Pellet Fan
All Things Considered => General Discussion--Non food Related => Topic started by: BigDave83 on May 01, 2021, 08:54:06 AM
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The propane dealer I use had a grill demonstration last night. They also started selling GMG grills in the last year or so. They gave one to one of the local restaurants that also has a food truck. He was the one doing the demo and cooking. His trailer was there and people were lined up to buy food from it.
I went to look at how the Saber grills cooked, I had looked at them one time I was there and kind of liked them.
After seeing what he cooked and how they worked, and speaking with another couple of people there that owned them, I had a good feeling. But after I left on my way home I got to thinking. The infrared cooking is nice no flare ups or hot spots for the most part. Here is where I am now. How is this cooking really much different than cooking on my blackstone griddle. Other than a few factors that could easily be fixed on the griddle, they seem to be about the same.
The infrared like the griddle has no flame access to what you are cooking. My mind tells me that part of the grilling whether gas, charcoal, wood, is the extra flavors you get when the juice and grease drip on to the hot spots and burn up. Yes this causes flare ups but also imparts flavor. Or am I wrong?
The grill can get to hotter temps than the griddle. Problem that could be solved on the griddle to a point.
The grill will give grill marks, it also channels the juice/grease away from what you are cooking instead of it cooking in that grease and juice. Again could be addressed on the griddle with the addition of a simple regular grill rack or even a set of grill grates laid on the flat surface. My blackstone has a built in lid so I could lower it to help hold heat in.
So give me some thoughts on my thinking if will. close to 2K for the Saber VS just going with what I have. The thing the grill has over the griddle is you can put a rotisserie in it.
I have a gas grill already not a great one. I may be good with just ordering Grill Grates for on it.
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If you want to expand and diversify your cookin corral, go for it. At some point you might find you favour one or perhaps two cookers. The rest become collectables. It's a personal choice.
As far as cooking goes, I think the novelty could wear off. We tend to return to tried and true. However, human curiosity drives to want to do better even if we can't.
Want or need?
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My mind tells me that part of the grilling whether gas, charcoal, wood, is the extra flavors you get when the juice and grease drip on to the hot spots and burn up. Yes this causes flare ups but also imparts flavor. Or am I wrong?
I don't know if that is true or not, but I've seen manufacturer ads touting that it does.
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I have thought the on the same lines before with a gas grill. I have a cheap charcoal grill. a Blackstone and of course my Maverick 850. Grill grates on the flat top would be neat but I finally decided the grill marks don't add any flavor and once the meat is cut up in no longer looks fancy. Plus our daughter is going off to college in August so our needs are going to be much lower. I suggest you study on it a while and see what folks who know more than me have to say.
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The infrared cooking is nice no flare ups or hot spots for the most part.
I gather that this grill is 100% infrared. (I couldn't tell from their web site.)
I had an IR grill for a time. It was a mass-produced brand still being sold in most of the big box stores. It was difficult for me to cook on it because the IR always ran wide open at the same high temperature, making it impossible to throttle the heat back. I did my best to convert it to a "regular" gas grill but that effort also wasn't to my liking.
Other members on the forum this brand sponsored loved their IR appliances, even those who had the same model I had. So the shortcomings may have been mine and not the grill's.
Nevertheless, I wouldn't buy a grill again without a 30-day return interval or the ability to cook quite a lot on it for the store's demonstrations. (The most successful grill stores in my home town do demonstration cooks every Saturday.)
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My mind tells me that part of the grilling whether gas, charcoal, wood, is the extra flavors you get when the juice and grease drip on to the hot spots and burn up. Yes this causes flare ups but also imparts flavor. Or am I wrong?
I think you're correct. But the Saber probably has some sort of infrared radiation emitter below the food. It's usually a burner with hundreds of tiny gas flames or a very hot sheet of metal. Whichever it is, the dripping grease will vaporize and roll back up as flavoring smoke, just like charcoal.
EDIT: BTW, IMO the IR generated by the hundreds of tiny gas flames is the best IR solution and has merit for certain applications like searing and rotissering.
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Grill grates on the flat top would be neat but I finally decided the grill marks don't add any flavor and once the meat is cut up in no longer looks fancy.
