British BBQ Society Forums

Got a mate that wants to smoke but through gas / electric rather than charcoal, any suggestions on what to buy?

Need to be a little more specific, you can smoke on any gas BBQ with some wood chips and foil.

Ok so he wants a decent size that he can do direct and indirect on, I did pulled pork last year and he loved it so wants tp be able to do things like. I have explained that it won't taste the same without charcoal but he wants to go for ease and control.

Thx on advance

Get him to look at a Fast Eddy. I don't know what his financial means are but you pay for what you get ? http://www.cookshack.com/

Regards

Eddie

Not knowing a budget it's hard to recommend an exact solution. If the budget is high enough an electric pellet fired grill would be the best option (as suggested by Al above), excellent control on temperature and still get that smoky flavour many people struggle to get with a gas fired grill, personally I have only poked at a Traeger which I understand are a little difficult to source in the UK right now (I'm sure someone will point it out if I'm wrong) which was a good easy to control unit, I just had a quick search and Google found the below

http://www.louisiana-grills.co.uk/

Seems to have a good selection from £750, no idea on quality of product but there are enough people on here so someone is bound to have experience of them. It looks like a unit that will both smoke and grill so should suit all occasions

If budget doesn't stretch to that much then Planet Barbecue have a good selection of gas units to suit all budgets but be careful you do get what you pay for.

Cheers guys I've passed on the info, mind you I'm liking the Louisiana myself has anyone used them?

As one of the pellet grill users here, I thought I would speak up.

Haven't used the Lousiana Grill, but it is the same basic design as the Traeger, which is what I, and a couple of other people here use.

I believe that Traeger is no longer represented by a distributer in the UK (someone will correct me if I am wrong), but their old distributer is now importing Green Mountain Grills.

I have used neither the Lousiana or GMG pellet grill, so don't feel I can give a recommendation. However, I have looked into both of them previously (on the web), and I believe the GMG is the better spec'd, and is cheaper too.

From the little information available on the web about the Louisiana, it appears that its controller is a timed mechanism with the various settings calculated to give you the required "low", "medium" and "high" settings. In this it is like the original Traeger - this works well most of the time, but because there is no feedback from a thermal probe, extreme weather (either hot or cold) will affect the grill temperature - i.e. here in the middle of winter, my Traeger is currently running quite cool.

The GMG has a more sophisticated controller, which has both a grill temperature probe and a meat probe. The former is used to adjust the feed of the pellets to keep the temperature on target. It also has a low-pellet alarm, which warns you when your fuel is running low. That would have saved my bacon a couple of times! The meat probe doesn't affect anything, but it does display on the controller which is nice.

An GMG optional extra is a remote controller, which means you can monitor and adjust your grill from the warmth of your home.

As I say, this is not a recommendation, but only to make you aware of the choices. I was well tempted by the GMG, but decided to pimp my Traeger instead, and add my own control mechanisms.

Chris__M wrote:here in the middle of winter, my Traeger is currently running quite cool.

Didn't want to over complicate my last posting (which was long enough!), but thought I would comment further on the above.

I recently bought a fitted blanket cover for the Traeger, and this has really helped with keeping the temperatare on target. Before I got it, there were some (cold) days where the Traeger was almost unusable on the Low setting.

I LOVE my GMG Daniel Boone. Tidy, easy to use , fast, responsive temperature control [both up and down], economic, transportable. This is the v.f.m. pellet cooker capable of beating the big boys at competition.

joker smoker wrote:I LOVE my GMG Daniel Boone. Tidy, easy to use , fast, responsive temperature control [both up and down], economic, transportable. This is the v.f.m. pellet cooker capable of beating the big boys at competition.

Free BBQ's are always the best