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  1. #37

    Re: The Food Thread/Cooking, BBQ'ing, Drinking, Eating, Dining Etc.

    HELP!

    I need a new grill. I am sick of buying bullshit big box store grills and watching them rust out in 2 years. Anyone have a suggestion or strong opinion on this? I'm not afraid to shell out a little more for a quality rig. This is propane but I'm open to suggestions.





  2. #38
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
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    Frederick, MD
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    The Food Thread/Cooking, BBQ'ing, Drinking, Eating, Dining Etc.

    Quote Originally Posted by BustOfPallas View Post
    HELP!

    I need a new grill. I am sick of buying bullshit big box store grills and watching them rust out in 2 years. Anyone have a suggestion or strong opinion on this? I'm not afraid to shell out a little more for a quality rig. This is propane but I'm open to suggestions.
    Literally JUST bought a new grill last Friday.

    I did a lot of research between charcoal, propane, and pellet grills.

    I can look up some brands in consumer reports for you if you have an idea of what you are thinking about.

    For propane/gas - the Weber Genesis seems to be rated well on Consumer Reports.

    I did a side by side comparison of the Big Green Egg and the Kamado Joe and they’re about even. Nice thing about the BGE is their lifetime warranty. Hardly any other grill company has a warranty like that. However, you have to buy special charcoal “briquettes” for kamado style grills.

    After a lot of research, I opted to buy a Green Mountain Grill pellet grill. Specifically, the Daniel Boone Prime model.

    Traeger is another popular brand of pellet grill that is well received and has good reviews.

    First, why did I choose pellet over charcoal and propane.

    Pellets are compressed wood sawdust. So, you are actually cooking with real wood and can get really nice wood smoke flavoring into what you’re cooking.

    When pellets burn, it just creates dust which you can easily vacuum out of the grill (super easy cleanup).

    Pellets aren’t as much of a risk as propane can be.

    Second, I don’t think of myself as an inherently lazy person, but I do admit that sometimes the idea of going out and lighting coals up with lighter fluid, matches, and then waiting for them to heat up, and then watching the coals so they don’t go out...making sure the food doesn’t burn because the grill got too hot...I admit I’ve opted to just cook in my kitchen. :)

    I think the pellet grill gives you a lot of control and options. You can do the low and slow smoke for things like pulled pork, brisket, etc. You can use a pizza stone in it and do pizza or bake bread in a Dutch oven. You can sustain temps around 150-160 degrees, which is good for doing a “cold smoke” on fish or cheese. You can also raise that thing up to a solid 550-600 degrees for searing, roasting, etc. I really liked the versatility.

    The pellet grills come with a WiFi option and an app that allows you to remotely start the grill up. Basically, open your app, pick what temp you want, and the grill pushes the correct amount of pellets into the grill and fires them up and keeps the pellets coming until the temp his hit and then it only pushes enough pellets in to maintain that temp. These WiFi systems also have meat temp options so if you’re doing a brisket or something and you want to get the meat up to a certain temp and then crank the grill temp up to sear it, you can program that into your app and it’s done.

    Why I chose Green Mountain Grill

    There are three different pellet grill brands that seem to be rated very well - Yoder, Traeger, and Green Mt Grill. Yoder’s are stupid expensive...like $2,000-2,500. Traegers come in around $800-1,500. Green Mountain Grills come in around $600-1,200.

    Pittboss makes a pellet grill that is cheaper, but it has lots of poor reviews and I polled several Facebook BBQ groups. My neighbor is also a competition BBQ champ for his brisket, so I talked to him about it as well. Would not recommend Pittboss.

    I chose GMG for three primary reasons.

    1) I have a local dealer in Frederick, MD (Mason Dixon BBQ) so, if anything goes wrong, I can talk directly to them rather than dealing with customer service call centers, etc. (Traeger has notoriously bad customer service)

    2) GMG has a solid front to back 3-yr warranty and the primary complaint they get is paint fading after being used...but my research suggests this is a thing with any grill. Traeger has a similar warranty, but one thing I did find out is that if you use a non-Traeger brand of pellets in a Traeger grill, that automatically voids the warranty. I didn’t like that.