I agree 100%. I'm not a GrillGrate® fan. They make dark grill marks before the remainder of the meat browns (Maillard reaction), but the marks aren't usually browned, they're burned-in, and burned meat is bitter. So you end up with "fancy" marks that provide no additional quality flavor and the remainder of the meat is plain.
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My 5 burner Char-Broil is all inferred and I agree with Paul, throttling it back is a challenge. I use it mostly for high temperature applications, i.e. a 1 1/2-2" steak cooked 4-5 minutes on each side or searing.
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I only remember charbroil and the first IR grill which had a large tub looking thing under the cooking racks to separate the fire from the food. I looked at them online and now they seem to have the same set up that Saber uses. Emitters under the cooking grate. Both have SS tube burners.
I remember the first time I looked at a TEC they had the grid burners, like the wall hanging propane heater.
I did a little more looking today at some things online. It seems like the SS is backed up by regular steel and it rusts very badly, and according to some very quickly. Granted that could have some to do with where the people live.
below should be a picture of the Saber grate assembly it is 2 piece like the charbroil.
The GF thinks I am crazy wanting to spend that on a grill. The one you have works good. So I will tell her she is right and maybe give a pass on the Saber. My thoughts after seeing it and thinking about it compared to the blackstone, I thought I was simplifying it to much and missing something.
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I owned a Saber grill but gave it to my son a couple of years ago. I bought it because I was tired of flare-ups on my old gas Weber. The saber was great for cooking steaks but that was the only thing it cooked well. Never had a flare up on the saber but I found it impossible to get the cooking temperature on the grates below 600. It was a gas miser as well, used very little propane but its limited temperature range (hot to hotter) convinced me to buy my first pellet grill, a Kuma. Haven't looked back though I sold my Kuma and bought a Memphis Elite when a local dealer was giving it away for $ 1,900.
The saber did have some rust issues even though I kept it covered and lived 60 miles from the nearest saltwater. My son still uses the saber for cooking steaks.
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I owned a Saber grill but gave it to my son a couple of years ago. I bought it because I was tired of flare-ups on my old gas Weber. The saber was great for cooking steaks but that was the only thing it cooked well. Never had a flare up on the saber but I found it impossible to get the cooking temperature on the grates below 600. It was a gas miser as well, used very little propane but its limited temperature range (hot to hotter) convinced me to buy my first pellet grill, a Kuma. Haven't looked back though I sold my Kuma and bought a Memphis Elite when a local dealer was giving it away for $ 1,900.
The saber did have some rust issues even though I kept it covered and lived 60 miles from the nearest saltwater. My son still uses the saber for cooking steaks.
I read about someone that hated the temp gauges at grate level. Said they always ran 600, but they tested temps up further in the cooking chamber and said they were 400 area.
I had asked the guy the first time I looked at them about those thermometers, he told me how great they were, I said with them being close the fire will they not always run very hot. He told me no. I did see the other night at the demo the guy using it had the left and center burner on one looked to be medium and the center was on low. Both were in the 5-600 range while the right one was at 0.
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So an infrared grill is a 2 step process. The gas flame is directed to an infrared element which in turn, radiates heat? So the IR elements is able to generate a higher heat then just the gas flame? I do not seem to understand the technology.
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So an infrared grill is a 2 step process. The gas flame is directed to an infrared element which in turn, radiates heat? So the IR elements is able to generate a higher heat then just the gas flame? I do not seem to understand the technology.
I am not sure how much hotter it is, more it would be hotter because the heat is trapped. The plates shown above have the holes under the mountains of the grate from what I had seen. the valleys just collected the juice or burned them. There is not element in the Saber or the Charbroil, both look like plain SS tube burners found in most grills today. I have never actually searched for what Infrared cooking actually is. To me the full grid type burners like on the side searing stations or the rotisserie burners would be more of an Infrared burner. But what do I know.
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So an infrared grill is a 2 step process. The gas flame is directed to an infrared element which in turn, radiates heat? So the IR elements is able to generate a higher heat then just the gas flame? I do not seem to understand the technology.
A gas flame below your steak relies on the flame heating the air and the air heating the steak. Air is a darn poor heat conductor.
