I have no experience with pellet grills, why go that route instead of gas? What are the benefits, is it a green issue or performance? Sorry if this is an old question.
I said the same thing a few weeks ago. I used briquette grills for years, and gas grills for many more years. Briquettes take a long time to start they are a fire hazard (I nearly burned my oldest brother's house down with his Habachi grill). They also cook really hot which is great for some things but not for others. They do not add that much flavor to the food and they add an off taste if you used lighter fluid. I flipped to an LP Weber-Q when they came out, and I still have it. It still cooks good for a gas grill. But gas is neutral at best, and does not add any real flavor to the food that you are cooking. Gas has the advantage of being fast though, and having far better temperatire control. I used to be a chef, and we used natural gas grills for steaks and the flat grills.They are great for fast cooking steaks to any doneness, but for smoking fish with? Not. For BBQ? Not. For ribs? Not so great. For slow roasted veggies? Not... And a million other things, they are just not that great.
These pellet BBQs are the new game in town. I had no idea what my brother was going on about, but I went over to his place and we put his new Brinkmann pellet grill together and had it running and burned in within 2 hours. We tossed on some pork ribs and they were to die for, as my mother would say. One factor is that they are temperature controlled, so they have even heat (unlike using wood or briquettes). The other factor is the wood smoke flavor makes all the difference. You can add whatever type of wood pellets that you like to flavor the food with, or mix pellet species, and that is the main key to these grills. It adds a ton of flavor to the food. You can smoke meats, cheese and veggies with them, as well as grill or roast with them. I put some corn cobs in foil with some butter and garlic and salt on there, and in 10 minutes we had gourmet mixed wood light smoke tasting corn that was better than any other corn I have cooked in years. We smoked a whole coho salmon the other day in the Brinkmann, after I brined it. It was as good as what we used to get when we were kids in Campbell River, BC, the Mecca of Salmon fishing. The BBQ that this thing produces? We had a chicken on there that we used a medely of woods on (apple, alder, mesquitte) and that just melted in your mouth. The next day chilled it was like deli chicken, moist and tender and smokey. I see now what people in Texas call BBQ. You cannot really get this quality BBQ anywere around here, at least not that I have found.
Anyway, I can go on and on about these grills. They are great. For a long time they were only available for really high prices, in the thousands of dollars.Traeger has been making them for years, and they have some newer smaller entry level grills at a reasonable price point (under a grand). However, they recently were sold and moved operations to China, and their quality has dropped off a cliff. For the price, I think the Brinkmann is a great deal. It works, and we have never had any flareups or burnouts, and no burned food, or failed food attempts. We have cooked a hell of a lot of food on it in a short time. Everything that comes off that thing is top quality BBQ. Even toasted bread tastes great. It is really hard to srcrew up BBQ with one of these things. You can look on the grilling sites, like this one for a full rundown on the pellet grills out there. These guys know what they are taking about, and they know BBQ:
http://www.amazingribs.com/BBQ_buyers_guide/smokers/pellet_smokers.html
