There Has Never Been a Better Time to Buy a SMART GRILL

THE CHOICE USED TO BE BETWEEN CHARCOAL AND PROPANE flavor or easy

- BRADLEY FORD

Then along came pellet grills, with temperature and fuel management systems. When they eventually became "smart," their technology bled over to charcoal grills. All this is to say, you have more choices than ever before when it comes to purchasing a grill-and that's a good thing, because the newest generation of pellet and charcoal grills don't sacrifice ease of use for flavor. Plus, their versatility makes it easier than ever to grill, smoke, roast, or bake, with minimal experience.

How Modern Smart Grills Work 

Pellet grills and smokers are essentially wood-burning cookers fueled by smoking pellets (not to be mistaken with heating pellets) made from compressed hardwoods. The pellets are fed to a fire pot, where an electric heating element ignites them at startup. A fan feeds air to the fire pot to ignite the pellets and keep them burning. Cycling the fan on and off and adjusting the speed at which the pellets are delivered helps maintain the temperature inside the grill. The best models do this with a digital proportional integral derivative (PID) controller that runs a control loop, constantly calculating the difference between the set temperature and the current measured temperature before adjusting it (if necessary).