Traeger 101 LIVE

[Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome trevor nation i am chad ward the owner and master of whiskey whiskey barbecue and also the director of barbecue marketing here at traeger grills and we are so excited to have you here today for the traeger live trigger 101 live and i'm amanda haas i'm a cookbook author recipe tester and developer i'm the founder of amanda house cooks but most importantly i'm a traeger pro team member and chad i'm so excited to be doing this with you today this is going to be great we're going through a lot of content today look forward to sharing it with everyone um before we get into that amanda tell me a little bit about what you love about the traeger hood well the traeger hood is amazing but i think the main word the first word that comes to mind is community and that i've always wanted my house and my home to be the place where everybody wants to gather and since i've had a traeger no joke it's that home so whether people are just my kids friends are coming over or i have a couple of friends i know that any time we cook together out back it's going to be a great time yeah i'd love the community too i mean have made so many great relationships throughout in the trigger community met so many great people and i love just the ability for food to be able to pull people together from all different walks of life right another thing i love about it also is i really enjoy the fact that the grill can take a beginner to an immediate cook and make them really the king or star the cul-de-sac so i love that about it oh i love that it's true though you can totally elevate people's cooking through it which is amazing and fun to watch so this trigger 101 today is really for all of you so we'll be taking questions the whole time i just want to encourage all of you to use this time to ask any question you've ever had about traeger before we get started okay and we can't wait so without further ado we're going to get started and one thing i should tell you is that we're not cooking today as much as you and i love you on trigger lives but the reason is is because we're going to cover everything for you so what are we going to start with so we're going to talk about wood pellet basics we're going to talk about how to start the grill how the fire combusts those type of things we're also going to talk about cooking on the trigger some of our favorite recipes some go-to's and then you're going to wrap it up with yeah we'll wrap it up by showing you how to clean your grill and maintain it as well so something i need a little work on i do too myself and also know that if for some reason you have to bail on us today you can go back or you want to share with a friend or anything of that nature you can go to trigger.com 101 this is going to be there in all kinds of other assets and content that you can use for anything to do with your traeger uh getting to the basics so great to have the 101 content for us okay so if we want to start out with wood pellet basics let's talk about some of the fundamentals fundamentals and what makes a traeger grill so different from how we're used to cooking outside yeah so the first thing when we when we look at the the basics of the pellet grill one is going to be our source of heat and that's going to be the 100 wood pellet uh you get a lot of flavor off of that very different than propane or charcoal cooking also always going to burn a really clean fire the other thing to know is we're cooking indirect instead of direct so amanda will go into it here in a little bit but we're using this more as convection than direct heat like you would get with a gas grill or a charcoal grill exactly and i think as someone who cooks for a living and did so much cooking indoors before falling in love with my traeger i'm a huge fan of convection heat in general because i like to tell people who are intimidated to grill think of this as a convection oven that just happens to make everything taste better so because of the convection heat circulating throughout the grill things are going to cook really evenly and get really crispy but the other advantage to it i think is that it allows you to cook multiple things at once which is great too and it just makes for a more how do i say it like everything cooks more evenly consistency right consistency and because you're not cooking over a direct flame i think if i were using a gas grill and i wanted to put a sheet pan of vegetables on it or dessert you would never do that right so because it's indirect cooking you get all the advantages of the wood smoked flavor but it allows you to cook so many more things than you would typically on a grill i completely agree and one thing too uh since i've been cooking on traeger and i just think it all around makes you a better cook is getting away from kind of being a slave to the recipe exactly and saying okay at 10 hours i'm going to pull this off right and start cooking to temperature internal temperature of the meat or anything of that nature you can take an internal temperature baked potato bread whatever but cooking to a temperature is going to make you overall a better cook and one of the reasons i'm a big advocate of it is i feel like every animal has lived a little different life so a little more marbling a little less marbling and it's going to come to that finish temperature at all different rates so by cooking to an internal temp it's going to make you a better cook and you're going to be pulling those dishes off at the exact right time all i totally agree with that i'm always going to remember that you see what you said about different animals different times and it's true so as we learn to cook to a temperature we're going to become better cooks absolutely so awesome so i think we should stop and take a couple questions and see if anybody's got any tips for beginners okay so any tips for beginners for our new trigger owner which by the way congratulations yeah trigger family right um i would say you know a lot of this that we're going to go through today as far as keeping your girl clean i think that's a big one um you know an instant read thermometer i think is always a great addition um it's going to be a really really handy tool and then once again just utilize the app and the website there's so many great ideas out there you can look at the apps by experience level yes and just the thing about it is don't overthink it just get out there and start trading i think that's such a great point and for beginners as well don't feel like you have to conquer everything at once and i do think it's great that we show you if they're com you know from simpler to more complicated recipes start with some basics but some delicious recipes are really easy to make so start there and get comfortable and then you can graduate up to other recipes agreed what else what are the benefits what are the benefits of convection cooking you want me so i love convection cooking and i always put my oven on convection so the fact traeger runs with convection heat is amazing i think it cooks foods more evenly i also think it works magic on things like let's say i do roasted broccoli in the oven and you just cut up little pieces of cauliflower if i were to put it on regular heat it doesn't get as crispy and i think that has to do with the heat circulation so crispier skin crispy veggies and even cooking love it yeah good did i cover it all yeah another daddy check okay okay any others what's the difference between traeger and gas and charcoal you want to start yeah so it really kind of goes back to what we were just talking about and i think the main difference is you've already hit on the convection style cooking and then also the indirect versus direct heat right um so on a traeger you just have much more versatility and you're going to replicate your results so much more consistently with that indirect cooking than you will with a gas or charcoal direct grill type situation such a great point and then it also comes down to flavor because since you're cooking with wood and you can select what kind of pellet we have you're getting your food infused it's not all smoky tasting right you just get this wood kiss flavor that you can't replicate with gas or charcoal you really can't yeah it's a positive ad to your food not a negative for sure right other questions for now all right okay so we're talking about we're gonna talk about fire yes we're gonna talk about fire so tell us a little bit about how it works okay so i mean i'm not an expert but i do know you need a couple things to start a fire you need to have oxygen you need to have a fuel source