In today’s review, we will look at the Z grills pellet grill. This is the 700 series, and specifically, this is the Z GRILLS Wood Pellet Grill Smoker 700D. We will be doing an initial walk around on it: the initial startup and a burn-in.
So let’s get going, and as a bonus, we’re going to do a test to find out where the hotspots are right to start with. So, this barrel part is double-walled, and it’s 2 millimetres thick, not the thickest out there, but certainly thicker than some of them. The lid is stainless steel, and the hopper lid is stainless steel. I want to mention the Z grills because they are mass-produced, which would probably account for the side it’s not entirely flush; there’s a little bit of play there. Not a major deal-breaker for me because I’m going to put a gasket on it anyway. I would probably put a gasket on any smoker or grill that I buy, so not a big deal.
It also has a PID controller if you don’t know what a PID controller is. The PID controller helps you maintain your temps without having to open your vents, close your ducts, and dial them in the open. Your grill doors or, you know, things like that, so inside you have your warming rack and you have your main cooking rack. Your warming rack is 26 in length by 6 and a half in width. At the bottom, you’re looking at 26 in length and 19 in width. Also, on the inside, you have an RTD temp probe.
You also have an inlet here where your two included temp probes go. So when you remove your cooking grates. You’ll see that you have a grease drain pan, and you’ll notice it’s set up at an angle. I also want to mention the grease drain pan. They recommend that you cover that with aluminum foil if that’s what you want to do, but it’s not necessary now.
After you remove the grease drain pan, you’ll notice that there’s a heat baffle in there. And after you remove the heat baffle, you’ll see you’ll have your hopper burner that sits in there. This is where your pellets will fall out from the auger into the burner and have storage. Below there are two magnetic doors there, and when you open those up, you can fill that full of pellets or cooking utensils or whatever you want, so the hopper has a capacity of 20 pounds. It’s pretty simple; open it up and toss in your pellets. So, if you look down inside, you’ll see that there’s a little Corkscrew little thingy that spins, and that’s called your auger. So once you put the pellets in there, the auger starts spinning, and it will actually push your pellets through the tube and then into that hopper burner.
And on the back of this, which is what I like about this Z grill. It has a pellet clean out, so if you’re, say, doing cherry pellets and you want to switch out to oak or some other type of pellet, you can drain the pellets you have in there and then put in your new pellets.
It’s also worth mentioning that it has this little pull handle. I also want to mention those Castor wheels. You have two in the front, the two in the front, and then you have the locking ones in the rear.
You can pick up one of this Z GRILLS Wood Pellet Grill Smoker 700D, this same model, for about $629. That’s not including shipping. There may be free shipping; I’m not sure you’ll have to go to Amazon. If you have this shipped to you, it comes not put together, so it’ll probably take 1 hour and a half.
It took me about an hour, 15 minutes, and if you put one of these together before then, you’ll probably have it together in like 30 minutes. Anyway, let’s get that burn in started. To start your burn-in, you’re going to open up your lid. You’re going to remove your cooking grates, remove your grease trap or your grease.
We’re going to plug in the unit and hit the power button. Please don’t hold it in; push it. Then we’re going to set it. To smoke, you’re going to make sure you open the hopper lid. That hopper should start spinning, which you want to see. You want to see it begin to move, and it’ll just move for a few seconds, then it’ll stop and then about 30 or 60 seconds later, it’ll start moving again, and it’s at barely moves. And also, after you see it moving, you want to make sure that you hear the fan running, and you’ll feel a little bit of air coming out. And now what we want to do is we want to see some smoke or at least smell some smoke. Now, if you’re going to do is you want to add some pellets, you don’t have to add a lot, maybe one to two pounds.
Right now, what you are going to do is you’re going to set Z GRILLS Wood Pellet Grill Smoker 700D to high. We will let that go until we see pellets start dropping into our fire hopper. There were going to leave everything open, and once we see the pellets start dropping into our hopper burner there, we’ll move on to the next step. So, our pellets have begun to fall, so you’re going to turn it off. Then turn it on immediately back to smoke.
