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Picking out a grill is a big deal. It’s a big purchase, and it anchors an outdoor living area. This is especially true with an outdoor kitchen build.
The luxury grill market is largely dominated by gas grills. They’re quick to get going, can be piped in to take away refueling, and they can get really hot for searing steaks.
While Coyote Outdoor has some beautiful gas grills, they also offer other options. One is their new 3rd generation Pellet Grill. They sent us one to test, and we’ve been thoroughly impressed with its performance and flavor.
Features and Specs
- Retail price of $3,299 (check price) for the 28″ and $3,829 (check price) for the 36″ – those are the prices for the built-in models
- 304 stainless steel construction
- 7″ digital touch screen for controlling the grill
- Halogen lights for cooking after the sun goes down
- Versa-Rack racking system for more cooking area and added cooking zones
What’s a Pellet Grill?
While pellet grills are much more widespread today than five years ago, they’re much less well known than gas or charcoal. If you’re very familiar with pellet grills, just skip this section, otherwise I’ll give a quick explanation.
A pellet grill is fueled with wood pellets that look like rabbit food. They’re made from sawdust that’s been pressed tightly together.
You pour the pellets into a hopper, and at the bottom of the hopper there is an auger which is like a big screw. On a pellet grill you can set a temperature to cook at, and a controller determines how much pellet fuel is needed to burn at that temperature.
The auger spins and moves the pellets from the hopper to a burn pot, which is a little cylinder where the fire is contained. There’s an igniter in the burn pot that sets the pellets on fire, then the fire is maintained automatically by the grill controlling airflow with a fan and the amount of pellet fuel.
The benefit of a pellet grill is it’s extremely convenient and it gives more flavor that a gas grill from burning real wood. You just set the temperature on a screen and press go.
The downside of most pellet grills is they don’t sear as well, although Coyote’s does a great job. Also, some people want more smoke flavor than a pellet grill produces.
Assembly
The Coyote Pellet Grill comes shipped fully assembled. You can buy it either to be built-in an outdoor kitchen or on a cart. The version I received was on a cart.
It comes shipped on a pallet, and Coyote did a great job packaging it. It’s a large grill, so the box is like a refrigerator box, and the grill is wrapped in foam to protect it.
All the beautiful stainless steel on the grill had protective wrap on to make sure it doesn’t arrive with scratches. The most time consuming aspect of setup is removing al the wrapping, but that’s a good thing that you have to do that, and it’s oddly rewarding.
After all the wrap is off, you’ll want to clean all the remnants off for a nice finish. I used grill cleaner and stainless steel cleaner for this. Just keep in mind that some stainless steel cleaner is toxic, so be careful where you use it.
First Impressions
Once I got all the wrap off and I could step back and look at the grill, I was really impressed. The giant touch screen on the front is a thing of beauty and really sets of the overall look.
It goes without saying that all the stainless steel looked great as well. I like how they did the finish on the grill lid. There’s a polished strip on the edge, then the center section is matte to show the graining of the metal.
The lid is spring assisted and has a nice feel to it. I like how the folding side shelves on the cart were designed. They are easy to move up and down and feel solid.
Starting the Grill
The pellet hopper is located on the front of the grill under the shelf. You can see in the video in the previous section, you just pour pellets into the hopper until it’s full. That’s the first step in starting the grill.
The capacity is 12 pounds on the 28″ model and 15 pounds on the 36″ model. That’s a little lower than some other pellet grills, but it’s still sufficient for almost everything you’d want to do with the grill.
The only time you’d run into an issue is if you wanted to do an overnight brisket cook. I don’t think you could sleep in and have the grill still running when you wake up. I like to check-in and spritz my meat every so often, so the capacity isn’t really an issue for me.
Once the grill has pellets, you click the button on the side of the grill and the touchscreen comes to life. On the screen you then press to unlock the screen, then you set your temperature and your off and cooking. It couldn’t be easier.
Cooking
The grill is double walled and the lid is gasketed, so it retains heat well. Between that and the components they use in the fire pot, this grill heats up pretty quick.
One of my favorite parts of the grill is it has laser cut cooking grates. They look really nice, and are good for retaining heat for searing. Plus, with the way they’re cut they’re easier to scrape clean than traditional wire style cooking grates.
The Coyote Pellet grill has two different main ways to cook on it. You can set the temperature and smoke or sear, or you can sear over an open flame.
You do this by switching out a plate that covers the fire pot. It’s a quick operation to change it out, and they include a stainless steel tool to do it.
On grill mode the grill can go all the way up to 650 degrees F, so high heat searing is definitely on the table, just like a gas grill. The open flame searing mode though takes it to the next level and adds some fun to it.
I’ll also call out that you only use the searing plate with the searing cooking mode going. This is mentioned in the instruction manual, but people often don’t read instruction manuals, myself included.
I really liked the huge temperature range on this grill. It makes it so you can cook anything you’d want to on it. Ribs, steaks, chicken, pulled pork, brisket, burgers, whatever you want it can do, and it’ll give you some great flavor.
There are three temperature probe ports on the grill so you can easily get great results from cooking. No more undercooking or grilling up some hockey pucks. The temperature probes go into your meat, just like a permanent meat thermometer and the temperature is displayed on the screen.
The grill doesn’t have wireless connectivity, so there’s no controlling it with a phone app. For me, I don’t use the apps too much when cooking.
If anything, I use apps just for monitoring temperature probes. If that’s a deal breaker though, there’s plenty of different accessories that aren’t that expensive that will do that. I usually use those when cooking rather than relying on the grill’s probes anyways.
Once you’re done cooking on the grill, you press the stop button on the screen. This puts the grill in cool down mode where it burns out the fuel left in the fuel pot for safety.
Pros
- A beautiful looking grill
- Solid stainless steel construction
- Very versatile, it gets hot enough to grill on and cold enough to smoke on
Cons
- Pellet hopper is a little smaller than other smokers
- No app connectivity
Conclusion
The Coyote Pellet Grill is one of my favorite grills to cook on. I like how versatile it is with its large cooking range and open flame cooking feature, while still delivering on flavor. It’s also just such a great looking grill, it’s perfect as a stand-alone grill or as the center piece of an outdoor kitchen.