Smoking and Grilling

In the NorthEast it is finally time to turn off the furnaces and stoves, and move to the great outdoors. It is time to early buy pellets for next year, clean the stove and furnaces mentioned above, unplug them (to protect in the many thunderstorms we have here), and I put a box of baking soda inside each to help with condensation control.
Then it's time to pull out my grill!
History of grilling- according to yours truly~
Aaahhh, there is nothing like the smell of meat on the grill! What type of grill do I use? A wood pellet grill, of course! When we began in the 1990's I had a Whitfield pellet grill. It worked pretty well, but they were discontinuing them. Rats! So we picked up Reliant Grills. They were DC and portable (somewhat- they were still a pretty good size, but you could plug them in to your car.) Then they reorganized and dropped their grills. All this time a family in Oregon was smoking up a storm. Traeger. We picked them up. Soon they were selling the smokers under the Smith and Wesson name.

Louisiana Grills
The newest player in the grill game is Louisiana Grills. Ironically, they were bought by a Canadian company. "Would ya'll like to have a barbecue, eh?" So far I am pretty impressed with the company. Very nice people, a solid and varied product line. Their grills SEAR, BAKE, BARBECUE, SMOKE, ROAST AND GRILL. The offer smokers, a line of grills that do it all from searing steaks to slow smoking a turkey, and outdoor kitchens and grill drop-ins for your own setup.
Pellet Flavors
I think my favorite meal made on my pellet grill would have to be pork loin smoked with apple flavored pellets. Big juicy burgers done with onion pellets are a close runner up. A advantage to cooking with your wood pellet grill is that you have many choices of different wood pellets like hickory, ash, alder, and mesquite, but they flavor them with other flavors like onion, garlic, and they even have Jack Daniels induced pellets! The ones out of my stove supply work just fine too!
How do they work?
A pellet grill actually has pretty much the same components that your stove or pellet furnace has. The auger feeds the pellets from the attached hopper. They have ignitors to start the fire, and the variable heat setting to adjust your cooking temperature. The only thing they don't have is a fan to blow the heat off of the grill- that wouldn't make much sense after all... There is a combustion air source so that you have a nice crisp and controllable flame inside. As with your pellet stove the precise air to fuel ratio control gives you a constant convective heat source to evenly cook your food. No hot spots!

Maintenance
Everyone is a little different in this department. Regardless of fuel type there are people who meticulously go through their grill to clean up the grease, and polish the grates. There are also those who clean it weekly, monthly, quarterly, or once a year. This grill is no different. Your biggest mess is what you put on the grill and what it drops in. They do have a nice plate that catches the drippings and directs them to an easily removed grease container. I do cover my plate with tin foil to help make cleanup easier. But to each his own!
Price?
There is a huge grill market out there. Cheapo Depot and the like have grills for $100. But they also have top of the line grills at patio stores, stove shops, et al that range up to $10,000-$15,000 outdoor kitchens. Pellet grills are not cheap, but they are worth every penny! They generally start around $600 and up. Louisiana Grills also makes the outdoor kitchen grill setups that range toward the higher end.
Easy to use!
Anyone can use a pellet grill. The plate that catches the grease also prevents direct fire contact. No nasty flare ups, or charred food. I have a very hard time overcooking anything on my pellet grill. It does a great job grilling steaks and chicken, too. People say that a turkey on the grill is divine, and that it is a great way to do summer baking although I haven't tried it yet. I better get grilling!