Wow... this has the potential to get interesting
I cook in an FEC-100 for competitions and larger home cooks, and in a WSM, or Egg with lump and wood chips for smaller home cooks and in my Good One offset for medium home cooks using lump as a base and wood for flavor. Each has it's own flavor profile. Is one better than the other? Hard to say. I like the food from all of them. (how's that for non-committal
) For comps I prefer the FEC for it's ability to produce consistent results under all conditions. It makes my life a little easier in a hectic environment.
As far as the animosity (if you can call it that) between pelletheads and stickburners a lot of it is good natured kidding. Guys who cook in stickburners will say that using a pellet cooker is cheating since it has a feeder for the pellets and a temperature control. So does a stickburner with a Guru or Stoker. Pelletheads will comment about getting some sleep at a competition while the stickburners are up all night (I really do wish you guys would oil your pit doors! All of that creaking is keeping me up
). Of course, there are some that take either position to an extreme, but I have found that these are not that common. Someone at the competition we were at this past weekend commented that they have seen stick burners purposely kick the power connection to pellet cookers to disconnect them. I hope that I never run into someone that malicious.
Finally, the pit (yeah, I used the P-word) is just a tool. It doesn't really matter if I stick my meat into a pellet cooker or an offset or a vertical, I still have to know how to use the tool and how to season the meat, manage the timing, etc. to produce consistent, high quality results. Look at cooks like Rod Gray of Pellet Envy. Rod is consistently at the top of the KCBS rankings and he cooks some competitions using his FECs and some competitions using his Geer. The common ground is Rod and his skills as a cook and mastery of his tools.
