Using up undesirable pellets

[rossn]

I'm new to pellet smokers. Picked one up from someone moving, and it happened to have Traeger Apple Pellets. Having read up a little here, I went out and got a bag of hickory and competition lumberjack pellets.

So, I have most of a bag of the traeger pellets around, and today I have two butts going with the competition pellets. My understanding is that the meat takes most of the smoke/flavor in the first few hours.

Half way through should I add and use up some of those traeger pellets, or will that do something odd to the flavor or cooking?

Thanks!

 

[SweetHeatBBQnSC]

Use those pellets if you ever wrap something. Also, cooking at higher temps you get way less smoke so it probably wouldn't make that big of a difference then.

 

[tom b]

you can just mix them in with the good at a low percentage to use them up

 

[thirdeye]

Actually the smoke ring stops forming when the exterior of the meat reaches 140°, which takes a couple hours with many things like briskets or butts. But you can keep piling on the smoke until the meat is inedible.

Fun fact #2 is that I've seen several surveys of people's favorite pellets and Traeger pellets are usually near the top. I think it's somewhat due to the fact that Traeger has marketed cookers and pellets for a long time and people are sort of conditioned to the flavor they produce.

 

[Porcine Perfection]

I don't think any pellets are bad if they are pellets made for cooking. I like Lumberjack Comp but it is readily available where I live. If someone gifted me a bag of anything else I would have no problem using it. I am sure some are better than others, but I don't think the differences are as drastic as say charcoal.

Sent from my Pixel 6a using Tapatalk