We’re going to wait until we get flames, and then we’ll move on to the next step. Now that we got our flames let’s put our heat baffle and the grease tray. Put your cooking grates back in. Leave everything open, and when we start seeing a lot of smoke, we’re going to go ahead and close it up, and we’re going to turn it to high for 45 minutes.
So we got my maverick here—425 reading on that 425 on that. And again, I have the centre of the great. Here is where I have my maverick set up now. I will say this, I don’t know if I mentioned it, but this pellet grill has a temp rating between as low as 180 all the way up to 450.
We have been going for 25 minutes now, and I still haven’t reached 450 yet. It’s taken a while now; it could be because of this gap that I told you guys about earlier. Now that I could be losing some heat there. It’s actually a bit about 55 minutes. My Mavericks fluctuated between 449 and 451. So, what we’re going to do is I’m going to wait a bit more. I’m still smelling some nasty stuff, so I’m just going to let it keep rolling at 450 for just a little bit longer, maybe another 10 minutes.
We’re going to turn it back on to smoke, and then we’ll let it go for another 10 minutes. And then we’ll be done with the burn-in. So it’s been 10 minutes. Let’s shut it down. Now it’s going to take; 5 or 10 minutes for the fan to cut off and shut down. So let it cool down completely, and then we’ll start our hot spot test.
We’ve let our Z GRILLS Wood Pellet Grill Smoker 700D completely cool. We turn it back on. I’ve got it set for 225 degrees, so we will take some tortillas and lay them out. Alright, we’ll let him go. Maybe we’ll see 15 minutes or so, and then we will start cooking the brisket in this and see how it goes.
It’s a big piece of brisket which I’m going to cook on this grill. I will put a lovely rub on this, so we hopefully turn it into smoke.
Oh, and now we’ve got some smoke to close the lid and take her up to 107. OK, so we’re just setting up probes in our meat and behind the meat to monitor the temperature inside the grill. Alright, we’ve got two temperatures, so we’ve got 98 and 58.
So it is 52 degrees at this end of the brisket, and we’re about 39 at the other end, and we can also see the temperature in this corner is about 101 and about 107 on this back left-hand corner. So little bit warmer. I’m going to flip the whole brisket around so that the fatter end will be at the warmer end of the grill.
I waited until we got about that 70, so I’m going to wrap it in foil, and we want to wrap this very tightly. We’re going to add a cup of beef stock into here. So we can maintain a little bit of moisture in there. It’s essential to have a nice thick foil.
We have been cooking this brisket for 9 hours. So I will do some probing and see if it’s nice and tender like butter. I will wrap it in my lovely starry cloth here and then stick this key. Let’s have a look. It’s a nice thing coming out there. Two hours later, time to slice.
OK, have a look inside. It’s not bad at all. Pretty happy with that. So bend test, pull test. It’s a pretty thick bit. But nice smoke ring. I’m actually really happy with that; the brisket has good flavor and taste, not bad at all. It’s my first try. I didn’t put a crazy amount of rub on there, but it’s really actually quite tasty. Alright, I’m just laying all these different cuts out. Brisket, brisket, brisket. Now here’s what I found. It’s a tricky bit of meat. There are so many other parts. You got these lovely long flats.
Nice smoke ring. Obviously, at the bottom, you got the fatty bits. I’m not going to try and use the proper names. I don’t know what they’re called. Still, you got like 6 different parts, all with slightly different textures, different fat levels, flavors, super tender, delicious flavor and again, the rubber had that was super simple. Still, I mean these little chunky bits at the end.
That’s fantastic, and I’m pleased with my first time using the Z GRILLS Wood Pellet Grill Smoker 700D. This wood pellet grill works great, and I highly recommend it for those searching for a great and cheaper pellet grill alternative to Traeger. I will come back later to write an update on how the Z GRILLS Wood Pellet Grill Smoker 700D performs after five to six times I have used it.