John "JR"
Minnesota/ United States of America
******************************************** Grills/Smokers/Fryers Big Green Egg (Large) X3
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Burch Barrel V-1 Karubeque C-60 Kamado Joe Jr. (Black) Lodge L410 Hibachi Pit Barrel Cooker Pit Barrel Cooker 2.0
Pit Barrel PBX
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Bayou Classic 35K BTU Burner Eggspander Kit X2 Finex Cat Iron Line FireBoard Drive Lots and Lots of Griswold Cast Iron Grill Grates Joule Water Circulator
KBQ Fire Grate Kick Ash Basket (KAB) X4 Lots of Lodge Cast Iron Husky 6 Drawer BBQ Equipment Cabinet Large Vortex Marlin 1894 .44 Magnum Marquette Castings No. 13 (First Run) Smithey No. 12 Smokeware Chimney Cap X 3 Stargazer No.10, 12 ******************************** Fuel FOGO Priemium Lump Charcoal Kingsford Blue and White B&B Charcoal Apple, Cherry & Oak Log splits for the C-60 ************************************************* Cutlery Buck 119 Special
Cuda 7' Fillet Knife Dexter 12" Brisket Sword Global Shun Wusthof ********** Next Major Purchase Lone Star Grillz 24 X 48 Offset
This is interesting for sure. I am sure some will love it.
For me, I have no interest in it because I love smoking outside with real fire and smoke. That being said, I don't like big counter top appliances. Too much bulky clutter. If I could put it in a storage room and forget about it when not in use, then it would be fine. I could see this being a cool appliance to own if this was your thing.
I'm with you. We had a bread machine (made awesome bread) and an ice cream machine (made decent ice cream), both anniversary gifts through the years, but the bulkiness and the fact that I do not live in a Better Home & Gardens or HGTV-renovated sprawling rich person's kitchen made them non-practical. This, to me, fits that spot too.
Safety issues aside, $1k seems steep for what is basically a very small electric oven that smolders wood pellets.. While I have a large assortment of outdoor cookers, when we are in fire season burn bans are common that include bans on anything other than propane/natural gas for outdoor cooking, so I can see a definite place for this appliance when the itch for ribs happens.
Hmm, I wonder if I could just put a smoke tube in the bottom of the oven with the exhaust fan above the range on high.... I am currently unsupervised..
Scotch: Current favorite- The Arran (anything by them), Glenmorangie 12yr Lasanta, sherry cask finished. The Balvenie Double Wood, also like Oban 18yr, and The Glenlivet Nadurra (Oloroso sherry cask finished) among others. Neat please.
About meReal name: Aaron
Location: Farwell, Michigan- near Clare. (dead center of lower peninsula)
Occupation:
Healthcare- Licensed & Registered Respiratory Therapist (RRT) at MyMichigan Health, a University of Michigan Health System.
GE is not GE appliance anymore….. They were my customer for a time during their breakup. We did some global networking refreshes with them. Neutron Jack left, and others had to pick up those pieces. They ended up restructuring and selling off a lot of stuff.
Their appliance division discovered that it was more effective to have the design leadership, engineering, and manufacturing in the same building. So they sold it to Haier, a Chinese company.
I will be curious to hear what Max Good thinks about this coming out of CES. From what I've seen on YouTube, they were not allowed to give out samples from the unit, but I'm hoping Max was at least able to get some questions answered.
I'll be honest, I am intrigued by this. If it retailed at the initial crowdfunding price (I believe it was $600), I'd be hard pressed not to pull the trigger. That said, I didn't back it then because I was once burned on a crowdfunding campaign. While it wasn't much money in that instance, the lack of any kind of guarantee (product or money back) now gives me pause. Losing out on $50 is one thing - $600 would stick with me.
I've never used a pellet cooker before, but I would consider this as an indoor/travel option. This would be much easier to take up north than an LSG!
I am also wondering what Max was able to find out.
For an apartment dweller, this thing would probably work great.
There was a lot of talk about CO poisoning early on in this thread,
but this unit isn't using the pellets for heat.
So in my mind it is no different than a smoking gun.
And it doesn't take very many pellets just to create some smoke flavor.
EDIT: I am in no way downplaying CO poisoning.
Last edited by Smoker_Boy; January 17, 2024, 11:58 AM.
Reason: Clarification
Last I looked, you can still buy this from Arden for $100 less than the GE model. I was told they are essentially the same oven. I voiced skepticism referencing my recent review of Ninja's Woodfire. Woodfire only burned a couple ounces of pellets and produced beautiful looking smoked meats that had little to no smoke aroma or flavor. GE pointed out their smoker can burn 2 cups of pellets during a cook and claimed to produce results similar to a pellet smoker. That gave me hope. And yes, the pellets are for flavor, heat comes from electricity.
Yes, but, does it have a smoke plus/boost/smokeyXL settig to actually produce a smoke profile, or am I going to have to figure out a way to add a smoke tube? Sorry, I am still home alone and unsupervised, all the daily chores are done, so I might be having an early afternoon cocktail..
So, I was being a bit of a wise guy..., but it does have smoke control. No idea what they consider heavy or light smoke profile, but the reviews at Bestbuy were positive given the limited number of reviews.
So it would seem that using 100% pure hardwood pellets would be critical to the final flavor.
As in 100% pecan, 100% mesquite, etc.
No alder/oak as a base, unless you like alder or oak.
Last edited by Smoker_Boy; January 17, 2024, 02:26 PM.
Reason: Forgot to thank Max for getting paid to review this - lol.