    3) and this is dumb...but I really felt like the fit and finish of GMG was better than Traeger. Examples: GMG has a standard front shelf/table for plates, cutting boards, etc. You have to buy that upgrade for Traeger. GMG has a side shelf/table with built in hooks for utensils - have to buy that for Traeger. GMG has a bottom shelf between the legs - Traeger doesn’t. Last, I really liked the wheels and casters on the GMG. They’re super high quality and I’ve rolled this thing over grass, dirt, gravel, etc.

    So, I went for the GMG Daniel Boone Prime model with the WiFi.

    All told, I got the grill, a nice heavy duty cover, two 20lb bags of pellets, a secondary upper grill shelf, and a pellet grill cook book for about $780. Took me about 30 min to assemble.






    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Disclaimer: The content posted is of my own opinion.





  3. #39

    Re: The Food Thread/Cooking, BBQ'ing, Drinking, Eating, Dining Etc.

    Quote Originally Posted by wickedsolo View Post
    Literally JUST bought a new grill last Friday.

    I did a lot of research between charcoal, propane, and pellet grills.

    I can look up some brands in consumer reports for you if you have an idea of what you are thinking about.

    For propane/gas - the Weber Genesis seems to be rated well on Consumer Reports.

    I did a side by side comparison of the Big Green Egg and the Kamado Joe and they’re about even. Nice thing about the BGE is their lifetime warranty. Hardly any other grill company has a warranty like that. However, you have to buy special charcoal “briquettes” for kamado style grills.

    After a lot of research, I opted to buy a Green Mountain Grill pellet grill. Specifically, the Daniel Boone Prime model.

    Traeger is another popular brand of pellet grill that is well received and has good reviews.

    First, why did I choose pellet over charcoal and propane.

    Pellets are compressed wood sawdust. So, you are actually cooking with real wood and can get really nice wood smoke flavoring into what you’re cooking.

    When pellets burn, it just creates dust which you can easily vacuum out of the grill (super easy cleanup).

    Pellets aren’t as much of a risk as propane can be.

    Second, I don’t think of myself as an inherently lazy person, but I do admit that sometimes the idea of going out and lighting coals up with lighter fluid, matches, and then waiting for them to heat up, and then watching the coals so they don’t go out...making sure the food doesn’t burn because the grill got too hot...I admit I’ve opted to just cook in my kitchen. :)

    I think the pellet grill gives you a lot of control and options. You can do the low and slow smoke for things like pulled pork, brisket, etc. You can use a pizza stone in it and do pizza or bake bread in a Dutch oven. You can sustain temps around 150-160 degrees, which is good for doing a “cold smoke” on fish or cheese. You can also raise that thing up to a solid 550-600 degrees for searing, roasting, etc. I really liked the versatility.

    The pellet grills come with a WiFi option and an app that allows you to remotely start the grill up. Basically, open your app, pick what temp you want, and the grill pushes the correct amount of pellets into the grill and fires them up and keeps the pellets coming until the temp his hit and then it only pushes enough pellets in to maintain that temp. These WiFi systems also have meat temp options so if you’re doing a brisket or something and you want to get the meat up to a certain temp and then crank the grill temp up to sear it, you can program that into your app and it’s done.

    Why I chose Green Mountain Grill

    There are three different pellet grill brands that seem to be rated very well - Yoder, Traeger, and Green Mt Grill. Yoder’s are stupid expensive...like $2,000-2,500. Traegers come in around $800-1,500. Green Mountain Grills come in around $600-1,200.

    Pittboss makes a pellet grill that is cheaper, but it has lots of poor reviews and I polled several Facebook BBQ groups. My neighbor is also a competition BBQ champ for his brisket, so I talked to him about it as well. Would not recommend Pittboss.

    I chose GMG for three primary reasons.

    1) I have a local dealer in Frederick, MD (Mason Dixon BBQ) so, if anything goes wrong, I can talk directly to them rather than dealing with customer service call centers, etc. (Traeger has notoriously bad customer service)

    2) GMG has a solid front to back 3-yr warranty and the primary complaint they get is paint fading after being used...but my research suggests this is a thing with any grill. Traeger has a similar warranty, but one thing I did find out is that if you use a non-Traeger brand of pellets in a Traeger grill, that automatically voids the warranty. I didn’t like that.