which in this case could be wood right and you need ignition and so trigger has all of those things and you can share with us a little bit about how that works yeah so we'll come over here to our and talk about that so cool we've got our hopper full of pellets so once we set our temperature all that fun stuff we're going to push those pellets with the auger down to the fire pot and then here at the fire pot we have a a hot rod that during that startup process is going to come on and kind of start and ignite those pellets right and then once that happens we're going to add in some air and that's when the air starts that's when you're going to start seeing the the white smoke that you see usually on a trigger startup and at that point we're just going to regulate the air in the pellets to get to the desired temperature you want to cook at so great and i think it's so important that you just shared that that you're always going to see the white smoke at the beginning so thanks for telling us that because i think for a lot of new traeger owners you're not used to seeing that when you start to cook so really important thing when you're working with real fire yeah yeah it's a real fire and you'll notice anytime you start a fire whether it be in your trigger or just yourself that's kind of the combustion of that fire starting where you get that white smoke and as the fire starts to cook and you start cooking over more coals yeah then raw wood then you start to get that much cleaner fire okay okay we're good i think we have fire mastered but maybe people have questions about it as well oh i think this is a question for chad yes so when or how should you use super smoke um i use it any time i'm operating my grill at 225 degrees or lower okay um i love it because usually if i'm at that temperature i want something a little more smoky flavor to it so i will use it on any cuts that are down below 225 so i've used it on ribs brisket pork butt um all those things so it's really up to you and how much you know smoke flavor you want but on some of those bigger cuts i really really enjoy a little heavier smoke profile so that's when i use it i really wish we'd cooked for our own good today i'm super hungry right now and because i know how good his barbecue is we didn't think this through well i guess not next time any other questions is it oh can i take those questions yes please is it okay to grill in the rain and this is for dan yes it's okay to grow in the rain i do it all the time and we test the living daylights out of these grills out of our frills and rain and for hours i cook all the time in the rain i don't know why i just get excited to do it it's it's very easy to do you get wet your food's going to be great and for me i live in florida so if you don't cook in the rain you would probably not cook it all during the summer because those summer showers would stop you so yeah there is nothing wrong with it you can definitely cook in the rain uh you just want to be smart and you cover your food up as you're taking it in that kind of stuff but yeah go for it that's awesome and yeah ooh the biggest difference what's the biggest difference between the ironwood and the timber line you talked about this earlier yeah so the biggest difference to me is the ins the level of insulation so we have here on the ironwood we've got both the sides insulated we're on the timberline we have uh the whole door insulated has more insulation has some on the back um and the grease management system so this has our traditional oh right bucket exterior grease system whereas the timberline has the internal grease system that's tucked away on the side of your grill i would say those are two of the big ones both get to 500 degrees both have the bottom shelf they can move up into smoke mode or sear mode so you have a lot of similarities but you got a little more real estate on the timberline if you go with the bigger model and uh the installation of the grease manager right it helps us all select one that's right for us this is my workhorse by the way yeah itself i do so much on it it's amazing me too that's my go-to at the house good other questions all right okay are we moving on to starting up our grill yes so it's time to start up your grill okay for that new trigger owner and the thousands more out there let's say you just got your grill this is your first time you're going to want to grab your owner's manual take a look or go online to 101 you can do it there also trigger.com 101 and look at the burn it you're going to want to get this grill burned in it's going to season it and set you up for success so once you've looked that up get the burning done and we'll go and then we're going to go to the basics but i should say i think it's so great we've got everything at trigger.com 101 now so all of these questions that you have you can find more information there but then when we want to start it we start with the basics we make sure it's plugged in underneath there and plugged into a power source and then you turn it on on the back and then chad the magic happens yes so one thing to also remember is when you have when you get your grill you get it burned in try to keep it plugged in and powered and powered on so this way when we have firmware updates and this is connected to wi-fi you'll be able to get those over the air your grill will be updated and you'll be ready to go the next time you want to cook it's smarter than we are i laugh that if you just leave it plugged in all of the updates get made to the app it's incredible right right okay if you say so the other thing is just as importantly as what we're about to share is you need to make sure that you always have pellets in the hopper right so i start with a full hopper and i think you and i are both good about keeping some close by because if you're doing a longer cook and you might need to add more it's just really nice to have them handy for sure and speaking of that let's talk a little bit about storing pellets okay so i'm using these the stay dry pellet container that we just launched a week or two ago really really great uh pour my pellets in there i can mix two varieties if i want to nice but keeps it nice and tight right we want to keep moisture out of there um that's the key thing that's why we want to store them that way so you can either use the stay dry pellet container a covered bucket anything that nature just make sure you're keeping those pellets nice and dry and out of harm's way out of harm's way for sure and i don't live in a very wet place either but i do store mine up a little bit right if i'm using the grill like this is fine but i keep them up in a cupboard so they can't get wet at all either and keep them covered like this so they're great so a couple other things we need to do before you start cooking is you need to make sure that these are fairly clean right so that if your grates are dirty at all as your grill warms up you can use a grill brush to just scrape them down and then if you're using a foil liner you want to make sure that you've changed that before you get started if there's a lot of residue on it one thing i should note as well is if you don't use the liners and you want to wrap it in aluminum foil you can you just want to make sure you wrap it tightly so that the air can continue to circulate throughout the grill and you really take advantage of that convection heat absolutely so now that we've got everything cleaned up turned on it's time so we are going to turn the grille on so right here we would start with the standby button yeah we're going to hold that for three seconds we're playing pretend by the way yes no it's not turned on the traeger logo will pop up right here once that happens you take the dial pick your temperature yeah push set dial in to set temperature and hit the ignite button and the first thing after that is you want to make sure the lid is always closed and just for clarification if there's one thing you take from today yes i don't care if you have traeger serial number zero zero zero one first one ever made and anything after that every trager grill can be started up with the lid closed yep remember lid is closed when you start it okay it doesn't matter which one no does not matter you don't have a special model no i do not have a special model we all have this special model it needs to be closed so the other thing you should know is that while it's heating up it'll probably take you about 10 to 15 minutes for it to heat up with the lid closed and also the fan will turn on and off as it's heating so don't be alarmed if it gets really quiet it knows what it's doing i promise it