But if you put a ceramic plate or something similar between the flame and the steak as an infrared heat radiator, the flame will heat the IR radiator and the IR energy waves will heat the steak and not the air in between. IR energy heat is like light that you cannot see, it's a longer wave length than the longest you can see, which is red light. So anything of a longer wavelength than red is infrared. The IR heat is hotter than the heated air produced by the same flame because there's no loss of efficiency by using air as the transfer medium.
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I'm pretty sure I am buying a stainless steel Weber Genesis II today. Not sure yet if I am buying the 3 or 4 burner. I want a rotisserie too but not sure if I will get it today or later.
I'm getting the all stainless so I can keep it outside all year long. It will be nice to have to make something on the grill in the winter and not have to wait on a pellet grill to start up or wet pellets. In a way, I miss the ease of a gas grill. I will wholeheartedly admit that I like the flavor of a pellet grill much better than propane grills. I used to have a Weber Summit and a Weber Spirit. Sold both of them. One before I moved, and one about 3 years ago. I should have kept it.
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I bought a small Weber grill just for steaks.
Reason being, I foil the drip tray (flavorizer as Memphis calls it) in the Elite and foil melts above 500.
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They had one assembled and we were able to fit it in the back of my Honda Pilot so I brought it home today.
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That is very nice. I see the extra knob is that fr a rotisserie burner? I believe I would like that feature.
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If you put the right size Sizzle-Q® or Little Griddle® on that Weber gasser you'd also have a swell stainless steel gas griddle.
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That is very nice. I see the extra knob is that fr a rotisserie burner? I believe I would like that feature.
The small knob on the right in between the two burner knobs is a sear station. It essentially is another burner so there are three really close to each other. Will see how that works at some point.
I am going to buy a rotisserie in June after my credit card cycles through its billing period. It is $130 on Amazon. I should have enough Amazon reward $ by then to pay for it. You remove the grates and place aluminum pans on the flavorizer bars. There are slots in the grill body for the rotisserie to sit in and the motor will sit flush on the outside on the left side shelf.
It ended up being $100 more than the 3 burner grill after the $100 gift card deal so I figured I would upgrade to the larger grill and 4th burner for only $100.
I will probably cook some burgers tomorrow and maybe even some wings if I can find any while cleaning up my Memphis and MAK.
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That's a very nice looking grill, stainless and all..Waiting on your evaluation.
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If you put the right size Sizzle-Q® or Little Griddle® on that Weber gasser you'd also have a swell stainless steel gas griddle.
Great idea. I've been looking at them this morning trying to figure out what to buy. Weber has one that fits in place of one of the grill grates, but it is not stainless. I need to read some more reviews about it.
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I need to read some more reviews about it.
(https://chi01pap001files.storage.live.com/y4mk3H9fCeH50GT3HYx7njq4rlleE1WcAvnvUtudl_IZAp_FtUkuspnHqgJ5mMDvfZ3RKXX-csMBn5dAfYGEoXABF2uw6NtbO1rCW2ylZiyF5u3WmQUPR6TAa6XS0PbOsmgXoZHMgJgdsKGQTll6DDR3ynSVIjdAu72AwLQvqQ0MTpjboBEnr3IYOHd3-WrOH74?width=436&height=327&cropmode=none)
The large Little Griddle® on my old infrared gasser that I hated.
There are a ton of relevant videos on YouTube.
Stainless steel won't hold seasoning. It'll get brown in places and you'll have to decide if you want to clean it with a squirt of water after each cook.
Have fun.
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I had a Euro Griddle that was similar to the one you had in the pic. I gave it and a stainless steel wood chip box away when I sold my Weber Spirit.
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Finally just got around to putting the new grill on the patio this morning and burning it in. It has rained here on and off since Friday afternoon thru last night.
I hooked up a Thermoworks high temp thermometer probe (K style) at the grill grate so I could compare the temps at the grate to the lid thermometer. I had the grill running at high on all four burners for about 20 minutes or so. Lid thermometer was about 630° while my grate thermometer was at 670°. I turned them all down to medium level now and will see where that settles in. I wanted to get an understanding of the temp difference before I started cooking so I could have some knowledge of where I wanted to set the knobs to cook some burgers, hot dogs, and sausages today. I am hoping medium is somewhere between 350°-400°.
