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I did manage to smoke the bacon last Sunday, and slice/package it on Monday, but it wasn't until this weekend that I managed to actually eat any of it.
First, the smoking:
The Traeger and the Bradley both offer automated smoke and temperature management, but they differ significantly in how they provide that management.
The Bradley separates smoke production from heat management, but handles both electrically.
The smoke generator is a detachable (more on this later) box that hangs on the outside of the food chamber. It's got a hopper to hold "Bisquettes" (tm), which are hockey-sized pucks (maybe a little smaller) of compressed wood chips. Every twenty minutes, the smoke generator pushes a puck from the hopper onto an electric hot plate near the bottom of the food chamber which is held at the right temperature to slowly burn the wood and let the smoke out. When the new puck loads onto the hot plate, the old one is pushed off into a small bowl of water at the bottom of the food chamber. Four or five pucks is enough to fill up the water dish, so every hour or so I go out and empty the bowl and refill it with water.
The food sits on racks above the hot plate, so the rising smoke passes across the food on its way out the top of the chamber.
On the temperature side, there is an electric heating element inside the food chamber, controlled from the digital panel on the smoke generator box. The element sits at about the same level as the hot plate, at the back of the chamber. The result is that lower food items, and those toward the rear of the chamber, get more heat than the ones toward the front and top. To counteract this tendency, every time I change the water bowl, I also rotate the racks down one step (and the bottom one to the top), and spin them back-to-front. Takes about two minutes an hour to do all of this, which is a lot less effort than managing a real fire would be, which is what allowed me to get started on smoking in the first place. I like barbecue a lot, but not enough to completely give up my weekends to it.
The Bradley does an OK job of maintaining temperature. IF I get the flue set right for the smoke box and outside temperatures, then it keeps things at the set temperature plus or minus about ten degrees F. That's always been good enough for smoking, and the box tops out at about 320 degrees F, so I'm not doing any real cooking in it anyway.
The Traeger, on the other hand, gets both heat and smoke from the wood pellets that it burns. There's a hopper on the side of the Traeger, and an auger that slowly advances pellets into the fire chamber in the middle of the grill floor. The hopper holds around 20 lbs. of pellets (give or take, depending on your model) and goes through them at a rate of one to three lbs. per hour, depending on your temperature setting. Most of the things I smoke are going to be on fairly low temperatures, so I expect to get close to 20 hours per hopper refill.
The user's manual says I should vacuum the ash out of the firebox about every 20 hours of grilling, so no need to open the grill up and let all the heat and smoke out for any purpose other than checking the food. This is already significantly lower-maintenance than the Bradley, and that's saying something.
Adding to the ease-of-use, over the five hours I ran it for the bacon, it was always within two or three degrees of the set temperature, except right after the couple of times I opened it up to check on things.
AND ON TOP OF THAT, the Traeger is big enough that I can easily get all three pieces of pork belly (I originally divided the full 10-lb. bellies into thirds because that's how it fits on the Bradley racks, but it turns out that's also the ideal size to fit into a gallon freezer bag for curing) onto a single rack, and the heat diffuser/grease tray between the fire and the food means the temperature is consistent the length and breadth of each rack, so now I don't have to rotate and spin my racks either. I checked the bacon at two hours and four hours, and brought it in the house at 4.5.
The ease-of-use bottom line: Bradley, A-; Traeger, OMG
The other major difference, to which I've alluded above, is the size/form factor.
The Bradley has 4 slide-in/out trays at 10"x14", for a total of 560 square inches of cooking surface. I actually have 8 total trays, so for certain foods that are less than about 3/4" thick, I can double the surface area by inverting four of the racks and stacking them two per slot, but not many applications will work this way. (Basically, I did a double batch of jerky once and it worked fine.) The Bradley racks are small and light enough that I can transport food in and out of the house on them, saving some effort and dishwashing.
The Traeger, only has three racks, and they are not very portable. On the other hand, they are HUGE, measuring in at 16"x33", 14"x33", and 8"x33", for a total surface area of 1254 square inches. The two larger racks will both easily accommodate a full packer brisket, though I'm going to have to work up to smoking one of those. Maybe next summer or fall, but no promises. Right now, the biggest advantage is that I can get what would have to go on three or four racks at different levels (and thus temperatures) in the Bradley, all onto the same level in the Traeger, which is going to make things a lot more consistent and predictable.
Size/form-factor bottom line: Bradley, B-; Traeger, A
The one place where the Traeger can't measure up to the Bradley is in cold-smoking. Cold smoking is great for foods that would melt or otherwise be rendered less yummy by heat, like cheese, deviled eggs, and salmon.