will continue to heat up yeah the other thing is while the new grilles have the great wi-fi feature you can still use this grille just plugged into power with no wi-fi connection it's still going to do everything for you you're just going to lose some of the benefit of not having it connected some of the things you can do on the app etc and you know i'm obsessed with the app but i i joke i don't use a lot of technology in my life when i'm cooking but i use this app all the time for inspiration for recipes like if i go to the store and i don't know what i'm gonna make i'll take a look and i'll choose a recipe but then it's got a ton of information and it allows me to have my hands free when i put something on the grill i walk away the fact that i can change the temperature i can put a timer on i can turn it off it's remarkable yeah i love the app for me where it's been a real game changer is the overnight cooks so whether it be a barbecue competition you know the super bowl with dan patrick usually you're cooking uh somewhere off site and staying somewhere else so it's nice to be able to get those grills connected to wi-fi put the meat on go back and get a little bit of a night sleep instead of the old days you had a zero gravity camp chair and you just slept right next to the cooker so i i like this app a whole lot i don't want to go with you maybe i want to observe what it looks like on super bowl sunday when you're doing all of this overnight but this has to be a game changer for you i love the app yes that's so great and when the pellet sensor will tell you to yeah cool it's another great one okay one last tip when you're starting these we've said it before these are all the same when you start you want to start with your lid down but even on these other models like the pro you'll have to turn this knob to set the temperature um so that's just a little bit different at the beginning but just make sure we're still turning the power on we're doing all those things and we're keeping the lid closed okay do we have any questions krista we do do you leave the switch on all the time yes that is what we mean by having the switch on keeping it powered on you don't have to have it powered on as far as like setting a temp you just want the switch on in the back right that way the grille will be on it'll be able to get the wi-fi updates right and you see it in standby mode i can see it when my grille is still turned on but it's not running right you see the little light on the grill so that's when you know that it can receive the updates and everything else yep other questions oh i love this question yeah so during startup yeah during startup can you put on food while the grill is getting up to temp um for me i just have usually i don't like to the only thing where i'll say it's okay is if it's a covered dish right you know if i'm doing some veggies in the first 10 20 minutes are you know covered right then i'll throw them in there but if it's not covered i'd prefer to wait until you get that nice clean thin blue smoke because i don't want to be putting any of that white smoke on a great steak or a burger because that smoke is acidic kind of creates a little bit of what we call creosote flavor uh which is a terrible word to say it just sounds bad so i wouldn't want my food to taste like it you know what i mean so i um so that's why i kind of wait until we get that nice thin blue smoke i think it's such a great point and if you're seriously into barbecue or anything where you're working with meat that's open like that's a great point but if you want to you know twist our arm and make an exception it would be for anything that's covered that goes uncovered and stays uncovered and that would just be if you're in a rush you don't want to forget to throw it on right right exactly wait the extra couple of minutes just do it right other questions do you have to remove the pellets and store them after every cook is the question i do not remove them every time but what do you do it depends on weather too yeah yeah to me a lot of it depends on whether i don't remove mine after every cook but i'm probably firing my grill up a couple times a week we do the same thing whereas if you know you're going out of town for an extended vacation something like that it's during a humid time of year right we make it so easy to clean the pellets out in the back with the pellet clean out um i would do it but i would say after every cook absolutely not you don't have to if you're going to have a big hopefully you never have to take a hiatus from your trigger i know if you're spoiled but if i don't you have to take a hiatus from your traeger three four weeks yes you may want to clean those out also too you know if you have taken a break like that and you notice oh man i'm not kind of getting to my temperatures i usually get to go ahead and change those pellets out because nine times out of ten you've got some pellets that have gathered some moisture right and they won't we can't produce the btus to get you to the high enough temperature that you're set at that's such a great tip so yeah i think we use ours an extreme amount i cook on my trigger four or five times a week right but if you ever go for an extended period it's a great idea to empty it out completely yeah what other questions can you use an extension cord uh for a longer run of power yes and and just typical you know extension cord common sense you know make sure there's no necks make sure it's well grounded uh all those things so yes you can use it and what i find is i usually go with a little heavier duty one that way you just know you've got a nice cord that's going to last a long time oh that's so good to know and i actually have this conversation with an electrician at my house because i'm like is it pulling less power it was on a new power outlet i had a good cord same thing he's like make sure you're safe but i haven't noticed any difference in it like pulling less power not getting up to temp i use an extension cord for all of my grilles and the other thing to note too is the the while we're talking about the power pull yeah on a trigger right after the hot rod goes off and the startup mode's done right the maintenance of it i think it's about the pull of like a light bulb wow so it's not a huge power pull uh once we get to the startup process that's awesome that's good thank you for that yes what other questions we're ready to keep moving on huh what's next for us cooking on the trailer that's what we're gonna talk about okay we're getting to the fun stuff one thing to to know when you uh go to put your food on you are going to see some temperature fluctuation uh for instance i usually cook at 275 a lot of stuff so if i'm at 275 the ironwood i'm going to see it you know 272 to 278 right which is perfectly fine you know when you set your oven to 275 it can vary 10 to 20 degrees either way you just don't know it because they don't tell you so that's one thing to notice there's nothing bad about it at all because remember whether it be a dish whether it be a protein food likes to cook at a very consistent temperature right and if you're within 10 degrees that's going to end up helping make a tasty food yes i say too you want to make sure you know every time you open a lid you're going to lose heat right it's like opening the door of an oven and i'm always telling people keep it open for as little time as possible so the same thing applies here the other thing you want to think about is that you want to make sure that your food is spread out well around the traeger so that the convection heat can continue to work but if you keep good pellets in it and you make sure to not leave this open for extended periods of time your food will cook so evenly like you said on ovens they can drop severely we just can't see it and you will be so surprised at how quickly these bounce back and recover they really do yeah so what okay we need to talk about smoke should we talk about smoke a little bit more yeah so we talked about it a little bit the white smoke versus thin blue smoke um white smoke is just a poorly combusted fire has that off acidic taste and then the blue smoke is what we want to leave that's what that's what we want to take the good stuff absolutely so that's that's what you're looking for that's what you're going to find once you let your trigger get started up we hit on it a little bit beforehand but we'll go back one more time super smoke so super smoke is available on the iron wood and the timber line it's a way of putting much more smoke into the chamber and operates between 165 degrees and 225 degrees okay and that's when