I thought these type of grills were basically electric that used pellets instead of chips. The fact they are the fire makes perfect sense. I wonder if pellets would work cooking with them in a grill or bge. I assume they would great. Only difference is they would be hand-fed. I'm sure they light really easy and get really hot. It seems just any old Weber kettle Grill could benefit from cooking with pellets, no?. I almost went with pellet stove over gas inserts inside house. I need a gas grill, but this type of grill seems like it would be just as easy to use. Is this grill the one and done?
Bear in mind, I don't own a pellet grill (I own two kamado grills and previously grilled/smoked with propane).
1) Generally you don't use pellets in a charcoal grill or BGE/kamado. The kamado is so well insulated that you want a small fire, and because of the volatile compounds in wood you can't have an overly hot fire in there. You need to use charcoal as your main combustion source, with wood (or perhaps pellets) as a flavor addition. But for a kamado, there's no real reason to use pellets over wood chunks.
2) From everything I understand, the pellet grill is as easy, if not even easier, than a gas grill. You have the electric temperature control so you can control temps automatically rather than a gas grill which is manual. Ease of use is IMHO similar.
3) One of the biggest critiques of pellet grills is that they don't get hot enough to do much real searing. They're great for smoking, for roasting, etc. But if you want to put a crust on a steak, you need more heat. There are workarounds for this (such as a product called
GrillGrates) that can help. But it's just tough to get high, direct, heat on to food. So IMHO it's *almost* a "one and done" grill, and I'd consider it an absolutely perfect grill to be paired with a simple weber kettle on which you could sear most anything.
4) Another point regarding gas vs. pellet is two-zone cooking. There are a lot of times where you want to have a cold area of your grill and a hot area. Gas grills, with multiple burners, allow you to have a side of the grill ready for direct heat and a side where you get indirect heat. You can't really do this with a pellet grill. It's going to be pretty even across the whole surface. This is better for smoking, of course, but sometimes not as good for grilling.
I'm torn right now on the decision of gasser vs pellet. I'm going to need a grill that's just a little easier to deal with than the kamados, particularly for those after-work grilling sessions where I don't want to mess with charcoal. I'm still not sure which way to go, especially since I can always fire up the small kamado for searing if necessary. But I'm thinking it might be gas.