I can think of no other barbecue cooker that evokes more opinion, disagreement, frustration and drama then the pellet cooker. Since Joe Traeger first introduced the pellet cooker in the mid-1980's, it was lauded as the next great cooking device the likes of which had not been seen since the indoor oven. Here was the perfect marriage of convenience and barbecue cooking all rolled up into one package. Since then it's popularity has exploded, with more brands being introduced each season.
Folks are also passionate about their pellet cookers, with brand loyalty comparable to the automobile. But note that I continue to refer to it as a 'cooker'. Is it really on par with a stick burner or have the capabilities a charcoal kettle? Do the results warrant the claim of being all things barbecue with a set and forget attitude? Unfortunately for me anyway, the answer to that is no.
Now you may disagree with me or you may comment that such and such a brand is the holy grail of cooking for you and yours. Fine, if your happy with the results then that's all that matters, argument over. But if you are like a lot of us who constantly chirp about the downside of these machines, there are some issues. For all it's convenience and versatility, they are not true smokers and they really are not true grillers. They do both adequately but they don't shine at either.
Back in December I wrote a review of a device I purchased from Smoke Daddy BBQ that really helped with introducing more smoke, produced by real, smoking wood, to my pellet cooker.....
Have I Found The Holy Grail?
I have a rather large custom converted stick burner made into a pellet cooker by a local Houston firm called Pitts & Spitts. Smoking profiles above the 250* mark are non-existent. Since I don't do low and slow much any more (prefer 275-300* cooks), that pretty much ruled out much of a smoke profile in my food. After purchasing the Heavy D stick burner accessory, and using it a few times I am rather pleased that now at least I get a good dose of smoke for about the first 2 hours of a long cook. As I said in the review, it goes a long way to solve one of the problems with these cookers, the lack of smoke.
That leaves the other complaint often heard, they can grill but not really very well. Most pellet cookers I've seen attempt to bring the heat from the burn pot directly to the grate surface by direct exposure through the deflector plates. Unfortunately with a fire that's only about 4" in diameter, that's a tough task. Typically you end up with a hot spot which quickly tapers off the further you move away from that spot. In other words an inconsistent heating surface which requires you to move your food around to achieve an even finish.
The folks at Smoke Daddy (www.smokedaddyinc.com) have also taken on this challenge and introduced another rather clever accessory that I recently tested. It simply turns a pellet cooker into a dandy grilling machine. They call it the Sear Daddy Universal Pellet Grill Searing Station. We'll just refer to it as the Sear Daddy.
The Sear Daddy is simply a large 19" by 19" square funnel shaped piece of sheet metal that tapers down 6" to a 6" wide opening at the bottom. You begin by removing your heat and grease deflector plates exposing your burn pot. The accessory then sits down on top of the burn pot holder, and depending on your cooker, it wedges up against the nearest wall or sits on the top lip. Obviously this requires a rather good sized cooker that can accommodate this large an accessory, In my case it fit almost perfectly. If I had maybe another 1/4" of height it would have been like a glove.....
Note the studs welded to either side, those hold the flavorizer bars you drop in place next.....
Those act to channel the heat and when heated themselves cause the grease drippings to vaporize back into your food as flavor, similar to the way Weber does in their cookers. They also act as holders for a bag of lava rocks they provide....
Now I made the mistake of opening the bag and just dumping the rocks onto the top of the accessory. Unfortunately there were a lot of tiny little lava rocks in the blend and those immediately found there way down into my burn pot. I had to carefully lift the whole accessory up and clean out the pot. I decided to give the whole thing a good shake over a garbage can to get rid of any further tiny ones to avoid having them fall through during cooking. Obviously if you ever owned an old style propane grill, the lava rocks are there as a heat sink helping to spread the heat load, as well as acting as grease absorbents. My biggest fear was grease making it's way directly into the burn pot. Luckily that never occurred!
I was a little surprised they did not supply any sort of grate to finish off the build. No matter, I own a ton of grates, so I chose to use some of my Grill Grates that normally reside in my gasser for the same purpose. They ended up bridging perfectly over the top of the lava rocks....