you're really trying to smoke food in general right everything over that you're just trying to cook and you get that amazing wood flavor so that's great to know and also if for some reason during your startup if you get an error simplest thing to do you'll have an error code here hold down the standby button let it go into shutdown mode it'll tell you how long the shutdown is going to be let the shutdown happen completely lid closed again during the entire shutdown and once the the shutdown is done then you can go run back through the paces restart it right and everything should be good to go and one thing to note if you ever do get that shutdown message is to take a look i'm i'm really adamant about making sure that the fire pot is cleared of any pellets right so you can vacuum those out it's just you're always going to have a better cook the next time if you start with a clean slate and we'll talk more about the shutdown mode in general for that but it'll really help reduce the flare-ups okay and then in the very unlikely hopefully event of a fire yes so usually and i'm telling myself a little bit here too if you end up having a grease fire it is usually due to cleaning or lack of cleaning exactly um you've got buildup of grease whatever the case well right you got there you've got a fire yeah so first off remember as amanda taught us about fire one key thing it needs oxygen right so first thing you want to do if you have a fire close the lid we're saying close the lid on that we do say close the lid a lot and hopefully it was closed while you were cooking but if there's a flare up when it was open make sure the lid's closed we're gonna uh starve of any oxygen right once we get done with that go right into the shutdown mode let everything shut down let everything burn out if for whatever reason this thing's still raging and it's got you worried you're seeing fire come out of the grease exhaust then you can go ahead and unplug it from the wall but that's really the last case scenario right let it run through and just like i said just for whatever reason if it's not wanting to extinguish itself in a timely manner then you can just unplug it and let it sit do its thing i know it's easy to want to peek and look don't you know just let it go and then come back and clean up and reassess the situation exactly great advice for sure so before we get on to our favorite part yes do we have other questions what in how should you use superstars when and how should you use super people want to know yes super smoke is a hot 101 topic today um so i like to use it whenever i'm wanting to put more smoke onto a dish onto a protein i use it almost religiously on overnight briskets butts i'll put them on at 185 or 225 just let them roll all night super smoke wow and then you know bump it up once i wrap so that's when i like to use it i know some folks like to use it on um broccoli i've never tried it yeah chili does it oh my gosh so good to know yeah so it's like a smoked broccoli and it's really really tasty okay good super smoke all the way yeah any other questions should you keep a pan of water on the grill while cooking so a lot of times competition people have done this because it all started back from the offset pits so offset pits a lot of them can run really dry as far as like a dry heat right so you put a pan of water in there to introduce some water some humidity and kind of not make it is dry the heat right i'll just moisten it a bit if you will so what i like about the trigger though the traeger i feel like it's balanced enough i don't need to add any supplemental water because we're already creating a great fire we've got the convection right whereas you know you're not cooking with convection on some of these offsets and different type of charcoal and wood grills right so it's funny i've never had anyone ask me if i do that on here i would think the only time i'd ever want to do that is if you're doing bread baking or something where it's a typical thing to do in a regular oven as well where you want that hit of steam to help make a crust or do something special but i've never done it yeah i haven't either on trigger yeah other questions so do you need a blanket do you need an insulation blanket for the timberline unless you live somewhere in antarctica or somewhere where it gets really really miserably cold i do not believe you need it i've cooked on the timberline and you know less than five degree temperature temperatures wow and it is held strong yeah we cooked on one at the super bowl minneapolis i think it was like seven yeah yeah and and it'll hold strong i mean that that insulation what the product team has done with the way they designed that grill it's going to help keep your temperatures there so i do not think you need an insulation blanket for a timber line oh that's so good to know so rain snow we're happy with our grills in this inclement weather what else can you use what'd you say can you use the app you don't need i don't have my wi-fi on ever typically when i'm using it can you use it over cellular yeah i mean you should be able to search the app look over cellular that kind of stuff i just think you would have to be hooked up the girl's gonna be hooked up to a network along with your phone to get all the grill stuff yeah when you're actually grilling it needs to all be hooked up to the same thing right i'm assuming so yes that's the only time that i really do otherwise when i'm running around i don't so yeah just to research things on it if you're not at home you don't have to but when you're cooking yes yep okay great other questions what's the difference between triggers what's the difference between triggers with the chimney and without it oh we're getting this question yes okay i'm gonna back up so you can show everybody so a lot of times when you when you look at you know let's go where we started so that's the chimney uh pro 34 here so one of the main reasons that we put this on there was two one you gotta have a way to exhaust the smoke anyway and two if you did not put a chimney on it when people saw it at retail they didn't know it was a smoker right so that's just people associate that chimney with you know oh that's just that's a barbecue smoker you know right so then as our product team grew and we got a bunch of really smart people here we started looking at the smoke science behind it we decided to use the downdraft exhaust in the back and so what happens here the way they've thumbed it down for a pit master well you had to dump it down for me is when we get that smoke in this cook chamber convection's rolling around as it stays in the cook chamber it starts picking up dirty molecules and that's what'll start to make that white smoke so what happens is when we get that dirty smoke it gets heavy enough down here at the downdraft and then we push it out of the back so we can maintain that thin blue smoke at all times that's incredible i mean that's just really design advanced design right yes i do laugh because some people say it's not a traeger unless it's got the smokestack i'm like if you want this one you could still get it right but this is a really thoughtful design it really is really smart so we've got smart people here other questions okay amazing well we're moving on to my favorite part i think yours too let's talk recipes and cooking so what do you like we've got it started up it's ready to go what are some of the recipes that you love to put on the trigger okay i love everything and i think that's what convinced me that i needed to actually work with this company because i put all of my types of cooking on it but some of my favorites are things like i have a sheet pan salmon recipe with roasted vegetables that is super simple to do on here i love baking on it so i do a coconut it's on the they're all on the app and on the website but i do a coconut dark chocolate brownie that's amazing i do molasses cookies i mean you name it i've made it on here i do make one rib recipe it's nothing compared to yours i'm sure but my kids think it's awesome steaks pork chicken all of it how about you yeah so for me i mean with my background being a competition barbecue obviously chicken pork ribs pork butt brisket yeah uh if you have not done pizza on a trigger so good it really is even if you go the easy way out and get taken bait right it still tastes so much better and so different on a trigger i absolutely love it uh two more of my favorites obviously burgers and steaks yeah so one thing i want to bring up about those when you're cooking them on a traeger a little bit different than cooking it on direct heat so we talked about that a