Occasionally we stumble across “game changing” camping gear. This is gear that offers vast improvements to the fundamental RV experience with few real downsides. This has been the case with our Traeger portable pellet smoker grills. Eating is fundamental, and with these grills we have been eatin’ good (if you’ll pardon the expression).
For the past several weeks, we have been smoking and grilling just about every type of food we can fit onto these things (except chocolate bars — we have not yet smoked chocolate bars). We’ve smoked hamburgers, steaks, a pork shoulder, turkey breast, chicken tenders, catfish, salmon, grouper, shrimp, vegetable kebobs, red peppers, onions, portabello mushrooms, frozen pizzas (seriously) and even some frozen tamales. Results have ranged from merely “good” to “very good” to “Wow! This is literally the best steak we’ve ever made at home!”
We have two models — the midsize Tailgater and the more compact Ranger. Both seem to cook and smoke food with equal effectiveness.
The larger Tailgater offers twice the cooking area, so we’ve been leaving it fully assembled and using it as our primary home grill. When traveling with our Airstream, we have brought along the Ranger. Its boxy rectangular shape seems more conducive to travel, although the two units weigh about the same. They are heavy grills (around 60 pounds each) and Traeger recommends that lifting them is a two person job. Actually I can lift one myself, but I wouldn’t want to carry it far.
What makes these electric grills so great?
They use real hardwood pellets to smoke meat and vegetables. The food is cooked with indirect heat, and is infused with smoke as the pellets burn. The indirect heat reduces your odds of burning the food. Flameups are rarely an issue so you don’t need to worry about burning the food. Meanwhile, the smoke adds a tremendous amount of flavor.
Each unit has a digital thermostat and interface. You simply set the temperature, push the ignite button, and wait. In our experience, you’ll get the best results usually with a “low and slow” approach. We often set the cooking temp to around 225 degrees and cook meat for an hour.
The grills take a few minutes to come up to temperature, and consumer about 160W of electricity during that process. Then they use about 50W of electricity once they are up to temperature. This is a surprisingly modest power draw. We have been powering the grills using our small lithium power stations.
You can choose from a variety of different wood pellets for flavor. My personal favorite is mesquite, but we have also used hickory and apple with great results. We also have a couple of blends — there’s a “big game” blend, and a “premium” blend that merges hickory with cherry. They’ve all been good, but I keep coming back to the mesquite.
I’ve never been one to helicopter over a smoker all day long. Sure, I like having a nice BBQ sandwich or hamburger, but grilling has simply never been a passion or hobby of mine. It always seemed like a lot of work! I know that some guys love to spend all day tending to their smoked meat. While I respect the passion, I’ve simply never taken the time to master the craft, and thus had little interest in smoking meat.
This has all changed with these Traeger grills. They have allowed me to significantly step up my grilling game with push button ease. Quite simply the resulting flavor has been fantastic. We have been getting much better results from these pellet smoker grills than we ever got with propane or charcoal.
Once you start using a Traeger, you’ll find yourself wanting to smoke food daily. The food is consistently delicious and it’s easy to get great results.