You'll recall that I mentioned above the fact that the Bradley smoke generator detaches from the side of the food chamber. This allows for the insertion of an auxiliary box and chimney between the smoke generator and the food chamber. Move the smoke generator's hot plate out of the food box, turn off the heating element, and there's nothing left to raise the temperature in the food box much above ambient.
The Traeger, on the other hand, does both heat and smoke from the firebox that can't be removed from the bottom of the grill. There are workarounds to approximate cold-smoking on the Traeger, but they all involve putting your food in a pan and then putting that pan into a bigger pan that's been filled with ice, which I probably don't have to tell you is going to be finicky and error-prone. (Although you could probably re-freeze the ice cubes after they've been in the smoke and use them to chill your whiskey, just sayin'.)
My solution? I just ordered a replacement smoke generator for the Bradley, and I will continue to use it for cold-smoking.
Cold-smoking bottom line: Bradley, A; Traeger, Did Not Attempt
But what about non-smoking applications? What if I have, say, a couple of steaks/chops/burgers? Can I use either of these devices for that?
The Bradley, probably not. I've had good luck and tasty results with higher-temperature (~300 degrees F) smoking bratwursts and similar foods, but it doesn't get anywhere close to hot enough to put a proper sear on a real chunk of meat.
The Traeger tops out at 550 degrees F, though, and I've heard from other owners (hi, JT!) that it makes a mean tri-tip, so I think if you want a good all-around smoker/grill, the Traeger's probably got you covered.
Personally, though, my Weber holds consistently at 600-650 degrees, and that few extra degrees makes a big difference to getting a steak the way I like it, which is good and seared on the outside, but not too warm on the inside. If you don't dig your steaks bloody, the Traeger's probably going to do you just fine.
Steaks bottom line: Bradley, D; Traeger, B+, Weber, A
Of course, it hardly matters how easy it is to use a smoker, or how much you can cram into it, if it doesn't produce quality 'cue. As you know, I am super enthusiastic about both the bacon and beef jerky I get from my Bradley; I have not had store-bought jerky since I got it, and we fairly quickly weaned ourselves off of store-bought bacon, except for applications that are not worthy of the homemade stuff. There is probably (for me) no more crucial test of a new smoker than how it handles my bacon recipe.
On the plus side, the Traeger has the ease of use and consistency of temperature, which mean the actual smoking process went smoothly and within the expected time.
BUT
It turns out that Traeger-brand Apple pellets are ~70% alder, and only ~30% apple wood (if you are on the east coast, the base wood is oak, not alder). There's nothing inherently wrong with wood blends for smoking; most professional pit bosses (I understand) have their own proprietary blends of wood to get exactly the flavor profile they're looking for. But Bradley bisquettes are, as best I have been able to determine, 100% the wood listed on the side of the box, and thus the flavor profile I've gotten used to for my bacon is 100% apple. Alder has a much milder flavor, so the new batch of bacon is considerably less smoke-forward than I'm looking for, which also causes it to taste a little saltier than usual. (My father-in-law tells me he prefers this version, going so far as to call it "perfect", so your mileage may well vary.)
To be clear, even this batch that I'm not completely happy with is still head-and-shoulders above the store-bought stuff. It's not like I'm going to be throwing it away.
Bacon flavor bottom line: Bradley, A+; Traeger, Incomplete
One of the reasons Traeger gives for using alder/oak as a base for their pellets is that alder and oak provide more consistent and controllable heat, which could certainly be a consideration, so I've got some testing ahead of me.
It's very hard to find a supplier for Bradley-style bisquettes that isn't, well, Bradley, which makes it fairly easy to decide what brand to use.
Food-grade wood pellets (for the love of God, Montresor, do NOT use pellet-stove-heater pellets in your pellet grill; most or all of the heater pellets have toxic additives that you don't want in your food and/or softwood sawdust that make bad-tasting smoke), on the other hand, are supplied by LOTS of folks; nearly every maker of a pellet grill has their own brand of pellets (and all of them say you should ONLY use their brand of pellets in their brand of grill), plus there are easily dozens of third-party pellet suppliers, each with their own EXTREMELY vocal band of fans. Add to the fact that wood pellet makers are in no wise required to disclose the actual ingredients that go into their pellets, and the Browser Wars of fond memory pale by comparison.
So I'll be trying various brands and flavors of pellets until I find the right mix. It could take me years and years of producing almost-perfect bacon, brisket, and pulled pork until I find what I'm looking for, but I think I'm up to the task.
To be clear, I do still recommend the Bradley for beginning smokers; the ease of use and great results add up to excellent value for the money, and the cold-smoking adapter greatly expands your repertoire (you might never buy smoked cheese at the store again either).