little bit earlier so what we can do with so when you're cooking on a gas grill or a charcoal grill and you're cooking a steak or a burger you're constantly flipping right because you have this harsh direct heat on a trigger since we're cooking evenly with convection you don't have to worry with that so what i like to do if if you really need sear marks if that's what you want sure you can throw some cast iron grates in here right let them heat up while you're cooking and then finish them on the cast iron to me i've never had anyone say hey chad that is gorgeous crosshatch sear mark right i'm so glad you took the time to do those but i have had people say that's one of the tastiest steaks i've ever had right so i'm focusing a lot more on the taste than i am the sear marks um if you want that mild reaction if you want that look use cast iron grates but you do not have to and you will still have one of the most tastiest burgers or steaks i love a trade good trigger burger that's the thing and i think it comes down to aesthetics versus flavor right so if somebody really wants it to look a certain way but i've never had a tastier burger than one made on a traeger absolutely so uh so which pellets are you gonna run okay so we love to talk about pellets around here and here's my thought on them i i think i'm really loyal to a couple and it's the ones i've tried from the beginning so i love our signature blend but i use a ton of apple as well and i think chad one of the reasons i like to use them is because i like to create menus that just use one type of pellet so i did a thanksgiving menu for us here a couple thanksgivings ago and i just designed the menu to work with apple pellets so think of a brine turkey with maple and black pepper and then i've got sausage stuffing with it all the baked goods it was amazing sounds really delicious yeah so good how about you so for me i love the signature blend yeah a lot of those i uh i like to mix i'll use the stay dry pellet container and i'll mix 50 50. um cherry and pecan i love that combo that's your secret yes that's it i got a secret [Laughter] so that's that's my go-to and then another one if i'm doing a long overnight you know beef rib brisket i want that bold smoky flavor i'll go with a hickory that's what i save those for when i'm smoking or doing things that are more in your world oh yeah amazing so good and so i'm going to say something one more time just like keeping the lid closed the one thing you want to remember about your pellets keep your hopper full right you just want to make sure that you've got your hopper full during your cooks and before you start super important and another thing there's a lot of options out there when it comes to pellets right um buy trigger pellets and the reason i say that is we control the quality specification of what comes in we follow our strict manufacturing guidelines and the only pellets that go out are the ones that meet our requirements and our moisture level right so when you get that bag of pellets you dump it in this grill they've been engineered and created in a way that you're going to get a great performance out of your grill every single time and believe it or not there's a ton of science that goes into wood pellets you know as far as how much moisture how many people you use you know how do you use the right uh varieties of pellets so you don't create too much ash wow so all those things go into it that's all been done for you you don't have to worry about it they've done the homework just uh just by trigger we own all of our own mills which is something amazing not many can say no if it ain't broke right that's what we say so we have so many different amazing varieties so i've never had to bother going anywhere else it's awesome okay before we move on do we have more questions we do what are the best recipes for beginners what are the best recipes for beginners i'm going to brag about your recipes so will you just tell them what i love amanda first came on we were just talking about simple things that you could wow people with off the traeger and one of them to me is simple boneless skinless chicken breast hit it with your favorite uh poultry seasoning 275 on the traeger depending on the thickness of the breast 45 to 60 minutes yeah i'm going to use a probe and once it hits 165 pull it off and rest it and i just feel like we were always raised on dry terrible gas grilled chicken right and when you just do something that simple when people see it they're like oh my gosh what'd you do and i'm like yeah be so ready to be so unimpressed i know that's the greatest part that's the best part i love that that was a good one for me and then staying down the chicken vein one that i just did with uh malcolm reed how to barbecue right yeah well things love about the trigger being able to cook a whole meal in it yes i love it too batch chicken at 375. wow and then we did some uh bacon brussels up top at the same time love it so those are two simple ones they're on the app you can go check it out okay those are awesome suggestions and i think if you're just beginning and you want to learn the variety of things you can do on the trigger one of my favorite things is to just chop up a ton of broccoli or cauliflower or carrots and toss some olive oil any seasoning you want i'll do salt and pepper a lot put them on a sheet pan and just stir directly onto the grill i do them at like 400 425 and you get that high convection heat they're crispy and delicious and they don't taste like anything you've ever had before i also love a lot of the things you're doing so i do like a sheet pan chicken where you just take cut up pieces and i've got some fennel and onions and i think a little orange juice and dijon mustard all you do is assemble it and put it on a sheet pan on here delicious but then the basics of like a burger just try a burger or a steak and just follow the directions with the you know simplest directions as possible you'll be blown away yeah and remember also as we talked about on the app or on uh the website when you're looking at recipes we have everything uh at what level of recipe it is which is so handy it is yeah it's really handy what other questions what are both of your favorite seasonings oh what are both of our favorite seasonings you go first so i'm biased i have my own seasoning so my favorite one from from mine is uh one called the rocks it's kind of i built it for red meat so brisket but also wild game oh wow and then the one that i really love from traeger is i've always just been a pork and poultry yeah poultry that color that it puts on ribs or pork butts just like lights out so those are two of my favorites okay i i really have a hard time deciding these things i'm gonna do two is it called the shanty what was the lemonade one that you had summer shanty is that gone i just thought it was super cool to put on vegetables but are i made but i put the chicken one on everything i put i tell people to just like to give people permission to take something that we say is for prime rib or chicken you can put it on your vegetables yeah super fun it's absolutely great and i think one more that's uh kind of a sleeper in the trigger lineup is just a straight up trigger rub right that's a good one on veggies all purpose that's a pretty solid good so we can we're having a hard time deciding coffee too what's the one that has coffee in it primarily a coffee road there's a coffee rub yeah yeah we're so spoiled i'm like i got them all but you can't go wrong right what other questions what is the best way to sear on a traeger um so a couple of ways yep one you can do cast iron grates yeah that heat up right here you could do a cast iron skillet yes also depending on if you want more like a pittsburgh sear but for me when i see her on a traeger i i'm usually cooking reverse sear if you want to know more about that there's plenty on the website right so i'm smoking it to start with and then searing it off at the end so i'll have my grill up to like in this case i'll have it up to 500 those cast iron grates getting really really hot yeah so it hits 500 give it a couple of minutes and then i just take the steak usually 60 to 90 seconds each side depending on what cut and thickness and temperature and then i like to and then flip it and go another 60 to 90 seconds and voila yeah i do something similar to that as well i'll use a cast iron pan if you just want things to look seared and ju in general but what you have to do is make sure you put that on as you're heating up your grill right because you don't want to put a piece of meat into a cold pan so get that pan really hot too but