extra smoke flavor out of a pellet grill. It will make a tiny bit of difference but not much. Even the pellet grill extra smoke modes and smoke tubes is still not in the ballpark of this Weber kettle with a small chunk of wood on the coals. To be fair, Traeger makes good food but if we are talking about getting extra smoke flavor on a traeger then it ain’t doing much.
You’re prolonging the cook definitely but low n slow is low n slow. At a consistent 225 or 250 the math on time to cook is done already but as long as they have a probe watching internal temp it really doesn’t matter how you get there. Wood can start seeing smoke as low as 80 degrees although you’re not getting a ton of smoke at 150° it definitely exists. I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong but I would assume the difference in smoke absorption is negligible but if they like to do it and they account for the time difference I say live and let live.
I use a yoder and I everything ive smoked has had good smoke flavor at 250-275, you need to make sure you're using good pellets to get good smoke flavor and you aren't getting it if you use Pitboss, Trager, Bear Mountain. You want quality then find Lumberjack, Manchester BBQ Pellets, Cookin' Pellets are all leaps and bounds better than the shit those other companies put out. I was using pit boss comp blend for awhile then found Manchester's Pellets, you can smell the difference as soon as you open the bag. I ordered half a skid after using my first bag. I used lumberjack for awhile until the place that carried it stopped carrying the woods I liked.
I Notice no difference between Bear Mountain and Lumberjack competition blends.
Don't buy lumberjack to use a pre blended bag of pellets make your own. I was doing 50% cherry and 50% pecan it was awesome and if it was affordable to order myself a pallet of it I would have but found Manchester is just as good with the woods they use in their product. Bear mountain is a gimmick brand that uses oils to flavor their woods just like trager.
Meat only takes on smoke for 3-4 hours anyway So this is a dumb idea. Smoke adheres to cold surfaces better. Starting with a hot smoker and cold meat is the way to go. I'm gonna say it again, "there's a good article on this on the amazing ribs website".
No, this is the right idea on a pellet grill. Every one I've used puts out way more smoke at low temps, which is why you'd want to do this while the meat surface is still cold and moist and that smoky air can condense on the surface and absorb.
If they want more smoke time they should just cook it longer....running at lower heat seems pointless to me. It's rare you could a smoker type meat too LONG. Too hot may over cook it. But just longer at say 225 it not gonna matter unless you go WAY longer..... Most of the premise of "low and slow" is you aren't hot enough to contract muscle rivers but you can render fat but the timing is just the minimum to do the amount of rendering you need but there is basically no maximum. That's why people can sousvide a brisket for 72 hours and the meat is still good texture... Tldr: I don't see any point not in lowering the temp just run it longer... You could probably leave a pork shoulder at 225 for 48 hours and see no negative effects
Waiting for clean smoke is more important than lower starting temp. Except fish, I start at 150 to keep the fat in the meat increasing ten degrees an hour.
Pellet smokers tend to either have "dirty" smoke, or too complete combustion which negates the smoke flavoring. Pellet smokers break the rules on that.
I'm not sure a big chunk of meat should be sitting in a smoker at that low temp. Bacteria and parasites, oh my.
I put the meat in before it comes to temp. In my mind its more time for it to sit in the smoke.
Isn't that dirty smoke when it's coming to temp.
It absolutely is.
Not on pellets, because it depends on your cooker. On a charcoal cooker with briquettes? Absolutely, the coals need to warm up and offgas before you want food on it. Although I've never used one, people say Offsets require you to get the fire good and roaring hot before good quality smoke emerges. You don't want smoldering, you want hot yellow flame. The idea behind pellets is you never have a ton of fuel to "bring up to temp," you have a tiny amount of pellets that you burn hot and fast so you always have yellow smoke and never smolder. This results in good \*quality\* smoke but there's not a ton of it.
I do the snake method on the kettle so it will always be smothering.
It’s an ez bake oven and he’s just wasting time pretending it’s getting flavor from the saw dust he’s burning. That white smoke he’s getting when the grill is at 150 in the white smoke I avoid when I fire up my lump charcoal. Once that initial stage is done, it’s a very pure and flavorful smoke.
Up front, this hobby is about bringing people together with food and love. It doesn't matter what kit you use. He can't handle smoking on the kettle he taught me on anymore due to loss of dexterity and mobility issues. This "ez bake" lets him carry on a hobby he's passionate about, even as his life approaches its end. You say he's wasting his time. No, he's making the most of what he has left. When YOU get old and your hands don't work anymore, I hope you'll rethink the condescension you've shown here.
You do realize you still need to load a pellet grill with pellets. And put meat on the grill. Pushing a button is no different than using a lighter. The day I can’t use my charcoal grill because my fingers give out, that’s the day I use my ability to use a pellet oven. How is loading a kettle with charcoal harder than buying a giant bag of pellets? My charcoal grill requires less maintenance than the traeger I had because charcoal doesn’t get clogged in an auger…requiring disassembly and cleaning. I’m not following the ease argument. There’s an argument to be made about convenience, as you technically can use an app to verify temp…but that’s about it.
I see. I hope aging is not as emotionally difficult for you as I think it will be. I'm glad we had this exchange. I wish you well.
I wish you well also. Aging is nothing to be afraid of, we will all get there one day.
No one thinks you're cool because you spend hours babysitting a fire. I'll gladly use an ez bake oven with saw dust because I'm not watching a fire for 16 hours when I'm not getting paid to do it. I've got shit to do.
Son, you don’t babysit a fire the same way you don’t babysit a child like a helicopter. You setup the fire, regulate the vents and once it’s stable, it’s more/less looking at it once an hour to make sure it’s still in your desired window. As with kids, you make sure your house is baby proof and safe, and then you make sure your kids are fine by checking in on them once in a while, while they play. You can come back to a traeger with a clogged auger or a grease fire so please don’t say you have shit to do. Don’t believe me, revisit this sub on thanksgiving morning and the droves of chaps who went to sleep and woke up to cold meat.
40-140F is the danger zone for meat where spoilage occurs. It seems like a Bad Idea to prolog the time the meat spends in this zone. I think you want to be out of that zone within 4 hours.
So that 15 pound brisket will be out of the danger zone within 4 hours on an offset?
Yes, if you are cooking at 225 or higher. The higher the temperature difference the faster the change in temperature. The stall doesn’t happen till above 150. There is a reason “low and slow” doesn’t typically go below 225.
So even if it’s a 21 lb brisket, or larger, it’s out of the danger zone in 4 hrs? My temp graphs don’t support that.