    3) and this is dumb...but I really felt like the fit and finish of GMG was better than Traeger. Examples: GMG has a standard front shelf/table for plates, cutting boards, etc. You have to buy that upgrade for Traeger. GMG has a side shelf/table with built in hooks for utensils - have to buy that for Traeger. GMG has a bottom shelf between the legs - Traeger doesn’t. Last, I really liked the wheels and casters on the GMG. They’re super high quality and I’ve rolled this thing over grass, dirt, gravel, etc.

    So, I went for the GMG Daniel Boone Prime model with the WiFi.

    All told, I got the grill, a nice heavy duty cover, two 20lb bags of pellets, a secondary upper grill shelf, and a pellet grill cook book for about $780. Took me about 30 min to assemble.






    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Interesting. Is the feed mechanism mechanical or electrical? The reason I ask is because the place I would be cooking is not close to an electric outlet.

    I use a pellet tray insert in my electric smoker rather than the bullshit builtin chip tray which is good only for making creosote. Those are just "flavor" pellets but they are wood pellets.





  4. #40
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
    Location
    Frederick, MD
    Posts
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    4

    Re: The Food Thread/Cooking, BBQ'ing, Drinking, Eating, Dining Etc.

    Quote Originally Posted by BustOfPallas View Post
    Interesting. Is the feed mechanism mechanical or electrical? The reason I ask is because the place I would be cooking is not close to an electric outlet.

    I use a pellet tray insert in my electric smoker rather than the bullshit builtin chip tray which is good only for making creosote. Those are just "flavor" pellets but they are wood pellets.
    It is electric.

    It’s 12v and comes with adapters for a battery connection, a standard 120v house outlet, or a car cigarette lighter power source.

    If you aren’t anywhere near an electrical outlet, I could understand why this wouldn’t be a good choice for you.

    The way the pellets move is you fill the hopper (box on left side) with pellets and there is an auger on the bottom that rotates and tunnels pellets into the grill.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Disclaimer: The content posted is of my own opinion.





  5. #41
    Join Date
    Mar 2015
    Location
    Pasadena, MD
    Posts
    12,189

    Re: The Food Thread/Cooking, BBQ'ing, Drinking, Eating, Dining Etc.

    Quote Originally Posted by wickedsolo View Post
    Literally JUST bought a new grill last Friday.

    I did a lot of research between charcoal, propane, and pellet grills.

    I can look up some brands in consumer reports for you if you have an idea of what you are thinking about.

    For propane/gas - the Weber Genesis seems to be rated well on Consumer Reports.

    I did a side by side comparison of the Big Green Egg and the Kamado Joe and they’re about even. Nice thing about the BGE is their lifetime warranty. Hardly any other grill company has a warranty like that. However, you have to buy special charcoal “briquettes” for kamado style grills.

    After a lot of research, I opted to buy a Green Mountain Grill pellet grill. Specifically, the Daniel Boone Prime model.

    Traeger is another popular brand of pellet grill that is well received and has good reviews.

    First, why did I choose pellet over charcoal and propane.

    Pellets are compressed wood sawdust. So, you are actually cooking with real wood and can get really nice wood smoke flavoring into what you’re cooking.

    When pellets burn, it just creates dust which you can easily vacuum out of the grill (super easy cleanup).

    Pellets aren’t as much of a risk as propane can be.

    Second, I don’t think of myself as an inherently lazy person, but I do admit that sometimes the idea of going out and lighting coals up with lighter fluid, matches, and then waiting for them to heat up, and then watching the coals so they don’t go out...making sure the food doesn’t burn because the grill got too hot...I admit I’ve opted to just cook in my kitchen. :)

    I think the pellet grill gives you a lot of control and options. You can do the low and slow smoke for things like pulled pork, brisket, etc. You can use a pizza stone in it and do pizza or bake bread in a Dutch oven. You can sustain temps around 150-160 degrees, which is good for doing a “cold smoke” on fish or cheese. You can also raise that thing up to a solid 550-600 degrees for searing, roasting, etc. I really liked the versatility.

    The pellet grills come with a WiFi option and an app that allows you to remotely start the grill up. Basically, open your app, pick what temp you want, and the grill pushes the correct amount of pellets into the grill and fires them up and keeps the pellets coming until the temp his hit and then it only pushes enough pellets in to maintain that temp. These WiFi systems also have meat temp options so if you’re doing a brisket or something and you want to get the meat up to a certain temp and then crank the grill temp up to sear it, you can program that into your app and it’s done.