you know what else i've done when i'm doing smaller foods and i don't want to worry about them falling through if i have a grill pan that's cast iron with grilled marks on it too so i'll just put that on here and heat it up and i've done shrimp on that and other things before and they'll sear too so if it's important for you to have that sear you can you can do it with the grates or a pan or a grill pan yeah in high tunnel high temp these get hot they get hot enough so that's what's awesome yeah is that someone who's new to traeger um so where do we start welcome to the family and the question was can the traeger do just your regular normal grilling and cooking yes yes yes yes i think that's what we love about it is you can do so many things on it as far as your veggies desserts breads proteins wild game you know all kinds of stuff it's it's really uh fundamental sophie if you're a guy that you know used to cook your burgers on medium-high gas grill then you're no longer that guy or gal and now you're the person that's going to be cooking your burgers on a beautiful traeger somewhere around 350 375 right that that's really the the biggest uh learning point for people that are coming over from gas grill is or charcoal grill is they're so used to well my burners were on medium or medium high and now we're having to try to equate that to oh you should be cooking at 375 if you like it that way or that kind of thing so get in there just play around with it yeah the one thing is you know these grills are very forgiving so instead of over analyzing it or thinking about it just go out and cook just cook you know you know i think the thing is in chad's world too where he's known for smoking so many things people think they'll say to me oh you have a traeger smoker yes it smokes but it does everything else as well and so when you get out of that lower temperature range i like to explain to people your food isn't going to taste smoky what you do get is the flavor of the wood pellets which is really different than putting a ton of smoke on something so when i say i cook my desserts on it i mean it i really do and i love it so you can do anything that you would normally put in an oven on here anything you'd put on a grill you can do on a trigger too on a guest or charcoal do you have a favorite pellet that goes well with everything i do what is yours chad it's the trigger signature blender nice nice that's the one i use if i had to pick a non-blend it would probably be the trigger cherry yeah cherry's great too uh we're we have a lot in common i i'm going to confess so many times i don't even know what's in my grill because i cook so often but a lot of times it's signature or it's apple i think that for the types of food i make both of those are amazing most of the time yes yeah how do you recommend using the top shelf oh that's a great question that is good how do you recommend using the top shelf for cooking i'll let you go first amanda what do you think well i think the thing that's so interesting is when you're working with convection like we are things are going to cook evenly throughout this entire grill so this idea that you have to have everything down low to be closer to the heat source you don't have to worry about that so i tend to use it just i cook different things on different levels right so i don't even really think about the fact like oh something's got to be high and something's got to be low like would you automatically put burgers down here and veggies or something else up top i do my drip analysis oh so don't i want the drip on the bottom right so i don't mind like if i got burgers down here and asparagus up here little olive oil seasoning drops on your burgers not a huge deal but i wouldn't want burger grease dripping all over my asparagus that is so smart that's how i look at it um but you know a lot of times too if i'm just doing a big rib cook yeah i love this iron wood this top shelf is so functional i can put you know trim down i can put another three racks of ribs right and i just love that about it so don't just kind of pigeonhole the top shelf not at all for after thoughts no this valuable valuable real estate it's so funny and now i'm remembering because i developed a recipe for us recently that's like a moroccan spiced chicken with root vegetables and i intentionally put the chicken legs up here so the juices would drip into the root vegetables and it's spectacular again perfectly crisp skin i didn't touch them on this top shelf so it's super versatile treat it like the other one and think about like you said what what's dripping into the other thing below it it's a really great suggestion do you ever mix pellet flavors yes i actually just talked about that they're joining us late yeah i do a 50 50 of pecan and cherry all the time um but yes that's the beauty of it it's your food it's your flavor profile get funky with it you know if you if you want to mix two or three different pellet flavors together go for it if it's what you and your family like to eat then i'm all for it i think it's a matter of giving people permission to be have fun with it and mess around right and so he is a master pit master and he's telling you he mixes cherry and pecan amazing like i might do apple with something else to add a little bit more of a woody flavor to things so yes we're giving you permission to mix and match and see what you like should you ever cover the grill grates with aluminum foil um i don't see why you would want to do that it's going to impede air flow right as we talked about this grill flows like this right so if you have foil on the whole entire grate it's just not going to let you get the air that you want you're not going to get the steady temp um you know it's one of those things if it's something that's just dirty right and you're worried about it this may be the perfect opportunity take yourself a large disposable pan put a touch of water in it put that on the bottom shelf put whatever your messy mess is on the top shelf and let it drip down into that pan so right that would be the only reason i'd see that you'd want to you know that or maybe i know sometimes people worry about fish sticking and those kind of things yeah these are great grapes just make sure they're well oiled yes and you should be good to go but do not wrap this whole grate with foil because it will mess up the airflow yeah agreed thanks for asking that yeah great question any other questions okay we're moving on okay so we got through our cooking and our pellets and now we're going to talk about shutting down the grill yes so what do we do here amanda it's pretty simple we're going to press and hold the standby button there right and it takes about three seconds and it will show up that it's going into the shutdown cycle which is so great yeah and so then what we have is this is you know you want to leave this lid closed let it go through the full shutdown right and while you know once it's done shutting down there's a couple things you can do to keep it and get it ready to go for next time definitely and also if you have different models like i can show you on the pro 34 the shutdown cycle you just turn the knob to the shutdown cycle so it's a little bit different but we're always shutting these down um then cleaning at the end again i always love to take a grill brush to it when it's not too hot and just scrape them down right away so any residual food drops off right away and then if you need to change the liner if you're using the disposable liners you can do that once it's a little cooler or again if you've wrapped this bottom what do we call this the drip tray tray yes if you've wrapped your drip tray in foil just make sure again you remove that and wrap it really tightly so you don't impede the airflow and then we can talk too the other thing i do once it's cooler is make sure i check the grease bucket or if you've got the timber line and how it's built inside you want to really carefully try to remove that when it's cooler take a look and if you need to drain those because the last thing you want is grease spilling all over your patio or anywhere where you're cooking right completely agree if it's a longer cook like if you're doing overnight brisket or butts uh you may have to clean it a little more often yeah maybe after that cook or maybe you can get two cooks out of it but it's a long cook you're burning a lot of pellets you've got a lot of grease just better to clean that up and and get it ready to go yeah um and then also once all that's done you've got it cleaned up you can throw your cover on i know for me we were talking about it uh it helps with