I have a fairly good amount of cooking experience for a non-professional. I used to build sous vide machines back when you couldn’t just buy them for a reasonable price, and I’ve been using low-temp cooking methods for several years. I’ve got Modernist Cuisine and The Food Lab and have digested much of them. I’ve owned grills and smokers of all sorts. Propane, charcoal, electric. In the last few years books like Franklin BBQ and Meathead have helped me get my outdoor cooking game on point.
Pellet grills appealed to me because they combine the ease of use of a sous vide machine (accurate temperature control) with the flavor of a wood-fired smoker, and my brother and I are considering jumping into catering and buying (or building) a professional unit. I’d used electric smokers (meh), good old charcoal grills (bit better) and the big propane smokers (easiest to use but not 100% there on the flavor) but thought I’d give the pellets a try because if we’re going to get a pull-behind smoker, we’re going with wood or charcoal of some sort.
The Davy Crockett was my first foray. I chose it because if its relatively low price, portability, and its wi-fi connectivity.
My first impressions were that it was small but well-designed. It can fit easily enough to make a main course for a family. For my first cook I put six chicken thighs and 3 ears of corn in. For my second, an 8.5 lb. packer brisket in with room to spare. I’m not sure how big of one you could fit, but I would think even a fat 12 pounder or so would work. I don’t know if you’ll be able to do one of those 16 pound beasts you sometimes come across
It’s a 12v unit, that comes with a 12v to cigarette lighter-style female plug in the back. They give you three things for the electric. A male to male lighter plug, so you could plug directly into a cigarette lighter in a car, RV, boat, etc. (That’s actually nice because lots of pickups and RVs have those on the exterior.) That can also plug into the two other included items, a 110v male to 12v female lighter plug converter, or a 12v female lighter plug to alligator clips for hooking directly to a standard 12v battery.
The grill doesn’t draw a lot of power, so if you were wanting to use it at a park, even a small 12v battery would be more than enough to get it going. It only uses 60w average to run, so that’s about 5 amps, meaning a 10 amp hour battery could get you through about 2 hours, more than enough to grill some burgers or steaks. If you’re wanting to smoke something for a long time you’re probably going to have to go with shore power or an outlet on a vehicle you can idle. A small car battery wouldn’t want to run this bad boy for more than a couple hours without using your alternator, so don’t plug it into your civic and try to smoke a brisket.
I’m only a few cooks in but so far I love it, with a few minor caveats. First the good: it pretty much works how you’d hope it works. You fill the hopper with pellets, set the temperature, and it takes it from there. You don’t have to spend any time managing temperature. I feel confident tossing in a brisket and leaving.
It’s about 60 lbs. so you can move it quite easily with two people. I can move it myself, but your average woman probably couldn’t. The legs fold up and become a handle, which is nice. Assembly was pretty easy. It took maybe a half hour, and they include nice tools to get it done.
The included temperature probe is a nice touch. You can see your food’s internal temp without opening the lid, and it’ll even notify you when done. It’s like a built in Bluetooth probe. That’s good because the wireless probe I have can’t work through the smoker, which I guess is probably like one big faraday cage.
The grill has a fan in it that it uses to control the fire, and the way the unit is designed (heat from below, smokestack at the top) seems to encourage good air flow. The air circulation cooks your meat faster than a traditional smoker, much like a convection oven cooks your food faster than a regular one. I planned on 10 hours for my first brisket and it got done in 8. Other cooks got similar results. I’d say it takes something 10% off of your cook time generally, though that’s just a guess.
The grill gets up to 550, which seems to be enough to call it self-cleaning. I ran it at that temp and pretty quickly everything inside was burned to ash. That’s really nice, as cleaning smokers can sometimes be a real pain in the ass. I think with a shop-vac and a half hour of mostly unattended cooking, you could get it clean.
Food gets just the right amount of wood flavor. It isn’t over or undersmoked. You don’t have to think about how much wood you’re adding. You just put the pellets in (with refills every few hours) and walk away, and you get great food. So as I give my list of minor gripes, don’t forget that at the end of the day I love this grill. It’s like the ease of use of a convection oven with the great flavor of a wood-fired smoker.