    Why I chose Green Mountain Grill

    There are three different pellet grill brands that seem to be rated very well - Yoder, Traeger, and Green Mt Grill. Yoder’s are stupid expensive...like $2,000-2,500. Traegers come in around $800-1,500. Green Mountain Grills come in around $600-1,200.

    Pittboss makes a pellet grill that is cheaper, but it has lots of poor reviews and I polled several Facebook BBQ groups. My neighbor is also a competition BBQ champ for his brisket, so I talked to him about it as well. Would not recommend Pittboss.

    I chose GMG for three primary reasons.

    1) I have a local dealer in Frederick, MD (Mason Dixon BBQ) so, if anything goes wrong, I can talk directly to them rather than dealing with customer service call centers, etc. (Traeger has notoriously bad customer service)

    2) GMG has a solid front to back 3-yr warranty and the primary complaint they get is paint fading after being used...but my research suggests this is a thing with any grill. Traeger has a similar warranty, but one thing I did find out is that if you use a non-Traeger brand of pellets in a Traeger grill, that automatically voids the warranty. I didn’t like that.

    3) and this is dumb...but I really felt like the fit and finish of GMG was better than Traeger. Examples: GMG has a standard front shelf/table for plates, cutting boards, etc. You have to buy that upgrade for Traeger. GMG has a side shelf/table with built in hooks for utensils - have to buy that for Traeger. GMG has a bottom shelf between the legs - Traeger doesn’t. Last, I really liked the wheels and casters on the GMG. They’re super high quality and I’ve rolled this thing over grass, dirt, gravel, etc.

    So, I went for the GMG Daniel Boone Prime model with the WiFi.

    All told, I got the grill, a nice heavy duty cover, two 20lb bags of pellets, a secondary upper grill shelf, and a pellet grill cook book for about $780. Took me about 30 min to assemble.






    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    For propane, I will say I'm still rocking a 15 year old genesis my dad gave me. The bottom is rusting out a bit, but that's because the movers list a wheel when we moved, and I was lazy about replacing it so it was directly on the deck for a year or two.

    Sent from my LM-G820 using Tapatalk





  6. #42

    Re: The Food Thread/Cooking, BBQ'ing, Drinking, Eating, Dining Etc.

    I think I'm just going to get Weber for the propane grill and forget about it. I'm going to make a rub and prepare some ribs I bought last night and smoke them in my electric tomorrow. Haven't smoked in a while. It can be a fun thing to do and I am looking forward to it.





  7. #43
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
    Location
    Frederick, MD
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    4

    Re: The Food Thread/Cooking, BBQ'ing, Drinking, Eating, Dining Etc.

    Hardscaped patio getting installed this week. Really looking forward to getting that done. Then I'll have an actual space to grill.
    Disclaimer: The content posted is of my own opinion.





  8. #44

    Re: The Food Thread/Cooking, BBQ'ing, Drinking, Eating, Dining Etc.

    Quote Originally Posted by wickedsolo View Post
    Hardscaped patio getting installed this week. Really looking forward to getting that done. Then I'll have an actual space to grill.
    I would really like to replace our deck with a hardscape patio. It's about 10' x 12' and only about 4' above ground. Fine for when the wife and I are just sitting there, or with another couple. Anything more and it's way too small. Deck is worn and we have plenty of unused space where we could expand the amount of outdoor entertaining space we have. Unfortunately have other more pressing projects to pay for first.
    '





  9. #45
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
    Location
    Frederick, MD
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    Re: The Food Thread/Cooking, BBQ'ing, Drinking, Eating, Dining Etc.

    Quote Originally Posted by BPF2 View Post
    I would really like to replace our deck with a hardscape patio. It's about 10' x 12' and only about 4' above ground. Fine for when the wife and I are just sitting there, or with another couple. Anything more and it's way too small. Deck is worn and we have plenty of unused space where we could expand the amount of outdoor entertaining space we have. Unfortunately have other more pressing projects to pay for first.
    '
    The big reason we are going through with it at this time is because part of where the patio is going was horribly graded by the original owner. So, we get water seeping through the foundation into the basement right at that spot. We've addressed the gutters around this area and we have removed a lot of bushes/shrubs that were there. The gutters helped, but it's hard to really nip it in the bud when the grading is sloped right at the problem area.

