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Pellet grills, sometimes referred to as pellet smokers, are outdoor cookers that combine elements of charcoal smokers, gas grills, and kitchen ovens. Fueled by wood pellets, they can smoke, grill, braise, sear and bake using a electric control panel to automatically feed fuel pellets to the fire, regulate the grill's airflow, and maintain consistent cooking temperatures.
Pellet grills began in pellet stoves. During the 1973 oil crisis, an increased demand for affordable home heating spearheaded a push toward alternative heat sources, which would later include wood pellets. [1] Wood pellets were invented in the United States in the late 1970s. They are small, eraser-sized capsules made of compressed sawdust. [2] In the early 1980s, Jerry Whitfield (a Boeing aviation engineer from Washington) and Joe Traeger (who ran a family-owned heating company in Oregon) both began experimenting with pellet-burning stoves. [3] [4] Powered by electricity, these pellet stoves used a motor-driven auger to transfer a specific amount of pellets from the storage hopper to a fire pot. A fan assisted in combustion and circulated the warm air. [5]
The Traeger pellet grill was created by Joe Traeger in 1985, and it was granted a patent in 1986. Early Traeger Grills employed a three-position controller called an LMH controller that indicated settings for low, medium, and high heat. This controller was also used by many of the pellet grills that were first released after the Traeger patent expired. Each setting roughly corresponds to a temperature range that was attained using a fixed, predefined duty cycle. [6]
As a result of its patent, Traeger was the only manufacturer of pellet grills for twenty years. During that time, the company remained a small family-run business that distributed its pellet grills to a limited network of stores. After Traeger's patent expired in 2006, other pellet grill companies entered the market with similar technology. [7] Joe Traeger and his son Brian sold their rights to Traeger Grills to a Florida Venture Capitalist for $12.4 million. In 2014, the Florida firm sold Traeger Grills to the private equity firm Trilantic Capital Partners. In 2018, Joe and Brian Traeger were hired by Danson's, which owned several grill companies, including Louisiana Grills and Pit Boss Grills. In 2019, Louisiana Grills announced the hire by unveiling a new line of grills, the Founders Legacy line, and advertisements stated "brought to you proudly by Joe Traeger, the founder of the original pellet grill," and showed the "Traeger Barn" that had been used in many of Traeger's advertisements. The new owners sued the Traegers and Dansons for using the barn and promotions involving the Traegers. [8]
Pellet stoves and pellet grills both run on wood pellets but there are differences in the pellets they burn. In addition to hardwood, pellets used for home heating often contain softwood and biomass scrap, which could be harmful if ingested. [9] Pellet grills use food-grade pellets that are made entirely from hardwood, although some manufacturers use soybean oil or vegetable oil as a lubricant during production. [10]
Cooking with food-grade pellets produce a light smoky flavor. Wood pellet varieties include oak, maple, apple, alder, mesquite, cherry, hickory, and pecan. [11]
Many turn to pellet grills as an alternative to traditional smokers.[ citation needed ]
Some pellet grill manufacturers have implemented Wi-Fi-enabled controls that allow for remote monitoring of the grill. Pellet grill technology is being integrated into other cooking devices, such as traditional ceramic Kamado-style grills and pizza ovens.
Pellet grills use automated fuel and air delivery, and can maintain a user-selected temperature.
First, the desired temperature is programmed into the electronic control panel. A motor-driven auger then feeds a small amount of pellets from the hopper to the fire pot. Igniter rods light the pellets and prime the fire, raising the grill to an initial starting temperature of 140 °F (60 °C) to 180 °F (82 °C), depending on the manufacturer. Once the fire is ready, the desired temperature is achieved via a repeated duty cycle, which represents a segment of time when the auger is active and idle. A single duty cycle starts when the auger turns on and begins feeding pellets then continues through the period when it shuts off and remains idle. The duty cycle ends when the auger turns on again. Duty cycles are typically stated as a percentage that represents the amount of time the auger is running—an auger that's always on has a 100% duty cycle, while one that is on half the time has a 50% duty cycle. [12] Each temperature setting has a different duty cycle. However, the auger-on portion of the duty cycle remains constant. Lower temperatures have longer auger-off periods, while high temperatures have shorter periods.
