"Food grade" pellets my eye!!

[gmc2003]

It was my understanding that trees like pine, cedar, and other similar softwoods have harmful tars and toxins that shouldn't be eaten.
Maybe someone can confirm this.

Since they're being made into pellets I'm pretty sure the pine tar/pitch has been eliminated. That being said I still don't think I would knowingly use them.

Chris

 

[ross77]

Unless you don’t have access to hardwood pellets I see no benefit to using softwoods. The flavor alone is enough reason to skip them.

 

[bregent]

>Pine resin and you’ll get creosote when you burn it.

Actually, as I understand it, hardwood creates more creosote than softwood. In fact, beech is most often used in commercial production of creosote. So pine may be a bad choice for other reasons, but not because it produces more creosote.

 

[SonnyE]

Frankly, I'll stick with what I believe are selected hardwoods.
Most of my life, and since I was a small child, I've loved the flavor of Hickory smoked fish. (Or at least that was what the man on the pier told my dad it was) And I do remember the name 'Albacore' and 'Halibut' as choices.
So I stuck with what I liked, Hickory Chips.
Only very lately have I branched out into other smoking woods, like Alder for my Salmon smoking. It has the same smokey goodness, but a milder flavor. Not the "bite" (as I call it) that Hickory imparts.
And now I have a small amount of Apple chips. But can't say I can distinctly tell the Apple from the Alder. At least not yet.
But for all of my smoking life, I always used home made smokers. Simple enclosures, an electric heat source, and a can or container for the wood being slowly burned for it's smoke.
I always smoked for preserving and flavoring.

But now days it seems the lines have been smeared drastically. In order to sell products, anything that makes any sort of smoke gets branded a smoker. Even things that are closer to a smoker in the traditional sense, have enough heat in them to Bar-B-Que a cows butt.
They are a Smoker, but also an outdoor oven as well.
I think when Treager decided to expand their heating business by making a cooker that burns pellet fuels is where the lines began to blur. And the temperature of the art of Smoking Meat for flavor, and to preserve it, began to become a way to cook it.
In my honest opinion, I take exception to a pellet grill being called a Smoker. The temperatures in a Pellet Grill are far too high even at the very lowest. They are designed to burn pellets with an electric heating element and a fan to blast air into a chamber pot that results in a flame... roughly. They even roar.
So how could the subtle nuances of different wood species be differentiated when incinerated in such a manner?
They are about as far away from Great Grandpa's smoke house as California is from Maine.

That said, I do like the idea of pelletised wood fuel. It's absolutely great as a source of wood for smoking, cooking, and heating. It burns very consistently, and reliably in different methods. Mine is to ignite it, then let it smolder to complete incineration making the most smoke a smoldering wood can, with the least amount of heat.
But... just like 'window food' poked at you from a drive through, there is no telling what is really in it. It could be 25% cat crap made to taste good surrounded with painted meat proteins flavor enhanced with beef fat byproducts.
And we'd eat it and say Yum!
Same-o, same-o we burn the pellets, but don't really know what's truly in them. (Except if we find a chunk of plastic in them...)

It's OK to find you are confused about smoking, smokers, smoker-ovens, Pellet grills, or stick burners. The companies marketing these want you to be confused.
Just like they use terms of vagueness calling out Hardwood, when who knows what crap they made it from. It could be pelleted pallets and be a 'Blend'. But it'll burn.
Just like cow tails, bull rectums, and old leather shoes are all "Beef Byproducts". Grind them together, cook them into little chunks, and call it 100% beef dog food.

 

[ross77]

What temp am I supposed to smoke meat? I always thought 225 was the sweet spot. My pellet smoker goes down to 180 with nice blue smoke rolling out of the chimney.

But the hotter you get the less smoke is produced with a pellet cooker.

Maybe you’re referring to cold smoking?

 

[troutman]

I agree 100% with SonnyE. The pellet pooper is a great outdoor convection oven. With the advanced PID controllers and all manner of extras, it may be better then most ovens inside most homes. But lets stop calling it a "smoker" because it just is not. I just call it a cooker and leave it at that. And oh by the way, I think it does a great job of cooking, its just not the same as a smoker or a stick burner.