It’s really just set it and forget it for great tasting food. It’s quite impressive.
Now on to the minor gripes. First, I wish it had a bigger hopper. The pellets ran out in a few hours, and the process of getting it going sucks a little bit in the middle of a cook. It’s awkward at any time, and could probably have been designed a bit better, but it’s manageable. On the plus side, you don’t ever have to do it if you just don’t run out of pellets. I’ve debated making some sort of removable pellet hopper extender for long cooks.
Wi-Fi functionality could be a bit better. I have a hard time connecting with it, and it comes in and out. It’s in a spot that my phone shows being about 50%. If anything the grill should probably have an easier time reaching wi-fi than my phone, since it has a giant antenna and a dedicated power supply. Even when it’s connected to wi-fi, I can’t manage it remotely if I leave the house. It’d be nice to just see the temperature even when I’m not there. The app’s a little clunky but I’m an app-designer so I’m particular about UI/UX, and it does get the job done when you keep connected.
I’m not a real big fan of the two-piece oil pan thing. I’d prefer a disposable foil one or something. It looks like they sell them for the bigger models. If fat gets through it drips through the grill below, and I’m debating using high heat silicone to seal it and then coating the bottom in foil, just in case.
It burns through pellets pretty fast and they aren’t cheap. It went through a hopper (which is about 9 lbs) in 4 hours on my first cook and that was at 70 degrees outside. I don’t know if that’s really a complaint about this unit; it’s probably like that for any un-insulated smoker. I purchased the optional thermal blanket which the manufacturer claims will cut pellet use in half. That’d be really nice if true, and I’m sure I’ll leave a review there.
So a few minor improvements that could be made, but overall I’d rate this unit a 4.5 stars if Amazon let me because at the end of the day it was relatively low-priced for a pellet grill, feels solidly built, and is really easy to get good results from. I'm going to round up to 5 though because if I knew then what I know now, I'd purchase it (with the thermal blanket from day one) again.
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Customer reviews
If you wanna go from BBQ Novice to BBQ Pro in a short amount of time, this is the grill for you.
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2017
This will be updated, but....First, I have never monitored the tracking on an order so intently as this one. (Amazon does not update nearly as fast as the Fedex tracking, by the way.) Got the grill today, and Its like a fat boy Christmas!Couldnt wait to try it, so got home at 8:30, had her fired up by 9, put a FROZEN chicken breast on at 9:30 and ate it by 10:15. HO LEE COW! Dayum! That was purty gewd, purty gewd, indeed. Pleasantly surprised given the fact that chicken was a brick. Excellent results from what I honestly figured would be a sacrificial cook. Got the wifi rollin, got the food probe in once the breast thawed enuf to do so, set the meat probe temp on the app, and pulled the breast at 165°. Verified with an instant read, and they were identical. I have rediculously high hopes for this thing now.Update. 12/10/17I have used the grill about 30 times. The more I cook the better it gets. Did poor man's burnt ends with a Chuck roast yesterday. Programmed my own profile for the Chuck, and I don't see how it could have turned out any better!I cooked two 8 pound bone in pork shoulders, (cut in half, four 4 pound chunks.) Thirty people got two good sized sandwiches, and it was absolutely delicious, every single bite, beautiful bark, quarter inch smoke ring, my mind was blown, honestly! The texture was firm but tender, could have shredded it finely, but I left it chunky.The only thing I haven't cooked perfectly on this thing is chicken wings. I have a mission to figure that out, trying different dry brines and temps/times.The biggest secret you should know with this thing is that the heat is very uneven, no matter where you put the heat shield. I have mapped mine with infrared thermometer and high quality digital probes. Right side of the grill was 50 degrees higher than the left side. After this, I decided to add another heat deflector just for low and slow cooks. I accomplished this by purchasing a round 10 inch cast iron griddle. Cut the handle off, and just sit it on top of the stock deflector. I now have a 10 degree variance from right to left, measured at the level of the grates. (Which are awesome by the way. They clean up so easily with a wire brush.)Also, the Traeger Pellets are the best I have used. Just wish they made a peach variety.I have used probably 100#'s of pellets so far, and whether I get them locally or online, they run about $1 per pound.
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2017
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