the pollen oh totally where i live it's like it's yellow right now everywhere so just make sure the grille is nice and cool yeah remember to also keep it plugged in and turned on in the back um and then put throw your cover on it'll be ready to go the next time you need it exactly and one thing i need to mention too is and to ask you is how often do we clean out the fire pot and actually use a shop vac or something to clean out the bottom how often do you have to clean yourself so we were talking about like that kind of clean i usually do about every four to five bags of pellets okay so that way i can get in there get everything vacuumed right cleaned up and ready to go um that's a great suggestion and i think that i probably might not do mine enough but it's really good to keep in mind when you're done with it after it's gone through the shutdown cycle or before you start again to just take a look every i don't know every five to ten cooks if you yeah when i'm cooking that much i need it so it'll make it'll ensure a perfect um traeger experience every time right anything else on shutting down our grills i think we've covered so much shut down let's see if we got any more questions yeah and these are for all of us who have these people ask me all these questions all the time so now we put it in one place for them right chad what are the best cleaning products to use so the best cleaning products to use i told the story uh i love the traeger uh grill cleaner yeah so i we're doing shop classes back in person yeah and there's our comeback i promise you they will they will um i remember i had a retailer that said they had bought a ton of trigger cleaner and i'd used in the past knew it was really good and it's all natural yes thank goodness it says that in the big print i'm like and somebody in the class asks what do you like to clean your grill with and so i took a shot of the grill cleaner and then went outside and cleaned said grill and they're like oh my gosh clean the grill up so good that didn't kill chads we sold all 36 bottles at night high five i'm sorry if anybody wants to if any retailers are watching you want to sell a lot of trigger drill cleaner get the taste test don't worry it's called legal i don't know but it does say it's all natural and i have to say i found i've had great luck with the trigger cleaner i had a bottle sent i ordered a bottle for all of my friends who have traegers because i'm like don't use anything else it does everything you need it to do it does it's non-toxic it can clean the outside it can clean the grates really well um even inside here's some of the insulation if that gets right a little messy you can spray it on there and uh let it set wipe that down and it wipes down it's kind of magical yep oh my gosh i'm so glad you're okay it really is non-toxic non-toxic what other questions how frequently should you do a deep clean on your grill you know i think that goes back to kind of depends on what you've cooked on right but i mean i would think you should be wanting to do those two three times a year yeah that's where we're pulling everything out wiping everything down cleaning it all vacuuming everything just soup to nuts yeah i do that about twice a year i always do it in the spring like the spring cleaning situation and then if i've done a ton of heavy cooking on it i think okay before i go into the winter but at least twice a year and i really just think it depends on how much you cook like i gotta think like when you're writing your cookbooks you're probably doing it more frequent than that because you're just cooking around all the time right all the time and on two grills and so um we probably do it more than most but make sure at least twice a year you're doing the full clean yeah absolutely good any other questions for us what is the best way to clean the grill grates i think you and i are going to agree yeah so the best way to clean the grill grates is i like to use the trigger cleaner i'll spray them really really well and then you can use either a grill scrape or a grill brush scrub them down real good and then i like to go through with a towel uh it can even be you know double paper towels and just wipe it down right real good um that's how i clean uh grill grates pretty straight forward yeah and even if i take the grill brush to it when the grill's still a little bit warm i can scrape off most of the food so it's ready to go for the next time i don't have to spray it down every time by any means right yeah yeah a warm grill always seems to clean up easiest for me yeah i agree how often should we change the drip tray liners yes so that kind of falls back under the caveat again of it kind of all depends on what you've been cooking right i would say i use kind of the common sense of how dirty is it how dirty um and usually after a big pork butt or briskets it's pretty dang dirty so we're gonna change it after one cook with that but if i've got veggies on here or chicken breast something doesn't create that much i may be able to cook two three four times right uh those type of meals before i need to change out the drip liner and i think it's pretty obvious when you look at it if there's a lot of grease on your dripline or if there are excess pieces of food that have fallen through the grates change it right that's where you want to be careful about flare-ups or any other things happening with grease when in doubt change it out yes so steel brushes are they okay to clean the grates with um these porcelain grates they're not gonna mess it up or anything of that nature it's gonna keep them pretty clean i know some people don't like using steel grill brushes because you can have there have been some pieces fall behind that people have gotten ingested right um so if that you know that's up to you and your risk factor i i usually use either a grill scrape or if i find myself in a tough spot i'll uh ball up some tin foil long pair of tongs and clean my grate that way so a couple ways to take care of that so smart and whatever grill brush we have that's kind of softer right i don't i've never used one of those big stainless steel ones on it frankly i haven't needed it and so things just clean up so easily with these that i haven't needed anything that aggressive aggressive yes aggressive thank you all right what's next for us first i want to go back and just remind you that we have you can go over to traeger.com 101 catch everything here that we went over today and tons of other content that you can feel free to consume or share with your friends and family such a great point and if you have the question we've probably made content on it which is so great from setting up your grill to burning it in everything like that but one other resource we both love so much is using the app right so again whether you're looking to use it for inspiration you can search by type of food or whether you're using it to help control your cook to have it notify you at a certain temperature or turn it up or down it's phenomenal it is the app is uh can't miss yeah so if you've enjoyed this today we have a library of other trigger kitchen lives where we have fired up the girls every time uh amanda's done something i've done some matt pittman we've had a great great group of uh folks come in and teach those so you can go over to traeger.com and check out traeger tv and all those trigger kitchen lives are there also if you've enjoyed this we have a private table shop class that we've been doing those have been great amanda's done some i've done some so 12 to 15 people we do it through zoom very interactive you get to know the people really well i think i now have someone that's been to four wow of mine so he's getting the frequent flyer benefits yeah um but it is really cool you get to connect with people and you know brisket that's one that i do that i love because i'll trim my brisket and then i say okay stop all you guys have their cameras they have their briskets i help them trim every one of theirs so it's just really cool really interactive so if you like that make sure go over to trader.com backslash shop class and you can check out all the private table offerings there yeah those classes are so amazing and honestly i've enjoyed them so much while we've had to regroup and figure out how to come to people absolutely i get to cook and people it's very intimate and that they're showing me what they're making i can give advice and i'm meeting people from all over the country maybe who hadn't come here to take a shop class so i've really enjoyed them they're so much fun i can't wait to do another one next week so it's good yeah it's really good