As you can see I could have easily fit two more into the grill space. In fact this device gave me half the amount of space I normally have for cooking on my lower rack, plenty to do a family sized meal. As a test cook I grabbed a couple of Cowboy Steaks (bone-in ribeyes), some home made brats and boudain sausages. Cooked the steaks first and while they were resting I heated up the sausages....
I got out my infrared thermo gun and temp'd the middle of the grates directly above the burn pot right at about 650-680*. The perimeters fell off gradually to between 550-600*. Unfortunately when the lid was open (which was most of the time) the temps fell quite a bit. It was 40ish outside with a nippy little north wind which made matters worse.
Regardless this thing worked and worked well, like a true searing station. With the other two grill grates mounted I could have cooked the entire meal in about 12 minutes. It took exactly 10 minutes to get the steaks up to about 125* IT and perfectly seared, with another 10 minutes to do the sausages as seen above. If you had the Sear Daddy installed in your grill, came home and fired up the pellet cooker, you could be eating a well grilled meal in about 35 minutes, not bad ! It was actually advantageous to have the hotter and cooler zones to allow for even cooking at the edges and a hot sear in the middle.
I give the Sear Daddy high marks for turning my pellet cooker into a pellet griller. Paired with the Heavy D, which makes it a true pellet smoker, I now have the versatility of cooking just about anything from low and slow to fast and hot, with set and forget convenience.
So what are the PROS?
And what are the CONS?
All in all I'm very pleased with both Smoke Daddy accessories and would recommend giving one or both a try if you're fed up with light smoke and don't have other options to quick sear a steak. Here are a few take away shots of the food my Sear Daddy produced in about 20 minutes of grill time....Troutman is out !!!
Folks are also passionate about their pellet cookers, with brand loyalty comparable to the automobile. But note that I continue to refer to it as a 'cooker'. Is it really on par with a stick burner or have the capabilities a charcoal kettle? Do the results warrant the claim of being all things barbecue with a set and forget attitude? Unfortunately for me anyway, the answer to that is no.
Now you may disagree with me or you may comment that such and such a brand is the holy grail of cooking for you and yours. Fine, if your happy with the results then that's all that matters, argument over. But if you are like a lot of us who constantly chirp about the downside of these machines, there are some issues. For all it's convenience and versatility, they are not true smokers and they really are not true grillers. They do both adequately but they don't shine at either.
Back in December I wrote a review of a device I purchased from Smoke Daddy BBQ that really helped with introducing more smoke, produced by real, smoking wood, to my pellet cooker.....
Have I Found The Holy Grail?
I have a rather large custom converted stick burner made into a pellet cooker by a local Houston firm called Pitts & Spitts. Smoking profiles above the 250* mark are non-existent. Since I don't do low and slow much any more (prefer 275-300* cooks), that pretty much ruled out much of a smoke profile in my food. After purchasing the Heavy D stick burner accessory, and using it a few times I am rather pleased that now at least I get a good dose of smoke for about the first 2 hours of a long cook. As I said in the review, it goes a long way to solve one of the problems with these cookers, the lack of smoke.
That leaves the other complaint often heard, they can grill but not really very well. Most pellet cookers I've seen attempt to bring the heat from the burn pot directly to the grate surface by direct exposure through the deflector plates. Unfortunately with a fire that's only about 4" in diameter, that's a tough task. Typically you end up with a hot spot which quickly tapers off the further you move away from that spot. In other words an inconsistent heating surface which requires you to move your food around to achieve an even finish.
The folks at Smoke Daddy (www.smokedaddyinc.com) have also taken on this challenge and introduced another rather clever accessory that I recently tested. It simply turns a pellet cooker into a dandy grilling machine. They call it the Sear Daddy Universal Pellet Grill Searing Station. We'll just refer to it as the Sear Daddy.
