Pellet Grill vs Gas Grill – Which is Better?

Purchasing a barbecue used to be a very simple affair. Perhaps you had a few brands to choose from, and the key issue was which brand provided the greatest quality within your budgetary limits.

Grills are offered in a wide variety these days. If you want a multifunctional barbecue that is simple to operate, the decision is between a pellet or gas grill.

However, there are variations between these two kinds of grills that will influence your selection. Do you want a barbecue that specializes at low and slow smoking? Or do you like a grill that will produce excellent sear marks on your steak?

Let’s take a deeper look at pellet and gas grills, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of each kind of barbecue.

Pellet Grill vs Gas Grill Overview

Before you select which grill is best for you, let’s go over some major distinctions. While they both include the term grill in their names, they are quite distinct types of grills.

Pellet and gas cookers both provide speed and convenience in a user-friendly packaging.

Pellet grills are excellent set-and-forget cooks. Consider them to be more like an outdoor oven. They cook low and slow and provide a mild smoky taste to your meal by burning wood pellets.

You’ve probably heard of pellet smokers and pellet grills. They are just various methods of saying the same thing.

In fact, pellet smoker may be a better moniker, given they produce much superior smokers than grills.

Pellet grills are often more expensive than gas barbecues, and pellets are not as widely accessible as gas.

So, if speed, cost-effectiveness, and superb sear marks on your steak are important to you, you may want to check into gas.

When cooking at medium-high temperatures, gas grills truly shine. You can usually locate a gas grill that fits your budget, and gas is a fuel that burns efficiently. A gas barbecue will also heat up quickly.

Having stated that, at lower temperatures, gas grills do not perform as well as pellet grills. The insulation is inadequate, making smoking on a gas barbecue problematic.

We have thorough recommendations to help you pick the best pellet grill and the best gas grill, so check them out when you’re ready to narrow down your options.

Related: Pellet Grill vs Charcoal Grill

Pellet Grill Overview

Outdoor oven with grilling capabilities.It’s a little perplexing to refer to these cookers as grills. It is best seen through the eyes of a smoker.

As pellet grills gain popularity, the number of manufacturers producing these cookers expands. Rec Tec, Yoder, Traeger, and Z Grills are all well-known brands among barbecue fans.

Pellet grills cook food using indirect heat and a convection fan, similar to an oven. Pellet grills need an electrical connection to run the fan and other components of the grill.

This Pit Boss graphic explains how pellet grills function.

Smoking wood pellets are manufactured from compressed sawdust fashioned into cylinders similar to huge chicken feed pellets. These are put in the hopper, a huge container. It is often located on the unit’s side or rear.

At the bottom, the hopper is fashioned like a funnel, and it feeds the pellets into the auger. The auger resembles a giant screw that gently rotates and feeds the pellets into the firepot.

Inside the firepot is a rod that warms up and glows red. When the pellets come into touch with this rod, they ignite, producing the smoke and heat that cooks your meal.

The fan circulates the smoke and heat across the grill’s cooking surface. Many pellet smokers will also have a heat baffle to properly disperse heat over the cooking surface.

Advantages of the Pellet Grills:

• Extremely practical After you’ve loaded the hopper with pellets and adjusted the temperature, all you have to do is sit back, relax, and wait for your meal.
• Fuel-efficient, low-cost operation Pellet grills use a convection fan, therefore they are incredibly efficient. This means you’ll pay less for pellets than you would for charcoal.
• Simple to maintain Pellet grills, unlike charcoal grills, do not produce much ash. Aside from cleaning the cooking surfaces, you may need to clear out the fire pot on occasion.
• Pellet grills are versatile since they can smoke, roast, bake, barbeque, and grill (but the sear will not be as excellent as a charcoal grill).
• Quick Within 15 minutes, your pellet grill should be heated up and ready to cook.

Disadvantages of Pellet Grills:

• They must be plugged in. Pellet grills are heavier and less portable than other kinds of barbecues. They are not suited for camping unless you have a generator or a method to connect them to power. If you do have a power supply, there are several wonderful portable pellet grills available.
• Not the cheapest choice for purchasing To get a high-quality pellet grill, you must be willing to spend some money. Expect to spend at least $400.
• A store of emergency pellets is a requirement. Smoking pellets are a more specialized item. While you can simply go down the road and get additional coal, this is not always practical with pellets, unless you live near a speciality barbeque shop. Obtaining the pellets you need may necessitate placing an order with Amazon.
• There is less smoke and heat. Pellet burners, unlike stick burners, do not emit a pronounced smoky taste. As previously said, they do not achieve the same high temperatures as other kinds of grills, therefore you should not anticipate beautiful sear marks. Some models, such as the Camp Chef Wodwind, allow you to circumvent this by buying a sear grill adapter.

For a more detailed explanation, see our page What Is a Pellet Grill and How to Use a Pellet Grill.

Gas Grill Overview

Grilling at high temperatures for short periods of time is best suited to gas grills. Some grills, however, have lids and other features that enable them to be used for indirect cooking as well.

Gas grills may run on propane or natural gas; however, which kind you should choose is a topic for another discussion! To be clear, we will focus on LPG grills in this piece since they are more often used.

The gas is held in a gas bottle, which is normally located underneath the grill’s cooking surface.

The gas enters the manifold via the gas regulator hose. The manifold is a tube that runs the length of the kitchen.