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Medium was about 510° on the lid thermometer and about 525° at the grate with the Thermoworks probe. Turned it to low setting to see where that ends up.
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That's off to a good start when the temps are that close. I bet if the ThermaQ probe was attached to the Weber thermometer, the minor differences would be closer.
Now on to cooking.
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Low was about 410° on the lid and 430° on the Thermoworks. When I put some food on it got closer 385° on lid vs 392° on the probe.
Here are a few pics of the cook today. I think this thing is about as big as my Memphis Elite.
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Can you get it to hold steady at 325°F by shutting burner(s) off?
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Can you get it to hold steady at 325°F by shutting burner(s) off?
I didn't try that today but plan to see how it operates on low with only the outside burners on. Everything cooked fine with all four burners set to low even though grill grate temp was 400+.
Wings were crisp, but juicy. Fat on inside was not rendered like they get when smoked. Meat was not as flavorful as smoked either.
I bought the grill for the things I cooked on it today to be able to make them quickly. It served its purpose today so I am pleased with the results. Pork chops and steaks later this week. Will see how those turn out.
I did buy a stainless steel smoker box to set on the flavorizer bars and put some wood chips in. That is how I used to smoke pre pellet grill. May do that with wings next time with some orange or peach wood chips.
And, it looks good next to the Memphis and will look good in between the Memphis and the MAK after I move the MAK.
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I ordered the Sizzle Q SQ180 griddle last night. It will be here tomorrow. May griddle up some bacon on it this weekend. If that works out well, then I won't need a separate griddle. Would still like to get my Griddle Hack installed in the Traeger XL though.
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Can you get it to hold steady at 325°F by shutting burner(s) off?
I did try with the two center burners off and the sides on low. It was somewhere around the 325 mark on the lid.
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It was somewhere around the 325 mark on the lid.
I think that's pretty cool (meaning good). A lot of stuff bakes in the oven at 350°. I sometimes use my gasser to bake things when I don't want to heat up the kitchen. I set it much like yours and monitor and adjust as required.
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I am thinking of buying this on Mon/Tues during Prime Days. I realize it may not do anything for the taste of a steak, but it sure looks neat if it can do what it shows in the video. I read some of the reviews and some folks seem to really like it. They are even putting it on top of the grill grates and still getting the marks. I wonder if you could do the same on a pellet grill that can get about 450°.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004A9SV3K?pf_rd_r=B4E2K6G162CZF13BTSSS&pf_rd_p=5ae2c7f8-e0c6-4f35-9071-dc3240e894a8&pd_rd_r=eb739c70-075f-46f6-8feb-d7864b7af4ea&pd_rd_w=UvZXe&pd_rd_wg=10aCP&ref_=pd_gw_unk
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It would eliminate the need for the 45° turn!
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It would eliminate the need for the 45° turn!
Yep, that was my thought for getting it.
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Once the steak is done, if you have the patience, place one peppercorn in the centre of each diamond (pepper steak - fancy).. :D
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I am thinking of buying this on Mon/Tues during Prime Days. I realize it may not do anything for the taste of a steak, but it sure looks neat if it can do what it shows in the video. I read some of the reviews and some folks seem to really like it. They are even putting it on top of the grill grates and still getting the marks. I wonder if you could do the same on a pellet grill that can get about 450°.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004A9SV3K?pf_rd_r=B4E2K6G162CZF13BTSSS&pf_rd_p=5ae2c7f8-e0c6-4f35-9071-dc3240e894a8&pd_rd_r=eb739c70-075f-46f6-8feb-d7864b7af4ea&pd_rd_w=UvZXe&pd_rd_wg=10aCP&ref_=pd_gw_unk
It arrived today. Will see if I can make something on it this weekend. If no, I will definitely make something on July 4th weekend.
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I would think it would make a pork loin look pretty special!
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I need some practice with it, but it certainly looks like it does as advertised. The sear burner is on the left side of the grate which is why I think they got darker marks than the right side did.
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