Remember when a good brisket was all about the smoke and not the gadgets?

A few years back, I dropped about $400 on a fancy pellet grill with a digital controller. I thought it would make everything easier. Honestly, it just made the meat taste flat, like it was steamed instead of smoked. I went back to my old offset smoker after two cooks. Has anyone else tried a pellet grill and felt let down by the flavor?

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3 Comments

verar216mo ago

Yeah, it's the lack of a real fire. Those pellets burn too clean and steady. You need the ups and downs of a wood fire, where the smoke changes as the logs catch and burn down. That's what builds the complex flavor, not just a constant thin blue smoke.

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brooke_hernandez6mo ago

My uncle's old smoker used to make the best brisket in Texas.

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miakelly6mo ago

My uncle's smoker was basically a rusty oil drum, and that thing was a flavor machine. I swear half the taste came from the twenty years of grease caked inside it. New gear just can't build up that kind of history, lol.

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