Academy Sports pellet pooper grill and pellets

[muebe]

The info says it cooks from 180-375 degrees and it has a smoke only setting (cold smoker?). 

180° would be too hot for cold smoking, but perfect for Hot-Smoking temp.

The smoke setting on a traeger thermostat is a algorythm that ignores the cooker temp and times the pellets so that there are smoke cycles created. The average temp for these cycles is 160F to 200F depending on ambient temp, load in cooker, pellet type, ect. So in this mode the thermostat does not try to maintain a certain temp but a good amount of smoke is generated. You can run your cooking in this mode for the first couple hours to get some extra smoke flavor and then set the temp to what you want to cook at.

[TentHunteR]

The smoke setting on a traeger thermostat is a algorythm that ignores the cooker temp and times the pellets so that there are smoke cycles created...
 You can run your cooking in this mode for the first couple hours to get some extra smoke flavor and then set the temp to what you want to cook at.

Good info, and that's exactly how I use both the MAK and Stoven if want want more smoke flavor.  Sometimes I'll even use it totally in smoke mode for hot-smoking bacon, sausage etc.

I guess my point was about the temps. 160°-200° is still too hot for cold smoking as it will cook the food as well as provide smoke.  But that's the perfect hot-smoking range. Hope this makes sense!

[TentHunteR]

Word to the wise:  You get what you pay for.  If you buy this thing please don't judge pellet cooking by the results.

Agreed and well put!

I hear MAKs are killer grills only bad thing Kimmie would kill me If I even thought of buying one

Not if she saw the quality & cooked on one. Have your wife call mine.

I'm not knocking anyone's grill. You know what your family budget can handle. But, like most working families, we don't have money to waste. We looked hard at different pellet grills before deciding on the MAK. The cost difference was easily justified by the huge difference in quality of materials and available options.

Still, the smartest thing I did was let her be the first one to fire up & cook on our 1 Star General. She was immediately sold!

[TwoPockets]

The info says it cooks from 180-375 degrees and it has a smoke only setting (cold smoker?). 

180° would be too hot for cold smoking, but perfect for Hot-Smoking temp.

The 180-375 was for the grilling mode and it says it has a smoke only mode also. We got a memo that said we had to remove the thermometer that came with this unit and replace it with a thermometer we sell. When the assembler took it out the name on the thermometer was one of a well known pellet smoker manufacturer. Since we are selling this as an Outdoor Gourmet branded unit, we could not have their name on it.