How To Use a Pellet Grill

Pellet grills have become increasingly popular with both beginners and seasoned grilling enthusiasts. Their user-friendly qualities and precise temperature control make them a versatile tool that can excel in many cooking styles, including smoking, grilling, roasting, baking and more. Whether you are thinking about buying your first pellet grill, or you are buying the last pellet grill you’ll ever own, you want to make sure you get the most out of your new pellet grill. That’s why we’re taking a deep dive into how to use pellet grills, so let’s get into it:

Understanding Your Pellet Grill

The first step to using your equipment better, is a better understanding of your equipment. Pellet grills share some common ground with other grills, but they are also very different. To better understand these differences, let’s first look at the parts of a pellet grill.

Pellet grills are made up of these main active parts: 

• Pellet Hopper - Stores pellets until more heat is needed.
• Auger– Transfers pellets from the hopper to the firepot · Firepot– Area where the fire is contained.
• Igniter – Ignites the pellets at startup.
• Fan – Provides airflow within the cooking chamber to keep the fire going and provide airflow.
• Thermocouple – Probe inside the cooking chamber that sends temperature information to the controller.
• Controller – Device that uses temperature inside cooking chamber to determine pellet feed rate to keep the fire burning at a designated setpoint. 
• Heat deffuser – Diffuses heat evenly and guides airflow around the cooking chamber. In a Yoder Smokers pellet grill, the heat deflector is also the drip tray.
• Drip tray – Collects juices as fat renders out of food and directs them to a drip pan or bucket, often under the grill.
• Grates – Location where food is placed during cooking. 

At its most basic, pellets grills work by storing fuel (In this case, wood pellets) in the hopper, the auger feeds pellets to the firepot, and the pellets are then lit by the igniter. Once ignited, the fan helps evenly spread heat and smoke while the thermocouple and controller work together to determine the grill’s current temperature, then apply a pellet feed rate to maintain the desired temperature.

If you are looking for a simpler explanation. A pellet grill is a convection oven that uses compressed wood pellets to produce heat and smoke, which is then circulated throughout the grill to cook and flavor food.

One of the big advantages of pellet grills is how their precise temperature control abilities make the entire cooking process easier. You are no longer bound to the grill to monitor fuel and fire over long cooks since the fire is maintained for you.

While the grill itself will help you regulate the temperature, you are still using wood, so you can further adjust the taste of your cook by using different pellet flavors.

Common pellet flavors include:

• Oak: High heat, less ash, and a mild smoke — great for longer smokes and larger proteins such as brisket
• Hickory: Bold smoke flavor — ideal for dishes that benefit from a stronger smoke aroma and smoke such as pork shoulders, beef, and chicken.
• Mesquite: Intense, earthy, flavor — best for meats that are grilled quickly on high heat, as mesquite burns quickly.
• Cherry: Sweet, softer smoke levels — versatile, good all-around wood.
• Apple: Mild, lightly pleasant smoke — good for vegetables and meats that could be overpowered by more intense wood, like fish, certain chicken preparations, and some pork cuts.

As you can see, your choice in pellets does matter. Try to always use a quality pellet that does not include any oils or chemicals. There are more details on how pellets are made, their efficiency as a heat source, and the intricacies of how pellet grills work in our previous blog post What Is A Pellet Grill. Now, let’s move on to how you work with your grill.

Getting Your Grill Operational — and Keeping It That Way

We can break this up into two sections: first use after initial assembly and seasoning your grill for continued performance.

First and foremost, we cannot emphasize enough that you read the manufacturer’s instructions or manual thoroughly, as every model is a bit different. The specific instructions for assembly should be there, and the process will vary by model, however it generally involves attaching a stand with legs or wheels and setting up the grates, along with filling the hopper and assembling other components. Make sure all screws are secure and the grill feels tight and does not wobble. Since a pellet grill operates with a live fire, this is as much of a safety issue as a performance issue.

After confirming the components are all properly installed, you can get your grill ready for its first use. To do so, you’ll fill the hopper with pellets before powering on the grill at a low temperature. Take a moment to monitor your grill, let it sit and burn at this lower temp until you feel comfortable moving on to the next step. This will allow you to catch anything isn’t functioning properly.

Now onto the seasoning

This is important to do before you attempt any cooking, but you’ll also want to do it occasionally during the life of your grill.

For the initial seasoning of the grates, there are two purposes:

1) Remove manufacturing and transportation oils, dust, etc., and

2) Applying a coating of food-safe oil onto the grates for rust prevention and keeping food from sticking to the grates.

The first seasoning will require a few additional steps. You’ll want to wash the grates with soap and water to remove dust and residue, after which you’ll run the grill at between 350°F to 400°F for at least one hour. Make sure all the grates and shelves are in the grill for this — this process dries the grates, burns off the remaining manufacturing grease and gets the grill to a baseline cook-ready state.

After that, give the grates a light coating with a neutral, high smoke point oil such as avocado oil. This can be done while the grill is hot by using high heat gloves and a pair of tongs, or you can coat your grates after allowing your grill to cool down. If you coated your grates while cool, you’ll (again) turn the grill on to about 350°F to 400°F. Run it for 45 minutes to an hour, and your grill is now ready to go!

One last note: For your first cooking session seasoning a new grill, the standard recommendation is to smoke a high-fat, high-moisture protein — pork shoulder, for example — because that will help further season the interior. This isn’t an absolute must, but if you can and that’s up your alley, it’s another good step to setting your grill up for maximum longevity. 

