MCS got the best of me!

[Dadof3Illinois]

So for the last year I’ve been researching pellet grills. Not that I really needed one but wanted to give them another shot. A couple years ago I bought a GMG and it just never worked correctly, issues with the auger, control board and wild crazy hot spots of 75-125 degrees across the grates. I was happy with the food it produced but not all the headaches it had. I sold it and stayed with my weber kettles and PBC which I love. So recently I’ve been wanting something that will hold 3-4 briskets or multiple racks of ribs. I’ve looked at several offsets but the 12-16 week wait for fabrication pretty much turned me off.
I started looking at pellet grills, researched several, Blaz’n, Yoder, Mak, but kept coming back to the camp chef woodwind. Everyone seems to like these, I already own some of their other products and dealing with camp chef customer service has always been very easy.
So I’m a new Camp Chef Woodwind WiFi 36” owner. Picked it up at the Saint Louis BBQ store on Friday, assembled it Saturday and did my first cook today. Ribs turned out decent for my first run, not as much smoke as I like but I knew that from my prior pellet grill experience so I’m ok with that. I bought the sidekick burner for it and that’s a game changer IMO. Cooked some shaved Brussels with bacon and onions for a side with the ribs and that thing is one of the best accessories I own.

Assembly was pretty straight forward, burn in easy and everything went smooth.




First set of ribs looked awesome but needed just a little longer to finish but that was no me and not the cooker.






So now I’ll be having fun trying to dial in my limited cooking skills on this new cooker. I have now formally joined the "Pellet Head" cooking movement…Ha. Oh I will say that you will have to pry my dead hands off my kettles…I’m thinking I’ll try smoking things on my kettles then finishing on the pellet grill.

[Huskee]

Congrats! Yeah, using the pellet rig to finish things is super convenient. You may also find certain things that you might not want a lot of smoke flavor on, like veggies, burgers, nachos, lasagna, etc are WONDERFUL when grilled or baked on the pellet cooker.

[Dadof3Illinois]

My wife has already mentioned baking cookies and casseroles in it.

[STEbbq]

I feel like I need this secret. How to get the wife to smoke cookies on the smoker?

[HawkerXP]

Really?

..., ..., ...!

[Jfrosty27]

That’s a winner! Welcome to the pellet club. That looks like a great cooker. Now get it dirty!! 🤣😂

The CC’s are nice especially with that Sidekick sear burner. They didn’t offer it when I bought my Recteq. That would have swung me to CC for sure.

Smoke on!

[LA Pork Butt]

Enjoy!

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

Hope it treats you better than the GMG did, looks like it's happy in it's little spot.

[Dadof3Illinois]

Thanks… me too. I think GMG has good products and their customer service was good to me but that grill just had some demons…Ha

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

Dadof3Illinois even MAK puts out a demon grill every now and then It's just the nature of mechanical grills I suspect.

[STEbbq]

That is a beautiful smoker. What did you name it?

[Dadof3Illinois]

It’s named patio grill #5…

[glitchy]

I don’t talk about the GMG I had very much because GMG tried so hard to fix it for over a year and I wrote it off as a lemon. I will just summarize it by saying I’d buy another SmokeFire before I’d take a free GMG though. As your expectations seem right, you’re going to really like that Woodwind. Mine always worked well and the best thing about is if you remember to slide the drop on the ash pot before each cook, you probably only need to vacuum the thing out every 80-100 lbs of pellets burned. I miss that a lot. Ain’t built like a tank, but seems built good enough to last a while.

[Dadof3Illinois]

Yes…they seem to have a lot of nice little features and priced pretty good. Offering the sidekick burner was a big selling point too.

[RonB]

Congrats. It's very nice to have your wife thinkin' about using it too.

[tenphases]

Congrats!

[Waiting for the Worms]

Welcome back to the pellet club! A smoke tube filled with wood chips is a good cure for the lack of smoke flavor.

[Dadof3Illinois]

I've done that with the old GMG....it helped a little. I started setting a chunk of wood on the grease shield right above the burn pot....that helped the most but still not like wood or charcoal gives you. Smoking wasn't the main reason I bought this one though.
Now I'm in the proverbial MUD on a search for pellets I like.

[DavidNorcross]

Congratulations! The Woodwind was on my shortlist You are lucky to have found one, they are sold out in alot of places.

[Dadof3Illinois]

The BBQ store in St Louis just got a shipment in last week and were well stocked with Camp Chef grills.....their other products not so much.

[fzxdoc]

It's almost too pretty to dirty up with cooks. I see you didn't let that stop you, though. Enjoy using your new toy.

Kathryn

[Skip]

Nice looking Pellet Grill! Have fun using it.

[bbqLuv]

Welcome to the "Pellet Head" family. Next door in the Traegerhood.