um the other thing to stay up to speed on everything we're doing here at traeger make sure you can sign up for our emails and follow us follow us on social you'll get all the scoop from us okay also do we have any more questions yeah last round okay what's the best newbie grill for a small family what are you gonna say i am going to go with probably a pro 575 um because you can get up to 500 degrees right you've got the wi-fi technology um and i think that would be a great grill for a small family to get started it's at a very reasonable price point right um so that's i think that's where i'd go i think that's a great suggestion you get all of the bells and whistles you know that it can get up to a high temp and if you're really not cooking for a crowd i tend to cook a ton of food at once and that's why i go towards towards something larger but that probably a perfect start yeah i think that would be good yeah so go buy that 575 and let us know how you like it report back what else what are our go-to recipes right now man do you want me to go first you need to think go ahead yes well it's funny now we're talking the moroccan chicken i'm making with the roasted root vegetables and i do it with a chermula green herb sauce that's so easy to make that's my go-to on i've made six different types of it on the traeger i love it so much but again these sheet pan dinners so the sheet pan salmon where i can throw on vegetables and it all cooks together or the chicken with the caramelized onions and fennel i mean they're magical and they're easy yeah i would say when it comes to one of my favorites i mean i think it's it's brisket i've always said yeah i mean yes please if you don't like brisket you've never had good brisket or you're vegan so that's that's kind of the way it works for me so i like we have a ton of brisket recipes um on the app and on the website so i like running those that's probably my fav go-to it makes sense considering you're really good at it oh thank you i'm not eating my brisket compared to yours no way oh what are some must-have accessories what do you love i love the i remember the first time i was here and i saw it and i'm like man what's that hook and i'm like they're like that's not a hook that's a pigtail oh looks kind of cool you know yeah get in the back alley fight or something i know i had no idea what it was and uh and so then i started looking at it and i was like and now i don't use tongs much i don't use spatula that pigtail i move everything whether it be pork loins um chops anything like that it's just so great for moving food around oh my gosh it's so funny i did not know what it was like i got a starter kit i'm like what is this thing and then i hear this everybody loves it for that so i think my favorite tool i'm not allowed to say it's my pig grill which i'm obsessed with but we have an extra large spatula is that what we call it it is so big that you can put an entire pork butt on it you can put a whole chicken on it and so when you're working with hot food and you're trying to get something on or off the grill it is amazing really nice i love that thing that's my go-to yeah i can agree with that one i've got one of those okay what's the most unique thing we've cooked on our grill you go first i have to think about this most unique thing i've cooked on my grill we've had some wild hogs oh nice uh some alligator we've done a couple of gators uh rattlesnake python dang it's pretty exhausting i'm gonna go home mine are boring yeah wild turkey wow yeah there was one we did a world turkey hunt championships and i think i grilled 375 wild turkey breasts stop it in like a four day period yeah oh that's so insane like you i'm a rookie that's crazy that is so crazy um i i here i thought the exotic things one thing i did that somebody taught me or suggested around here is that i smoked water to make smoked ice cubes so for cocktails you know to put in like with the whiskey and people i did very useful oh so good so i'm like people are like what are you doing i'm smoking water it was incredible but then i think it's really cool when i do desserts on the traeger and people don't expect it so if i want to add a little smoke flavor to something to like a caramel sauce but i've even done i did peppermint ice cream on the grill and i just did the i um infused the cream and the half and half with a vanilla bean and just put a little smoke on it it was remarkable so i like to do things where people are like there's no way and then they're like why does this taste so good it's trigger i traded it triggered it i triggered it what are our favorite models i love this i'll ask you yours first because we okay favorite trigger model i love the ironwood 885 it's my daily driver i use it all the time just love the feature package and just super consistent turns out great food my one b to that is the ranger i absolutely love the ranger if you're just cooking for yourself or a small group going to tailgate anything of that nature the ranger is awesome and i have to give an honorable mention shout out to the pro 34 right here because that grill i have cooked tens of thousands of pounds of food on isn't that crazy and it is a workhorse it is a great grill so yeah more than one i gave you some choices there how about you amanda uh this is my workhorse we agree this just does everything i needed to do every day i can't pick my pig grill because honestly i don't even cook on the pig grill that much i just like having her around while i cook so this would be it and yeah i love it so much did you say the pig is your emotional support grill my pig is my emotional support girl i it's just like her name's poppy she hangs out with me people know in traeger lives now that usually she's in the set she's just my buddy i mean i was home alone for a year yeah so yeah i love her oh i think we have the answer to that yes so what is the best model for cold climate and windy conditions i you got to go with the timberline i mean there's so much insulation in that grill right cooked in some pretty harsh conditions of that grill and then sat there and watched it stay within two three degrees of set temperature so a heavier grill a little you know a little little pricier than some of the other models but well well worth it when you look at what you're getting and how it's built i agree i mean you just can't beat the insulation on it and it really can withstand any temperature it's amazing yeah it does a great job yeah worth it all right last question last question [Music] [Laughter] i just ordered my third trigger how many is too many asking for oh oh so somebody just ordered their third trigger they want to know if that's too much and they're asking for a friend no you're just getting started just getting started yeah no that that is great and that's what we love about the trader community and the trigger nation is you know people you know they start they go to small grill then they want to upgrade and they have a you know now they're doing so much stuff on their triggers now they want two traegers and this guy's got going three i mean it's it's awesome i've been there and i people are like there's no way you would ever use all of these grills guess what i decided one year i was gonna do friendsgiving for 50 people who had nowhere to go i used every grill i worked it so hard so you can't yes you need different girls for different reasons you love some for one thing and another for another so don't call us until you hit double digits if you hit double digits we may consider an advantage but we'll see what happens i love it so good so all right we are done with questions we did i think we have covered it all i think we did cover it all that was really fun chad yes and real quick before we close up i want to thank everybody behind the scenes here also amazing amanda and i have been up here but they have really spent the last several weeks getting everything ready for us and it's just been awesome and we're super happy to uh to have been able to do this for you so real quick thanks again for joining us make sure and remember traeger.com backslash 101. yeah now it's time let's quit talking about it let's quit reading about it let's go and get something on the trigger thank you for joining us thank you and don't forget tag us when you cook show us at trigger grills or trigger we want to see what you're making so thanks chad that was amazing thank you so fun bye everybody take care see ya you

Channel: Traeger Grills

Views: 44,810

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Id: MP6vk4e1CXA

Length: 66min 15sec (3975 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021