The best wood pellet flavours for any BBQ course

After you get yourself a shiny new wood pellet grill, you’ll be faced with a bit of a dilemma—what are the best wood pellet flavours? Picking wood pellets for your grill isn’t too hard to do, but it does require some thought.

Smoking has become a popular way to introduce interesting new flavours to grilling. It involves slow-cooking meat on a wood pellet grill, allowing the terpenes and flavonoids from the burning pellets to bathe the meat and add flavour.

Wood-fired smoke can enhance almost anything you grill over a wood pellet grill so the type of wood pellet you use will determine what kind of flavour it’ll add to the meat.

In this blog post, we’ll take a look at the best wood pellet flavours you can try for grilling.

What are some tips for choosing wood pellets?

Before diving into the best flavours of wood pellets, however, let’s first deal with what you need to consider when choosing smoking wood pellets.

Pick high-quality wood pellets

There are many, many options for wood pellets available, but not all of them are of the best quality. If you want to get the best out of your wood pellet grill, you’ll want to choose the best-quality wood pellets that you can find.

Most high-quality wood pellets are made entirely of natural food-grade wood, unlike low-quality wood pellets that have fillers, binding agents, and bark. Also, high-quality wood pellets offer a long-lasting flavour and even smoke.

Avoid using heating pellets

Compared to smoker wood pellets, heating pellets are less expensive. The thing is, these pellets are made of wood-burning stoves and aren’t suitable for use on a wood pellet grill. Heating pellets are usually made from non-food-grade ingredients, such as pine and plywood.

Pine and plywood, however, aren’t safe ingredients to smoke meat with. So while these pellets are great for warming up your home, they should never be used for smoking food.

Decide between mild or strong flavours

Flavours of wood pellets can be classified as mild or strong, so it’s important to see which wood pellets offer mild and strong flavours before using them for smoking meat. 

For instance, wood pellets with strong flavours may not work for some BBQ recipes and may overwhelm the dish. In cases like this, you should opt for wood pellets that give off a mild flavour.

What are the best wood pellet flavours for BBQ?

Here is a selection of wood pellets that give some of the best flavours for smoking meat.

Cherry

Cherry wood pellets add a sweet and fruity flavour that’s subtle and not too strong for your food. They also give off a robust smoke that promises a wonderful overall flavour.

Alder

These wood pellets offer a mild flavour and aroma. Alder wood pellets are very versatile and go well with almost any kind of meat or vegetable you’re grilling.

Hickory

This is probably the most popular type of wood pellet used for smoking, mainly because of its strong flavour. Hickory goes well with many types of meat and can be mixed with other wood pellets, such as applewood pellets to tone down the flavour if needed.

Apple

Applewood pellets can add a light, fruity flavour to the meat. These wood pellets work especially well when smoking chicken.

Mesquite

Mesquite adds a delicious smoky flavour to your food. They’re a great choice if you want to infuse meat cuts like brisket with a hearty and robust smoky taste.

Oak

Milder than hickory but stronger than applewood, oak wood pellets offer a balanced nutty flavour with just the right amount of smokiness.

Add some zing to any BBQ course with wood pellet flavours

Wood pellets are a great way to add smokiness and unique flavours to your meat. There are many kinds of wood pellets available and when paired with the right food, you can create dishes that’ll tantalise anyone’s taste buds!

Get yourself the perfect wood pellets for any BBQ course today!