So let's talk a minute about the difference between a pellet cooker and a pellet heater inside a home. The heater in the home is essentially a closed system. It has some sort of heat exchanger and the radiant heat produced by burning pellets gives you the desired thermal bump you need to heat your home all cozy. The combustion gases and whatever smoke produced by the burning pellets is confined and exits the chimney. If not one would probably die of asphyxiation.

A pellet cooker, on the other hand, is an open system. It burns pellets the same way as the heater but it let's loose radiant and convective heat, combustion gases such as NO (which oh by the way is what gives you a smoke ring which should be called a combustion ring, but I digress) as well as some amount of smoke, usually acrid in nature. Since the system is somewhat contained all of that is funneled in and around the item you are cooking. So what ever that may be, noxious fumes, creosote, acids, nitric oxides; is all coming in contact with the food, not just exiting through a chimney.

Heating pellets can contain whatever they need to burn at a sufficient BTU to heat a home. They can use soft or hardwood dust (whatever is plentiful), ground up leaves from the forest floor, cardboard or even Kevin's old gym socks. They don't have to be discriminatory. Those pellets, if they contain tar or pitch or other such softwood components, give off some pretty nasty gases. In the heater who cares, in the pellet cooker we might care, or at least I care.

Heating pellets are cheaper for that reason. Cooking pellets (at least legitimate ones and I'll use Lumberjack as my example) have to cull trough and provide certain 100% woods of various species or blends of those species. That is somewhat labor intensive and requires a greater degree of quality control. Therefore a higher price point.

The other issue you have to be aware of is a lot of heater type pellets are produced near to the source of their use. I live in Texas. If I want pellets here, either heater or cooking type, I have to pay for freight. That can amount to as much as the cost of the actual pellet due to bulk and weight. That's why I buy mine at discount prices because I buy 500# at a time with 5 other guys who all split the cost of that freight. If I lived near the pellet mill, that cost goes way down. So to compare the cost of heating pellets to cooking pellets near to the mill, the cost differential is much less.

So to get back to the original topic, I would think long and hard about cooking anything with heater pellets. Yea there are no standards for either one, you are putting your trust into the hands of the producers. But saying that you don't smell anything different or taste anything different does not mean there is something that has been imparted to your cook that might affect you sight unseen. Toxic levels of pollutants in farm raised fish, as an example, cannot be detected by the naked eye or tasted when eaten. But it's still a very real problem and one I avoid. So too with heater pellets.

 

[ross77]

Actually premium heating pellets do have a standard and are regulated. And no they aren’t allowed to use gym socks or other fillers.

You should be fine if they are a member of the Pellet Fuels Institute.

http://www.pelletheat.org/participating-fuel-manufacturers


I’ve used these pellets but mostly for high heat grilling:

http://www.indeckpellets.com/ourQuality.php

 

[troutman]

The socks thing was a joke but my point is valid. I know several of the manufacturers and I hear these things from the horse's mouth. Be that as it may you can certainly use whatever pellet you think is best, but I personally am not going to risk it for low and slow, just like I would not throw a pine log on my stick burner.

As to the so called "standard" and "regulations", that's strictly voluntary. I believe they are pushing hard for some type of formal legislation or regulation that governs the body of producers, but again the standards are voluntary NOT mandatory.

 

[ross77]

By that rationale, heating and BBQ pellets would both be under a voluntary standard then.

All you can go by is what the manufacturer claims. At least with the PFI standard, the pellets are tested by a third party. There is no BBQ pellet institute standard.

If they are premium hardwood pellets from a reputable manufacturer, I don’t have a concern.

OUR TESTING
Indeck Energy Premium Wood Pellets are tested for quality both on-site and through a third-party testing firm, Twin Ports Testing, located in Superior, Wisconsin. Quality control sampling is done on-site routinely each day and a sample of our product is shipped for independent, third-party analysis in accordance with Pellet Fuels Institute (PFI) guidelines.

Indeck Energy Premium Wood Pellets consistently exceed The Pellet Fuels Institute's Premium Wood Pellet Standards.


From the Dept of Energy:
“The Pellet Fuels Institute launched the PFI Standards Program, a third-party accreditation program providing specifications for residential and commercial-grade fuel. This standard assures the consumer of the highest quality pellet when certified pellets are purchased.”