    Putting in a patio will address the grading and the company is well aware of this problem area and has plans to make that the high point. So, everything should slope away.

    If this doesn't correct the water issue, then the final step for me would be to put in a sump pump and a french drain system in the basement...which happens to be my woodworking shop. So, we'll see. Fingers crossed this works.
    Disclaimer: The content posted is of my own opinion.





  10. #46

    Re: The Food Thread/Cooking, BBQ'ing, Drinking, Eating, Dining Etc.

    Since there is nothing going on in the news, I thought we could trade crab soup recipes...

    I don't really have a recipe I use but I got a hankering to make crab soup this weekend so I did a little reading and came up with my own.

    I started with a large yellow onion chopped and then added about 4 stalks of celery chopped and 2 large carrots split and chopped. I sweated the those in some oil oil with a little salt until the the onions started to get clear. I then added about 5 or 6 cloves of chopped garlic long enough to cook garlic. I then dumped in a couple bags of frozen vege mix containing string beans, lima beans, peas, more carrots, and corn. I added about a teaspoon of old bay and stirred that up to get the frozen veges a little thawed. I then added a 28 oz can of crushed tomatos and mixed that up and added a box of low sodium beef broth and another half of low sodium chicken broth a couple bay leaves, another teaspoon of old bay, a tablespoon of Worshtershire sauce, 1/2 teaspoon of pepper flakes and brought all that up to a boil and then let it simmer for 20 minutes. I added some water and almost a full mesh bag of chopped golden potatoes and brought it up to a boil again and then lowered the temp and added two 8 oz cans of crab meat, one lumb, one claw and let it simmer for another 20 minutes.

    It's pretty good but I think next time I'll add less crushed tomatoes and maybe add some real tomatoes. I also think I might saute the veges with butter next time instead of olive oil. Also maybe substitute chicken broth.

    Everyone is out of town so I'm eating crab soup for lunch and dinner every day since Sunday. I'm sure there are some good recipes on this forum and thought I'd throw this out to see what interesting things resulted from it.





  11. #47
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    Carroll County
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    1

    Re: The Food Thread/Cooking, BBQ'ing, Drinking, Eating, Dining Etc.

    Quote Originally Posted by BustOfPallas View Post
    Since there is nothing going on in the news, I thought we could trade crab soup recipes...

    I don't really have a recipe I use but I got a hankering to make crab soup this weekend so I did a little reading and came up with my own.

    I started with a large yellow onion chopped and then added about 4 stalks of celery chopped and 2 large carrots split and chopped. I sweated the those in some oil oil with a little salt until the the onions started to get clear. I then added about 5 or 6 cloves of chopped garlic long enough to cook garlic. I then dumped in a couple bags of frozen vege mix containing string beans, lima beans, peas, more carrots, and corn. I added about a teaspoon of old bay and stirred that up to get the frozen veges a little thawed. I then added a 28 oz can of crushed tomatos and mixed that up and added a box of low sodium beef broth and another half of low sodium chicken broth a couple bay leaves, another teaspoon of old bay, a tablespoon of Worshtershire sauce, 1/2 teaspoon of pepper flakes and brought all that up to a boil and then let it simmer for 20 minutes. I added some water and almost a full mesh bag of chopped golden potatoes and brought it up to a boil again and then lowered the temp and added two 8 oz cans of crab meat, one lumb, one claw and let it simmer for another 20 minutes.

    It's pretty good but I think next time I'll add less crushed tomatoes and maybe add some real tomatoes. I also think I might saute the veges with butter next time instead of olive oil. Also maybe substitute chicken broth.

    Everyone is out of town so I'm eating crab soup for lunch and dinner every day since Sunday. I'm sure there are some good recipes on this forum and thought I'd throw this out to see what interesting things resulted from it.
    That sound delicious to me. Have you ever made cream of crab soup?





  12. #48

    Re: The Food Thread/Cooking, BBQ'ing, Drinking, Eating, Dining Etc.

    Quote Originally Posted by CarrollCoRaven View Post
    That sound delicious to me. Have you ever made cream of crab soup?
    Have not made cream of crab. I'll have to check that out.





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