How to Use Smoking Pellets? BBQ Tips & Tricks

It’s long been recognized that having your BBQ or grilled meat absorb smoke enhances its flavor. You can use smoking pellets to produce the smoke, as they’re highly dense and contains little moisture.

Their flames burn hotter and they don’t burn out as easily. It’s also not that hard to learn how to use smoking pellets.

Using the Smoking Pellets:

It’s not really all that complicated. You don’t even have to soak them, unlike their wood chips counterparts. Use up ⅓ of a cup and that’s good for about half an hour.

The resulting tastes are also consistent, so you can get the same smoking pellets that your taste buds fancy.

You can use a smoker box for your smoking pellets, but doing so may burn up the pellets too quickly. So instead, you can just make an aluminum foil pouch, with a couple of holes on top.

So really, all you need to do is to make the foil pouch:

1. Get a 12 by 12 inch sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil.
2. Fold it in half.
3. On both short sides, fold about half an inch in and then fold again. This results in something like an envelope, with a long open side.
4. Now fill it up with the amount of smoking pellets you need, depending on how long you plan to smoke the meat. Just remember that a third of a cup equals 30 minutes of smoke.
5. Fold over the open end twice, so now your pellets are in a sealed pouch.
6. Poke a couple of small holes on one side of the pouch.
7. Put this pouch below the cooking racks over the heat plate, with the holes on top.
8. Light your grill and let it heat up.
9. You will either smell the smoke from the wood pellets, or you can see the smoke coming from the holes. Either way, it’s time to put in the meat on your grill or smoker.

Which Smoker Pellets to Use?

The type of wood pellet you get will depend entirely on what kind of smoky flavor you want your meat to absorb. Here’s a guide on what flavors you can get, depending on the wood pellet choice:

1. Really mild flavor, and suited for turkey, pork, and beef.
2. Mild smoke and it is good for just about anything you want to grill or smoke. But it’s especially good for fish and beef.
3. This is a familiar flavor for many. Its strong smoke matches well with beef, pork, chicken, and turkey.
4. Another popular choice, as it has a strong smoke too. This is good for fish, as well as beef and chicken.
5. Black walnut. Quite intense smoke, with a hint of bitterness that actually seems like walnuts. You’ll want this for venison, pork, beef, and other red meats along with game meats too. But this may be too much for poultry.
6. Light flavor that goes well with everything, but especially fish.
7. Mild smoke, good with beef, pork, chicken.
8. Another mild smoke, and great for beef, pork, chicken, and turkey too.
9. Strong, and good for everything especially pork, chicken, and turkey.

You can even mix smoking pellets if you want — it’s all up to you.