Louisianna Black Label review 2021
I recently decided to take the plunge and invest in a big boy grill for the first time and thought this would be a good opportunity to review the new one and explore the 2 ends of the pellet grill market, some pro’s and cons and general comparisons and what someone might look for when buying one. If you have no idea what the hell a pellet grill is or why you would want to grill pet food then look no further than this article here detailing your new favourite kitchen appliance that you won’t need to clear out cupboard space to fit.
The Assembly
First off, don’t be me. Have a friend, preferably a big burly one give you a hand moving this thing around. They’re big, heavy and awkward and I managed to scratch up my bumper paint, dump this thing on my ankle and was very close to having the new neighbours realize that I was anything but a perfect gentleman. After having wheeled this thing around on a dolly, fought the epic battle of getting it past the ball pit rock slopes and heaving this thing end over end up the deck stairs, I was ready to assemble. There’s a time-lapse video for your viewing displeasure. Overall the experience of assembly was pretty satisfactory and is quite manageable on one’s own though a second set of hands-on a couple of occasions would have been of benefit. I was at it about an hour with a couple of trips for a couple of odds and ends, Check-in’s from my furry supervisor and the neighbours getting curious and excited. Once assembled plan for a 30 min-1hr burn-off to prepare for cooking.
More Powder coating than your truck parts
Initial impressions of the grill are overwhelmingly positive. Build quality is overall quite excellent. A couple of very minor nitpicks, while attempting to remove the finger guard from the hopper, I found 1 of the 4 screws to seemingly be the wrong screw, and a second one had a stripped head that I will have to cut out to remove the guard (It’s my finger and I can crush it in the auger if I want to!), do note however that most people would never remove or notice these particular peculiarities. The metal has a nice powder coat finish and the omnidirectional wheels provide easy maneuvering and locking to set in place. The shelf is handy to have and folds down and out of the way which is nice when not in use. The metal used for the barrel is much heavier than what is on my smaller Pitboss 440 and found it held steady on the temperature more consistently.
We decided to christen the new grill with a packers brisket, some corn and garlic & cheese bread rolls. Everything turned out delicious as expected and will be using it extensively on.. well most anything that needs cooking because honestly everything just tastes better coming off the smoker. Overall quite pleased with the new grill and looking forward to an easier, more convenient year-round bbq season!
Which Pellet Grill is right for you?
Now for the comparisons! If you’ve become smoker curious over the last year like many others and are entertaining the thought of jumping in I do have some considerations for you. While purchasing the smallest, cheapest smoker may seem like a good idea at the beginning you may find some drawbacks as we did.
- Temperature Stability: Overall the smaller unit works great, however, if like me you live in an area of the world that gets the dreaded season called winter, then you can expect to have some troublesome battles with the grill. During colder weather, we found the grill could flame out forcing a manual restart. The restart would often result in a large temperature swing upwards afterwards as it burns through the extra pellets. In general, temperature instability was a concern the colder it got. Shorter cooks it was a bit of a nuisance, for longer stuff like briskets it was absolutely infuriating some moments. Unfortunately, to rub salt in the wound, there doesn’t appear to be a winter blanket available for the smaller models which could have solved or at least alleviated this issue for all but the coldest days.
- Sear plate operation: Another feature that might be missed is that the smaller unit doesn’t have a manual lever arm to operate the grill slide plate for searing. While the unit does have a sear plate it involves a dance of moving whatever it is you’re cooking and using two utensils/tools to lift the grate and slide the plate over, hardly efficient bbq’ing!
- Size: The last major consideration would be the size. For a lot of people, a smaller size might be necessary or preferred. The small size can work great for 1-3 people in most cases, but as you inevitably explore the new horizons of smoked dishes and low and slow cooking, you may find it’s easy to run out of space once you start throwing on a brisket or a couple of racks of ribs, or maybe just a veggie grill tray. Grill space was the lowest priority reason for an upgrade for us, the smaller unit was more than capable of handling some monster briskets, ribs, chicken and lots of steaks!
- Pellets: This is actually a major pro, the little 440 is a Honda Civic compared to the gas guzzling 800 series. Overall your fuel consumption should be much lower on the smaller series smokers which is ultimately good for the pocket book!
Dinner time game changer
The one big takeaway is that it’s just not another bbq, whatever your bbq habits were before, you will likely expand and explore more as it is just so easy, with so many new options that didn’t seem to exist before. We purchased the smaller unit thinking it would be more than enough but found ourselves trying to bbq/smoke year-round including the dead of winter for the first time ever, found ourselves trying different cuts of meat beyond the basic burger and steaks we had been accustomed to. We started using it rather than our oven for items like pizza, bread and virtually anything we would stick in the oven.
What about you guys? Are you thinking about jumping in on the action? Or have you already made the leap? Did you make the same decision as us and buy small and realizing that some of those extra features and quality perks of the big ones were suddenly more important with increased usage? Let me know in the comments below!