Lumber Jack Wood Pellets vs. Traeger Pellets

If you own a wood pellet grill, then you've already experienced great tasting, juicy and smokey flavored meals.  When I first bought my Traeger, I was super excited!  I walked into Costco picked up the Big Tex and a bag of Supreme Blend Traeger brand wood pellets.

The next few months I experimented with different flavors of Traeger pellets.  But I was a little underwhelmed by the results. The food I was smoking looked great.  Great crust and great smoke ring, but no smoke flavor. Now don't get me wrong, the food tasted great.  But there was no distinct smoke flavoring to it.  

So I started to do some research, and what I found was pretty interesting.   What I found is that not all wood pellets are created equal. Here's what I discovered about Traeger brand pellets. 

Traeger pellets are made of 70% filler wood and 30% flavor wood. For example, if you buy a bag of Apple Wood, it's 70% alder wood and 30% apple wood. There are some articles that suggest that Traeger uses oils to flavor their pellets but there's no confirmation since the company isn't required to list the ingredients in their product.

Discovering this information confirmed what I believed about Traeger pellets. So I started experimenting with different pellet brands. I tried quite a few before discovering Lumber Jack Wood Pellets.

Lumber Jack Wood Pellets are harvested and chip them up as green chips, with full flavor to make the BBQ pellets.  They use the bark and core of the tree flavor your buying to get the full smoke flavor of that particular pellet.  Just as if you were burning a whole log.  Also, their competition blends produce less ash, which means less build up in your fire pot.

The best part of Lumber Jack is the price. $25 for a 40 lb bag and $15 for a 20 lb bag.  Depending how often your using your grill, it can last you for a month to 3 months. Not bad compared to propane, charcoal and Traeger pellets.  Plus you're getting a much better quality pellet.

So there's my take. I hope it was helpful. Oh yeah, for those of you who don't have a pellet grill, you're in luck. You can still use pellets to smoke on your charcoal or propane grill.

They sell what's called a "Smokin Wedgie" .  You place the pellets in it and fire it up and you'll get hours of great smoke.

I just ordered one and will follow up with a review of that product.

Thanks again and feel free to get a hold of me with any questions.