The gas is subsequently fed into valves through the manifold. These valves are used to regulate the quantity of gas burned, which in turn controls the temperature.

Some gas grills have an infrared burner that uniformly distributes heat. Most gas grills, on the other hand, will feature flame-producing burners. Because food is not grilled directly over the flame, heat must be distributed uniformly around the grill.

Briquettes are one method for doing this. On a rack, they are placed right on top of the flame. The briquettes are heated by the flame. Your meal is placed on a rack on top of these briquettes, and the heat is dispersed evenly to cook it.

We offer a comprehensive instruction on how to smoke on a gas barbecue.

Advantages of the Gas Grill:

• Excellent for grilling This is a clear benefit. When cooking at higher temperatures, gas grills truly shine. While they may be used as smokers, they do not perform as well while cooking low and slow as other varieties of grill.
• Cheap You may purchase a gas barbecue to fit almost any budget. While higher-end gas grills will undoubtedly have more amenities, there are still solid options available at the lower end of the price spectrum. Gas is also a low-cost, efficient, and widely accessible fuel. A standard LPG tank will provide around 20 hours of cooking time.
• Simpleness of usage As long as your gas bottle is full and you’ve set the temperature on your gas stove correctly, your barbeque should be ready in no time.
• Gas grills should attain the optimum cooking temperature in about 10 minutes.
• Because Clean Gas is a clean-burning fuel, you will not have to clear up the ashes of burned wood or coals.

Disadvantages of Gas Grills:

• Heat conservation Gas grills need enough ventilation. As a result, the heat retention of gas grills is poor. As a result, they are lousy smokers.
• Flavor deficiency Because gas is flavorless, using it as a fuel will not impart any smoke flavor to your meal unless you use a pellet smoking tube or something similar.
• Considerations for safety A gas barbecue requires free room to function. This is done to limit the risk of fire while utilizing gas. Check your local laws and restrictions as well, since some municipal codes ban the use of gas grills.
• To begin with, temperature management might be difficult. Temperature shouldn’t be an issue if you’ve mastered your gas barbecue. However, you may need to tinker with the dials at first to ensure that the heat is exactly perfect.

Pellet Grills and Gas Grills Go Head to Head

Now that you understand the primary distinctions between these kinds of cookers, let’s have a look at how they compare in a few critical areas.

Ease of Use

Gas barbecues and pellet grills are both popular owing to their simplicity of use. Given that the most difficult aspect of grilling is starting the fire, it comes to reason that the attractive characteristic of both of these kinds of grills is that starting the fire is as simple as turning a knob.

Both are also simple to maintain, however pellet grills need you to remove the grill grates and vacuum out the burned pellet dust every few cooks to keep them working properly.

If you want to use your stove as an oven or smoker, a pellet grill is the way to go. While a gas grill can be converted into a nice smoker, it requires a little more DIY talent.

Temperature Control and Range

Pellet grills thrive at cooking low and slow, with the sweet spot being between 200 and 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Older devices will struggle to attain temperatures beyond 450°F, while newer ones, such as the Weber SmokeFire, may reach 600°F.

Most gas barbecues will easily reach 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Better grade gas grills can achieve temperatures of approximately 700°F.

However, because of the heat retention concerns that are often associated with gas grills, managing the temperatures in the lower levels may be challenging. Cheaper gas grills with poor heat retention may struggle to maintain a steady temperature of roughly 250 degrees Fahrenheit.

However, a high-quality gas grill will do a better job of maintaining constant low temperatures.

– 5F, which is rather remarkable.Pellet grills use advanced algorithms to manage the temperature, and some models may even achieve +/- 1% accuracy.

Fancy Features

Gas and pellet grills both have sophisticated bells and whistles, particularly as the price rises. However, at this stage, pellet grills are more likely to be technologically advanced.

Pellet grills are, by definition, high-tech devices. As a result, manufacturers have rushed to include technologies like as WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, integrated meat probes, and LCD panels.

Some may even be configured to keep meat at a certain temperature after the cook is finished.

Gas grills do not have automatic temperature control. Gas grills often have more classic features such as side burners and rotisseries. Some versions also have little pleasures like as interior lighting and lighted knobs.

Are Pellet Grills Healthier?

When muscle meats are cooked at high temperatures, potentially carcinogenic chemicals are generated. These chemicals have also been found in charcoal or wood smoke.

Some argue that pellet grills are a safer alternative for barbecue.According to the claim, pellet grills are designed to prevent as much of this potentially hazardous smoke from coming into touch with the food. Because pellet grills do not reach the same temperatures as traditional grills, some people believe they are a safer alternative for grilling.

However, in order for these claims to be validated, much more in-depth study is required. Indeed, according to Kristie Sullivan, a toxicologist at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, these carcinogenic chemicals may still be formed in the absence of apparent char marks on the meat.

If you want to learn more about this subject, you may read a useful article here.

Wrapping it up

We hope you found this comparison of pellet and gas grills useful.

If you are ready to spend a large sum of money on a new grill, you will undoubtedly want one that provides the most value for money and is best suited to your requirements.

While both pellet and gas grills provide excellent convenience and efficiency, there are variations that will decide which one is best for you.

Do you have a gas or a pellet grill? How did you come upon it? Do you have any advice, techniques, or questions? Please include them in the comments area below.