Probably pulling trigger on Camp Chef Woodwind; anything I'm missing?

Hi Folks

First, a thank you for the abundance of threads on so many topics. It's made reading about my purchase easy to find.

I think I'm going to pull the trigger on the Camp Chef Woodwind Wifi 36. I'm double-checking my thinking here and would appreciate any feedback in the event I'm missing something or should be going with a different model cooker.

The main reason I'm looking at the Camp Chef vs., say, a Silverbac is the sear box. I don't like having to bring my cooks indoors to my range w/ cast iron in order to reverse sear and I don't want to set up charcoal just to finish cooks. My understand is the Camp Chef would be best at confining the sear to the unit. I also don’t like having to wait for a unit to heat up after doing low and slow.

It hits the budget sweet spot in that yes, I could afford, say, a Yoder or something else, but we're hard-core budgeters here and the Camp Chef price point is about where we'd like to be.

I currently am on a Weber Genesis running off natural gas. I use an inverted flavorizer bar w/ wood chunks and water pan to create 2-zone cooking. it works ok, but is a PITA to set up, needs monitoring and tweaking and feeding of wood for the first 2 hours on longer cooks, and sometimes just doesn't work right. Once i'm into a longer cook it is *almost* set and forget. Just needs tweaking. quality of food is consistent with other attempts at gas bbq smoking.

I was going to just get a weber kettle and use a slow-n-sear or similar for more flavorful cooks, but I have to accept the reality that i have 2 young kids and the number of times I'm going to be able to properly tend to a cooker is limited - even a weber kettle.

Typical items I cook: pork butts, ribs, chicken/holiday turkey, thick steaks/tri-tip w/ reverse sear. I also like to smoke salmon and grill some veggies. Burgers occasionally, also reverse sear. I want to get into cooking brisket, but have been too reticent given my setup.

I'm thinking a pellet cooker + weber kettle or PBC for those times I want to do something different / have the time is going be optimal. Any thoughts?

I'm thinking I'll get the sear box since I currently bring my cooks indoors to finish on my BlueStar range w/ cast iron. I don't see I'll use extra features of the sidekick since the grill will be exclusively in my backyard. Also, the idea of open flame reverse searing sounds great.

Anyway, that's my thinking. Any feedback is appreciated before pulling the trigger.

Thank you.

matt

WeldonG said:

Sweet. I love their commercial, hilarious

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...BMAF6BAgBEAQ&usg=AOvVaw0xbCJDKYBTC84ZuO7b8xZQ

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

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Ok, I avoided all corporate advertising in my search so hadn't seen that. That was great.

Chris2 said:

I got a Woodwind about 2 months ago and I love it. No problems so far.

I went with the Sidekick rather than the sear box. I figured I had more options than just a dedicated sear grill. I was pretty much set on the sear box right up until the night before I ordered it. I found a couple reviews that changed my mind.

Not that one is better than the other, I just decided I liked the options of the Sidekick more. I bought the pizza oven with it but haven't used it yet.

I did give it a test fire this weekend and according to the IR gun it hit about 775 deg. You won't be sorry either way!

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Hi

Can you point me to the review that compared the two? I couldn't find anything that I felt really assured me the sidekick would do a good sear. To be clear, I don't even think my weber genesis given 15min to warm up does very well on more than 1 side of a steak. Burgers w/ grill grates does just fine though. Big roasts? Forget it.

I like the idea of having future options in the event I change my mind, but I'm so tired to crappy sear on reverse sear or having to make a mess on my range...

Chris2 said:

I got a Woodwind about 2 months ago and I love it. No problems so far.

I went with the Sidekick rather than the sear box. I figured I had more options than just a dedicated sear grill. I was pretty much set on the sear box right up until the night before I ordered it. I found a couple reviews that changed my mind.

Not that one is better than the other, I just decided I liked the options of the Sidekick more. I bought the pizza oven with it but haven't used it yet.

I did give it a test fire this weekend and according to the IR gun it hit about 775 deg. You won't be sorry either way!

Click to expand...

Hi

Thank you for the reply. Can you point me to the review that you felt influenced your decision? The need of access to an adequate sear method is a major player in my decision and I worry the sidekick will be insufficient.

For reference, I don't like the sear that I get on my genesis after full blast for 15min - particularly on the 2nd side. It is a bit older though, so that could be part of it.

thank you.

Just put in the order. They also had a 'coupon' good for a free cover w/ order of a grill + sear box.

I ended up getting the sear box based on salesperson recommendation. It's 30% hotter than the sidekick and, given my issues i'm trying to resolve, is the best choice, it appears. It does sound like the sidekick would be a sear similar to that of my weber genesis on full blast for 15min. That would be adequate, but not what I'm looking for.

Thank you! I'll report back.

Shipment arrives Friday!

Hi folks

I was able to put the unit together and do a quick cook of some sausages. Pros and cons to be sure as well as some significant issues to figure out.

Packaging was pretty good and came apart / unpacked well. Some slight scratches on the inside of the lid, but I didn't see it as a big deal. I assume the box got turned upside down and something banged around in there.









I had watched a youtube video about the use of the unit where the reviewer said the put it together in 45-60min. They must have had experience putting together similar units or perhaps just had more patience...but the directions were pretty bad. Not like ikea furniture bad - just details missing that would have really helped. Like a list of parts included so I could know what is what instead of figuring it out as I went along. Sometimes screws were referred to as bolts and vice versa - seemed to change all the time, so it was sometimes hard to figure what they were wanting sometimes. The pictures of what was to be installed were so small I had to take pictures on my phone and blow them up.

On some occasions, directions just said, "Install with supplied hardware" (like on the sear station) Well, there was a whole bunch of stuff in there so the heck if I knew which washers they wanted me to use. I ended up having to reinstall a few bolts to include some washers that weren't specified, that kind of thing. Not a huge deal, but a PITA. Took me like 3hrs to put the damn thing together, which is ridiculous. It wasn't 100% the unit/directions as I sure my incompetence played a role. However, regardless, there are definitely ways to improve the directions. Heck, I had to dig into a sub-box to even find the manual with the directions. The manual should be the first thing somebody finds when they open up the main box.

Once I had it together, startup went fine. Did the burn-in and all seemed well. However, I noticed that my phone would disconnect frequently from the controller. Upon investigation, the controller isn't receiving a strong signal from my wifi. The unit is no more than 30' from the base station/router. The unit told me an udpate was required, but the signal wasn't strong enough. I eventually had it use my phone as wifi (still showed 3 parts while standing next to it). Update went fine after that.

I can now read the temperature of the unit, but it doesn't appear I can make any changes. it's pretty strange. I'm going to try calling Camp Chef Monday and see what's up.

Because I'm an idiot, I put on a brisket tonight at 160 "low smoke" setting. It has an auto-setting for "high smoke" (220 and max smoke) or "low smoke" (160 and max smoke). Strangely, the smoke setting says it's at 2 even though it goes 1-10. I can't seem to change it via the phone. Weird. Possible user error.

For now, it's on there and will stay a the lower setting before upping it to normal temp. That method has been discussed here, it appears. Build quality appears consistent with price point. It comes with 4 probes, which is great. However, the probes are short-ish and broad and were somewhat difficult to insert into the brisket. I'll be checking to see if some thinner probes are available.

update tomorrow....

The sear station did work pretty great though