Some brands have switched to fully digital control panels that, in addition to a LED display, use a one-touch interface. The sensor uses a feedback loop, it measures the grill temperature and sends the information to the controller, which initiates or halts the auger when the grill exceeds or falls below a specified threshold. [13]
Multi-position and digital controllers developed refined auger duty cycles. [14] It also keeps large amounts of pellets from pilling up in the fire pot.
When the desired temperature is set into a PID controller, the pellet grill ignites the pellets and begins an initial warm-up to a predetermined temperature. The PID controller fine-tunes the rate at which pellets are fed by learning how long and how much fuel it takes to raise the pellet grill's temperature under the current conditions. Using an advanced algorithm, the PID controller applies this data to calculate a duty cycle and adjusts the duty cycle as necessary until it reaches the programmed temperature. [15] These adjustments continue for hours, even after the programmed temperature has been met.
Smoking is the process of flavoring, browning, cooking, or preserving food by exposing it to smoke from burning or smoldering material, most often wood. Meat, fish, and lapsang souchong tea are often smoked.
A thermostat is a regulating device component which senses the temperature of a physical system and performs actions so that the system's temperature is maintained near a desired setpoint.
A barbecue grill or barbeque grill is a device that cooks food by applying heat from below. There are several varieties of grills, with most falling into one of three categories: gas-fueled, charcoal, or electric. There is debate over which method yields superior results.
Solid fuel refers to various forms of solid material that can be burnt to release energy, providing heat and light through the process of combustion. Solid fuels can be contrasted with liquid fuels and gaseous fuels. Common examples of solid fuels include wood, charcoal, peat, coal, hexamine fuel tablets, dry dung, wood pellets, corn, wheat, rice, rye, and other grains. Solid fuels are extensively used in rocketry as solid propellants. Solid fuels have been used throughout human history to create fire and solid fuel is still in widespread use throughout the world in the present day.
A stove or range is a device that generates heat inside or on top of the device, for local heating or cooking. Stoves can be powered with many fuels, such as electricity, natural gas, gasoline, wood, and coal.
Wood fuel is a fuel such as firewood, charcoal, chips, sheets, pellets, and sawdust. The particular form used depends upon factors such as source, quantity, quality and application. In many areas, wood is the most easily available form of fuel, requiring no tools in the case of picking up dead wood, or few tools, although as in any industry, specialized tools, such as skidders and hydraulic wood splitters, have been developed to mechanize production. Sawmill waste and construction industry by-products also include various forms of lumber tailings.
A kitchen stove, often called simply a stove or a cooker, is a kitchen appliance designed for the purpose of cooking food. Kitchen stoves rely on the application of direct heat for the cooking process and may also contain an oven, used for baking. "Cookstoves" are heated by burning wood or charcoal; "gas stoves" are heated by gas; and "electric stoves" by electricity. A stove with a built-in cooktop is also called a range.
Pellet fuels are a type of solid fuel made from compressed organic material. Pellets can be made from any one of five general categories of biomass: industrial waste and co-products, food waste, agricultural residues, energy crops, and untreated lumber. Wood pellets are the most common type of pellet fuel and are generally made from compacted sawdust and related industrial wastes from the milling of lumber, manufacture of wood products and furniture, and construction. Other industrial waste sources include empty fruit bunches, palm kernel shells, coconut shells, and tree tops and branches discarded during logging operations. So-called "black pellets" are made of biomass, refined to resemble hard coal and were developed to be used in existing coal-fired power plants. Pellets are categorized by their heating value, moisture and ash content, and dimensions. They can be used as fuels for power generation, commercial or residential heating, and cooking.