But I'm very happy so far with the Traeger as an upgrade, and once I find some pellets that perform the way I want them to, I don't think I'll have any regrets having moved on from the Bradley. (Especially since I'll still have the Bradley for cheese and deviled eggs. :) )
First, the smoking:
The Traeger and the Bradley both offer automated smoke and temperature management, but they differ significantly in how they provide that management.
The Bradley separates smoke production from heat management, but handles both electrically.
The smoke generator is a detachable (more on this later) box that hangs on the outside of the food chamber. It's got a hopper to hold "Bisquettes" (tm), which are hockey-sized pucks (maybe a little smaller) of compressed wood chips. Every twenty minutes, the smoke generator pushes a puck from the hopper onto an electric hot plate near the bottom of the food chamber which is held at the right temperature to slowly burn the wood and let the smoke out. When the new puck loads onto the hot plate, the old one is pushed off into a small bowl of water at the bottom of the food chamber. Four or five pucks is enough to fill up the water dish, so every hour or so I go out and empty the bowl and refill it with water.
The food sits on racks above the hot plate, so the rising smoke passes across the food on its way out the top of the chamber.
On the temperature side, there is an electric heating element inside the food chamber, controlled from the digital panel on the smoke generator box. The element sits at about the same level as the hot plate, at the back of the chamber. The result is that lower food items, and those toward the rear of the chamber, get more heat than the ones toward the front and top. To counteract this tendency, every time I change the water bowl, I also rotate the racks down one step (and the bottom one to the top), and spin them back-to-front. Takes about two minutes an hour to do all of this, which is a lot less effort than managing a real fire would be, which is what allowed me to get started on smoking in the first place. I like barbecue a lot, but not enough to completely give up my weekends to it.
The Bradley does an OK job of maintaining temperature. IF I get the flue set right for the smoke box and outside temperatures, then it keeps things at the set temperature plus or minus about ten degrees F. That's always been good enough for smoking, and the box tops out at about 320 degrees F, so I'm not doing any real cooking in it anyway.
The Traeger, on the other hand, gets both heat and smoke from the wood pellets that it burns. There's a hopper on the side of the Traeger, and an auger that slowly advances pellets into the fire chamber in the middle of the grill floor. The hopper holds around 20 lbs. of pellets (give or take, depending on your model) and goes through them at a rate of one to three lbs. per hour, depending on your temperature setting. Most of the things I smoke are going to be on fairly low temperatures, so I expect to get close to 20 hours per hopper refill.
The user's manual says I should vacuum the ash out of the firebox about every 20 hours of grilling, so no need to open the grill up and let all the heat and smoke out for any purpose other than checking the food. This is already significantly lower-maintenance than the Bradley, and that's saying something.
Adding to the ease-of-use, over the five hours I ran it for the bacon, it was always within two or three degrees of the set temperature, except right after the couple of times I opened it up to check on things.
AND ON TOP OF THAT, the Traeger is big enough that I can easily get all three pieces of pork belly (I originally divided the full 10-lb. bellies into thirds because that's how it fits on the Bradley racks, but it turns out that's also the ideal size to fit into a gallon freezer bag for curing) onto a single rack, and the heat diffuser/grease tray between the fire and the food means the temperature is consistent the length and breadth of each rack, so now I don't have to rotate and spin my racks either. I checked the bacon at two hours and four hours, and brought it in the house at 4.5.
The ease-of-use bottom line: Bradley, A-; Traeger, OMG
The other major difference, to which I've alluded above, is the size/form factor.
The Bradley has 4 slide-in/out trays at 10"x14", for a total of 560 square inches of cooking surface. I actually have 8 total trays, so for certain foods that are less than about 3/4" thick, I can double the surface area by inverting four of the racks and stacking them two per slot, but not many applications will work this way. (Basically, I did a double batch of jerky once and it worked fine.) The Bradley racks are small and light enough that I can transport food in and out of the house on them, saving some effort and dishwashing.
The Traeger, only has three racks, and they are not very portable. On the other hand, they are HUGE, measuring in at 16"x33", 14"x33", and 8"x33", for a total surface area of 1254 square inches. The two larger racks will both easily accommodate a full packer brisket, though I'm going to have to work up to smoking one of those. Maybe next summer or fall, but no promises. Right now, the biggest advantage is that I can get what would have to go on three or four racks at different levels (and thus temperatures) in the Bradley, all onto the same level in the Traeger, which is going to make things a lot more consistent and predictable.
Size/form-factor bottom line: Bradley, B-; Traeger, A
The one place where the Traeger can't measure up to the Bradley is in cold-smoking. Cold smoking is great for foods that would melt or otherwise be rendered less yummy by heat, like cheese, deviled eggs, and salmon.
You'll recall that I mentioned above the fact that the Bradley smoke generator detaches from the side of the food chamber. This allows for the insertion of an auxiliary box and chimney between the smoke generator and the food chamber. Move the smoke generator's hot plate out of the food box, turn off the heating element, and there's nothing left to raise the temperature in the food box much above ambient.