Smoker_Boy at Menards is it Bear Mountain pellets? Asking because that is what you said you use, but the Bear Mountain website doesn't show any of their fruitwoods to be 100% whatever they say it is..
tstalafuse - No, the Menards pellets were the Pitboss brand. (I forgot to mention this little fact - lol) We bought these because we were conducting a taste test using different types of pellets. We still have a bunch of the Bear Mountain apple.
Thanks for your initial thoughts, Max! From what I've read and watched online, they claim the two cups lasts for a four hour cook, which is how long they've set the smoke function to last. That said, one video I watched said you could reload and start up the smoke function again if your cook is longer than four hours.
All that said, if I decide to pull the trigger and pick up one of these this weekend (a big IF - my wife and I are delivering Meals on Wheels Saturday, and a store not too far from us has two in stock, so we will see since we will already be out earlier in the day...), I might be leaning on the good people here for pellet recommendations!
Thank you for the kind words. My wife and I have been doing this for over 20 years now. It started as a part of her program in graduate school and we just never stopped. It's a pretty light commitment - we're signed up for one Saturday a month, and only miss a couple Saturdays in the Fall when I have to work.
Mind you, I'm not sure my wife will be fired up for another new cooker, as she just got me the LSG Adjustable. That said, she tends to be a bad influence on my MCS. We will see... :-)
First, the TL;DR account: I have this cooker on order from Best Buy, and pretty much everyone other than GE Appliances direct currently had it on sale for $300 off - for anyone who might be on the fence due to the MSRP. Also, my wife continues to be an enabler of my MCS, as she said it would be “foolish” not to get this cooker, particularly with the sale today.
Now onto today’s unabridged saga for anyone who is bored and/or has time to kill:
So the Crate & Barrel that is relatively close to me listed it in stock for the sale price today - so I placed my order. I got confirmation of my order, and the notification said to not go to the store until I got notification that my order was ready later that day. The confirmation email also said my credit card would not be charged until my order was ready.
Fast forward about 45 minutes, and my credit card alerted me that the charge had been processed. As such, since the store is about an hour away from me, I got in my car and headed that way. Literally as I was parking my car, my phone rang. The person on the other end said that the item was back ordered, and wouldn’t be ready until late January. I wanted to find out if the sale was offered elsewhere, so I told her that I needed to think about the order, but that I might be calling back later to cancel it.
While I was checking to confirm other rerailers were offering the same sale, I got an email from Crate & Barrel that the cooker was back ordered to “mid to late February.” Having found it available much earlier at other stores for the same price, I decided to call back to cancel.
This time, a different person answered the call. I told her I had an order I would like to cancel, and gave her my order number. While she was looking up the order, I asked why my card got charged when the original notification said my card would not be charged until my order was ready. She said different stores had “different policies.”
I said that I didn’t understand how a store could override corporate policy, and I asked if she could confirm when my charge would be credited back to me. After a brief pause, she said my cancellation was processed, I would get an email confirming it shortly, and then hung up the phone.
Thankfully, the sale seems to be almost universal. As such, I decided to make my purchase from Best Buy because: I can pick it up at the store, which is much closer to my house, and it is scheduled to be ready this coming Thursday.
Needless to say, I was not overly pleased with my experience with Crate & Barrel. I would say I’m never going to shop there again, but I don’t recall ever shopping there before - so I guess I just won’t be shopping there full stop.
Thank you to any/all of you who made it this far into the post! As I’ve never used a pellet cooker (“smolderer?”) before, I would greatly appreciate any pellet recommendations and/or tips!
My priority is finding a pellet that will provide a good smoke flavor, particularly since I don’t believe this cooker has a burn pit, per se - so ash creation isn’t as much of a concern. My initial thought is to pick up a bag of Weber Grillmaster, as it is available for me locally, and appears to not have filler woods.
I usually recommend Lumberjack or BBQr’s Delight. The Weber should be fine for a starter session but if you’d like to try something different, I think those would be good options. Congrats on the purchase and the enabling wife. Looking forward to seeing pics.
So I decided to have my inaugural cook on the GE Profile Smart Pellet Smolderer today before the NFC Championship Game. I figured chicken thighs would be a pretty simple test for the cooker.
I used a simple rub I had thrown together for a previous cook, and then added some fresh cracjed pin pepper onto the meat before going into the cooker.
Given that this is my first experience using pellets, I was generally pleased with the results. I ended up using the small bag of Kona pellets that came with the cooker. While it is a blend of some sort, there is definitely some hickory in the mix.
Because I wanted to get dinner done before the Lions game (if history tells us anything, I might not be around in 32 years when the they next make the NFC Championship game- so I don’t want to miss a snap), I decided to go with a relatively high temperature (275 degrees). I went with the highest smoke level setting to try to maximize the intensity of the smoke flavor.
Given the quick cook time, I was pleasantly surprised with the level of smoke flavor. It’s clearly not going to produce the smokiest meat possible, but I would say the flavor was definitely there.
I would be curious how this flavor profile compares to a full blown pellet cooker. That said, while this will never replace my LSG, it will definitely get used in smaller/quicker cooks, particularly when the weather is terrible.
There was a relatively subtle scent of a fireplace in the kitchen during the cook, but it subsided pretty quickly after dinner. That said, each time I opened the door, I first let it go through the entire 10 minute smoke clearing cycle.
It was skinless chicken, so I can’t yet speak to how skin would be on a cook. I have seen on YouTube that skin can be a challenge on this cooker, although some people have reported that wings turned out well.
I think the answer is, "Why would you use your own money when you can use other people's money?" If it works out, you get to sell it and make a profit, if it doesn't you aren't out any money.
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