What are the best wood pellets? Which hardwood should you choose for your meat? Are wood pellets toxic? Questions like these are famous in the grilling world. After all, you want that precious meal on the grill grates to turn out the best it can be.
Here are some things you'll want to consider when choosing your wood pellets.
How are Wood Pellets Made?
Our wood pellets come straight from the earth starting with a tree. (Yeah, authentic is our middle name.) From there it's chipped, milled, and then heat compressed into small cylindrical pellets--perfect for smoldering and smoking in your pellet grill. Before they leave the mill, each batch is tested and inspected for quality purposes.
Look for Food-Grade
Be sure that you are using only food-grade pellets for cooking with your pellet grill. Some grillers will tell you that heating pellets (that is, wood pellets used in wood-burning stoves) will work just as well, but this isn't necessarily true.
Many types of heating pellets are made from woods that you wouldn't want to use for smoking, like pine or spruce. These woods will ruin the flavor of your food. Heating pellets may also be sourced from wood products like plywood or particle board, and include binding agents that could also sour the flavor of your meat.
In short, since heating pellets are not produced with food consumption in mind, there are no real standards you can count on when it comes to safe wood sources and binders. This isn't an issue if you're using the wood to heat your home; but when you're talking about food, you could be risking more than just the taste.
Stay safe and cook smart with food-grade wood pellets. So, why are Camp Chef hardwoods the best wood pellets? Ours are made from pure hardwood, kiln-dried and heat-compacted with no fillers or binders. They'll burn faster, cleaner, and more efficiently than anything else you'll find on the market. And unlike others, our premium hardwood pellets are non-toxic. We make our pellets right here in the states.
Choose the Best Flavor
Next, you want to pair the best pellets with the meal you're cooking on the grill. The "flavor" of the pellets has less to do with the actual flavor of the wood and more to do with the strength of the smoke flavor you get from burning it. You can think of pellet flavor on a scale from mild to strong; mild flavors work best with delicate foods, while strong flavors work best with heartier foods.
Check out our flavor guide below.
How Long will a 20 lb. Bag of Pellets Last?
We've estimated that a 24-inch pellet grill will burn through about 3 lbs. of pellets per hour. Keep in mind that cooler temperatures will make your grill work harder, resulting in more pellets burned. So depending on the temperature and what's on the grill for dinner tonight you can estimate how long your bag of pellets will last.