The Traeger, on the other hand, does both heat and smoke from the firebox that can't be removed from the bottom of the grill. There are workarounds to approximate cold-smoking on the Traeger, but they all involve putting your food in a pan and then putting that pan into a bigger pan that's been filled with ice, which I probably don't have to tell you is going to be finicky and error-prone. (Although you could probably re-freeze the ice cubes after they've been in the smoke and use them to chill your whiskey, just sayin'.)
My solution? I just ordered a replacement smoke generator for the Bradley, and I will continue to use it for cold-smoking.
Cold-smoking bottom line: Bradley, A; Traeger, Did Not Attempt
But what about non-smoking applications? What if I have, say, a couple of steaks/chops/burgers? Can I use either of these devices for that?
The Bradley, probably not. I've had good luck and tasty results with higher-temperature (~300 degrees F) smoking bratwursts and similar foods, but it doesn't get anywhere close to hot enough to put a proper sear on a real chunk of meat.
The Traeger tops out at 550 degrees F, though, and I've heard from other owners (hi, JT!) that it makes a mean tri-tip, so I think if you want a good all-around smoker/grill, the Traeger's probably got you covered.
Personally, though, my Weber holds consistently at 600-650 degrees, and that few extra degrees makes a big difference to getting a steak the way I like it, which is good and seared on the outside, but not too warm on the inside. If you don't dig your steaks bloody, the Traeger's probably going to do you just fine.
Steaks bottom line: Bradley, D; Traeger, B+, Weber, A
Of course, it hardly matters how easy it is to use a smoker, or how much you can cram into it, if it doesn't produce quality 'cue. As you know, I am super enthusiastic about both the bacon and beef jerky I get from my Bradley; I have not had store-bought jerky since I got it, and we fairly quickly weaned ourselves off of store-bought bacon, except for applications that are not worthy of the homemade stuff. There is probably (for me) no more crucial test of a new smoker than how it handles my bacon recipe.
On the plus side, the Traeger has the ease of use and consistency of temperature, which mean the actual smoking process went smoothly and within the expected time.
BUT
It turns out that Traeger-brand Apple pellets are ~70% alder, and only ~30% apple wood (if you are on the east coast, the base wood is oak, not alder). There's nothing inherently wrong with wood blends for smoking; most professional pit bosses (I understand) have their own proprietary blends of wood to get exactly the flavor profile they're looking for. But Bradley bisquettes are, as best I have been able to determine, 100% the wood listed on the side of the box, and thus the flavor profile I've gotten used to for my bacon is 100% apple. Alder has a much milder flavor, so the new batch of bacon is considerably less smoke-forward than I'm looking for, which also causes it to taste a little saltier than usual. (My father-in-law tells me he prefers this version, going so far as to call it "perfect", so your mileage may well vary.)
To be clear, even this batch that I'm not completely happy with is still head-and-shoulders above the store-bought stuff. It's not like I'm going to be throwing it away.
Bacon flavor bottom line: Bradley, A+; Traeger, Incomplete
One of the reasons Traeger gives for using alder/oak as a base for their pellets is that alder and oak provide more consistent and controllable heat, which could certainly be a consideration, so I've got some testing ahead of me.
It's very hard to find a supplier for Bradley-style bisquettes that isn't, well, Bradley, which makes it fairly easy to decide what brand to use.
Food-grade wood pellets (for the love of God, Montresor, do NOT use pellet-stove-heater pellets in your pellet grill; most or all of the heater pellets have toxic additives that you don't want in your food and/or softwood sawdust that make bad-tasting smoke), on the other hand, are supplied by LOTS of folks; nearly every maker of a pellet grill has their own brand of pellets (and all of them say you should ONLY use their brand of pellets in their brand of grill), plus there are easily dozens of third-party pellet suppliers, each with their own EXTREMELY vocal band of fans. Add to the fact that wood pellet makers are in no wise required to disclose the actual ingredients that go into their pellets, and the Browser Wars of fond memory pale by comparison.
So I'll be trying various brands and flavors of pellets until I find the right mix. It could take me years and years of producing almost-perfect bacon, brisket, and pulled pork until I find what I'm looking for, but I think I'm up to the task.
To be clear, I do still recommend the Bradley for beginning smokers; the ease of use and great results add up to excellent value for the money, and the cold-smoking adapter greatly expands your repertoire (you might never buy smoked cheese at the store again either).
But I'm very happy so far with the Traeger as an upgrade, and once I find some pellets that perform the way I want them to, I don't think I'll have any regrets having moved on from the Bradley. (Especially since I'll still have the Bradley for cheese and deviled eggs. :) )