The Sear Daddy is simply a large 19" by 19" square funnel shaped piece of sheet metal that tapers down 6" to a 6" wide opening at the bottom. You begin by removing your heat and grease deflector plates exposing your burn pot. The accessory then sits down on top of the burn pot holder, and depending on your cooker, it wedges up against the nearest wall or sits on the top lip. Obviously this requires a rather good sized cooker that can accommodate this large an accessory, In my case it fit almost perfectly. If I had maybe another 1/4" of height it would have been like a glove.....
Note the studs welded to either side, those hold the flavorizer bars you drop in place next.....
Those act to channel the heat and when heated themselves cause the grease drippings to vaporize back into your food as flavor, similar to the way Weber does in their cookers. They also act as holders for a bag of lava rocks they provide....
Now I made the mistake of opening the bag and just dumping the rocks onto the top of the accessory. Unfortunately there were a lot of tiny little lava rocks in the blend and those immediately found there way down into my burn pot. I had to carefully lift the whole accessory up and clean out the pot. I decided to give the whole thing a good shake over a garbage can to get rid of any further tiny ones to avoid having them fall through during cooking. Obviously if you ever owned an old style propane grill, the lava rocks are there as a heat sink helping to spread the heat load, as well as acting as grease absorbents. My biggest fear was grease making it's way directly into the burn pot. Luckily that never occurred!
I was a little surprised they did not supply any sort of grate to finish off the build. No matter, I own a ton of grates, so I chose to use some of my Grill Grates that normally reside in my gasser for the same purpose. They ended up bridging perfectly over the top of the lava rocks....
As you can see I could have easily fit two more into the grill space. In fact this device gave me half the amount of space I normally have for cooking on my lower rack, plenty to do a family sized meal. As a test cook I grabbed a couple of Cowboy Steaks (bone-in ribeyes), some home made brats and boudain sausages. Cooked the steaks first and while they were resting I heated up the sausages....
I got out my infrared thermo gun and temp'd the middle of the grates directly above the burn pot right at about 650-680*. The perimeters fell off gradually to between 550-600*. Unfortunately when the lid was open (which was most of the time) the temps fell quite a bit. It was 40ish outside with a nippy little north wind which made matters worse.
Regardless this thing worked and worked well, like a true searing station. With the other two grill grates mounted I could have cooked the entire meal in about 12 minutes. It took exactly 10 minutes to get the steaks up to about 125* IT and perfectly seared, with another 10 minutes to do the sausages as seen above. If you had the Sear Daddy installed in your grill, came home and fired up the pellet cooker, you could be eating a well grilled meal in about 35 minutes, not bad ! It was actually advantageous to have the hotter and cooler zones to allow for even cooking at the edges and a hot sear in the middle.
I give the Sear Daddy high marks for turning my pellet cooker into a pellet griller. Paired with the Heavy D, which makes it a true pellet smoker, I now have the versatility of cooking just about anything from low and slow to fast and hot, with set and forget convenience.
So what are the PROS?
- Turns almost any large pellet cooker into a true pellet griller.
- Achieves high heat at the grate level over the entire surface area between 600-700* in most cases.
- Large 19" x 19" grilling surface, can accommodate a variety of grates.
- Kept grease from running down into the burn pot through absorption and vaporizing.
- Clean up was therefore rather easy.
And what are the CONS?
- Setup is simple but requires tear down of the divertor plates and the mounting of this device. I can achieve similar sear temps in my gasser with Grill Grates without all the hassle.
- Lava rocks. They do what they say but if you remember the days when they were popular they eventually get rather nasty and have to be replaced.
- Storing and breaking down such a large device requires some extra room. Best to leave the lava rocks in place but if that's not possible then add one more step removing and re-installing them.
- Price. They want $99 plus tax. I did see an intro discount for first time buyers however.
All in all I'm very pleased with both Smoke Daddy accessories and would recommend giving one or both a try if you're fed up with light smoke and don't have other options to quick sear a steak. Here are a few take away shots of the food my Sear Daddy produced in about 20 minutes of grill time....Troutman is out !!!
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