A pellet stove is a stove that burns compressed wood or biomass pellets to create a source of heat for residential and sometimes industrial spaces. By steadily feeding fuel from a storage container (hopper) into a burn pot area, it produces a constant flame that requires little to no physical adjustments. Today's central heating systems operated with wood pellets as a renewable energy source can reach an efficiency factor of more than 90%.
Renewable heat is an application of renewable energy referring to the generation of heat from renewable sources; for example, feeding radiators with water warmed by focused solar radiation rather than by a fossil fuel boiler. Renewable heat technologies include renewable biofuels, solar heating, geothermal heating, heat pumps and heat exchangers. Insulation is almost always an important factor in how renewable heating is implemented.
Biomass heating systems generate heat from biomass. The systems may use direct combustion, gasification, combined heat and power (CHP), anaerobic digestion or aerobic digestion to produce heat. Biomass heating may be fully automated or semi-automated they may be pellet-fired, or they may be combined heat and power systems.
A kamado is a traditional Japanese wood- or charcoal-fueled cook stove.
A wood-burning stove is a heating or cooking appliance capable of burning wood fuel, often called solid fuel, and wood-derived biomass fuel, such as sawdust bricks. Generally the appliance consists of a solid metal closed firebox, often lined by fire brick, and one or more air controls. The first wood-burning stove was patented in Strasbourg in 1557. This was two centuries before the Industrial Revolution, so iron was still prohibitively expensive. The first wood-burning stoves were high-end consumer items and only gradually became used widely.
Pellet Fuels Institute (PFI) is a North American trade organization that represents manufacturers, retailers and distributors of wood pellet fuel supplies and appliances. The PFI was formed in 1985 as the Fiber Fuels Institute.
Maine Energy Systems (MESys) was founded in summer 2008 by Les Otten, Dutch Dresser, and others to aid in the transition to alternative energy in the northeastern United States. The company delivers wood pellets in bulk and sells fully automated wood pellet boilers for hydronic heating. MESys has been involved in numerous academic studies, work with political groups concerned with the environmental and economic aspects of residential and light commercial heating, and works with American regulatory bodies concerned with the safety of heating appliances.
A clean-burning stove is a stove with reduced toxic and polluting emissions. The term refers to solid-fuel stoves such as wood-burning stoves for either domestic heating, domestic cooking or both. In the context of a cooking stove, especially in lower-income countries, such a stove is distinct from a clean-burning-fuel stove, which typically burns clean fuels such as ethanol, biogas, LPG, or kerosene. Studies into clean-burning cooking stoves in lower-income countries have shown that they reduce the emissions of dangerous particulates and carbon monoxide significantly, use less fuel than regular stoves, and result in fewer burn injuries. However, the emissions some supposedly clean-burning cookstoves produce are still much greater than safe limits, and in several studies in lower income countries they did not appear to be effective at reducing illnesses such as pneumonia induced by breathing polluted air, which may have many sources.
Pellet heating is a heating system in which wood pellets are combusted. Other pelletized fuels such as straw pellets are used occasionally. Today's central heating system which run on wood pellets as a renewable energy source are comparable in operation and maintenance of oil and gas heating systems.
A pellet boiler is a heating system that burns wood pellets. Pellet boilers are used in central heating systems for heat requirements from 3.9 kW (kilowatt) to 1 MW (megawatt) or more. Pellet central heating systems are used in single family homes, and in larger residential, commercial, or institutional applications. Pellet boiler systems run most efficiently at full load and can usually be regulated down to 30% of full load. Since the warm up phase of pellet boilers usually takes longer than for oil or gas firing systems, short burning phases have negative effects on the fuel efficiency. In order to improve energy efficiency and reduce harmful emissions, pellet boilers are usually combined with buffer systems, such as insulated water tanks.
Memphis Wood Fire Grills is a privately held North American manufacturer of pellet grills and food-grade hardwood pellets.