Operating Your Grill After the First Seasoning

The main details are filling the hopper with your wood pellet of choice, switching it on, and setting your temperature. The digital thermostat on a modern pellet grill makes this easy. The preheating time will vary by model.

Some pellet grills will have an integrated food probe; if yours does, the proper usage is to insert it into the thickest part of the meat while avoiding connective tissue, fat, and bone. Ideally, you’ll want to prepare the meat so that all parts of it are relatively even in thickness. This principle applies regardless of grill type or cooking method and is why, for example, spatchcocking a chicken is such a revered method of preparation. You’ll see this principle play out all over when observing experienced chefs; specialized yakitori restaurants will measure out their chicken pieces to the gram, experts advocate for shish kebabs with only one ingredient of even size per skewer, and roasted vegetables’ doneness can be inconsistent if you mix size and type in one pan.

In some pellet grill models with a combined food probe, you can even set your desired internal temperature and, if that comes with a phone app, you can set an alarm to notify you when your food is close to being done. Remember that whatever internal temperature you’re aiming for, you want to remove your food from the heat — particularly for meats — before it reaches the desired internal temperature since food continues to cook after being removed from the grill. Allowing proteins such as fish, chicken, pork, or beef to cook beyond the desired temperature means it could become overcooked and dry, less tender, and less flavorful. Keep that in mind!

Also, a pellet grill allows you to easily adjust your target temperature during cooking. For example, you might be smoking meat — a low-temperature cooking method — and decide that everything is cooking too fast, so you can lower the temperature even further by simply setting a new cooking temperature. On the other hand, for searing and grilling of less fatty, high-collagen meats like steaks, you’ll want to go way higher for the temperature, which is just another turn of the dial. A pellet grill also allows you to use both methods in the same cook. You can easily smoke a larger steak prior to searing it by beginning with a lower temperature, then raising the temperature for searing and then moving your steaks over the heat source. This is called a reverse sear. If you would like to go more in-depth on different cooking methods, we have a handy guide for you here.

 A Few More Tips, Tricks, and Cooking Truths

Along with the tips we just mentioned, here are some other thoughts from the science of cooking: 

Flare-ups (or, More Accurately, Preventing Them)

This is tricky sometimes because fat is flavor, but fat is also the culprit when your grill has a flare-up. Depending on the cut of meat and how you’re cooking it, you may want to trim excess fat off prior to cooking.

If your meat is on the fattier side, that likely (but not always!) means it’s a cut that needs that fat and should be cooked accordingly. So, in this case, how to prevent flare-ups without ruining the meat by taking off all the fat? Enter indirect heat.

On a pellet grill, a heat diffuser sits between the fire and the grate to assist with indirect heat and smoking. This can also be achieved by moving your food as far away from the heat of the flame. Just be careful not to place your food directly in front of your chimney or over the edge of your heat diffuser or you will end up with burned edges from the increased contact with more intense heat. We recommend smoking in the center of the upper rack if you have one.

Enhancing Smokiness

For starters, dispelling a myth: Yes, it is possible for food to be too smoky. Done wrong, smoke can become bitter and overpower the flavor of your food as well as give you indigestion.

To impart a pleasant, flavorful smokiness, it’s all about low temperatures over a long cook time. Throughout this type of cook, you will want to see a light blue to clear smoke. This renders the fat gently and slowly and keeps everything moist and flavorful with a hint of smoke.

Stronger pellets like hickory or mesquite tend to suit higher fat pork and red meats better, while more delicate meats like poultry and fish are best complemented with cherry or apple wood. This is a fun detail to experiment with as you gain more experience with your grill.

Foil and Water Pans

Placing an aluminum foil pan under your food can catch drippings, helping to avoid the flare-ups while also allowing you to keep that valuable fat for future use. Just remember that if your meat is sitting in a pan, this can disrupt the airflow on the meat and result in less smoke flavor and/or longer cooking times.

A water pan can help keep the cooking chamber interior moist. In doing so, it can benefit low-and-slow smoking to keep the meat from drying out over longer periods. While pellet grills inherently have more moisture than others, this is a move that comes down to personal preference; others might spray their cut every so often with a spritz of apple cider or another liquid. Once again, this comes down to personal preference. The ATBBQ Team never uses water pans or spritzing when cooking on pellet grills and we’ve had no complaints among our coworkers, friends, and family.

Your Job Isn’t Done Just Because You’ve Taken Meat Off the Heat

Along with what we mentioned above about cooking your meats until just before they hit your desired temperature, there are a few other details for how to get the perfect results by what you do after taking them off the heat.

This has become more widely known in recent years, but a crucial step for both seared steaks and longer-smoked meats is to let them rest after cooking.

If you cut into meat directly after taking it off the grill, it will become dryer. That’s because the rest period allows the juices to redistribute throughout the cut. This means a moister, more flavorful product.

The amount of time to rest depends on the type of meat, plus the cut and cooking method. A steak, for example, should be good after resting under a foil covering for around 10 minutes — a larger cut that’s cooked lower and slower, like a pork shoulder, could use between 30 minutes to an hour. Something like a beef brisket should rest for at least an hour and could even rest for closer to three hours.

Unrelated to the actual food, but we also recommend following a thorough grill shutdown process by doing a cleaning burn and cleaning the grates while they are still hot. We have more information on cleaning your pellet grill on this post.

Pellet grills are a fantastic addition to the grill enthusiast’s repertoire. Check out some recipes for chicken breasts, vegetables, and steaks if you’d like more inspiration!

In our opinion, there are fewer things more delightful than cooking — but eating might be one of them. Pellet grills make both an absolute joy!

Happy Grilling!