Weeknight Smoking on Your Traeger and Other Pellet Grills: Incredible Wood-Fired Meals Made Fast and Easy

By Adam McKenzie

Traeger® Cooking - Low on Effort, Big on Flavor

It’s easier than ever to enjoy your favorite smoky flavors whenever you want, even on your busiest weeknights. Adam McKenzie is here to show you how to master your Traeger® for meals that are fuss-free and packed with flavor. Teacher by day, king of the grill by night, Adam has learned all the tips and tricks to make Traeger® cooking fit into anyone’s busy life. With these brilliant recipes, you’ll want to cook with your Traeger® every day! As a bonus, he’s adapted traditionally slow-cooked barbecue recipes to be faster and easier using the unique features of pellet grills. Best of all, Adam includes recipes for a variety of meats, perfect for any griller no matter their tastes. In this collection, discover new grilling favorites, such as:

• Smash Burgers
• BBQ Chicken Lollipops
• Festival Flank Steak Sandwiches
• Whole Traegered Chicken
• Wood-Fired Carne Asada
• Buffalo Chicken Burgers
• Colorado Tri-Tip with Santa Maria Salsa
• Grilled Salmon with Spinach Pesto
• Orange, Chipotle & Bourbon Glazed Pork Tenderloins
• Quicker Whole Smoked Brisket

With each delicious recipe, Adam helps to take the stress out of weeknight cooking. Gather your goods, fire up your Traeger® and you’ll have a tantalizing barbecue dinner ready in no time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: May 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781645673019

Book preview

MASTERING YOUR

TRAEGER

One of my goals in writing this book was to give Traeger owners some ideas and resources to make cooking on the Traeger a part of their daily life. When we got our first Traeger—a Tailgater—we reserved it for special occasions and weekends when we had adequate time and energy to cook on the grill. But in hardly any time at all, it became something we used more and more often. My little Tailgater that could has cooked for probably a thousand hours and seen at least that many pounds of meat. Since then, we’ve expanded our Traeger arsenal to include one of each of Traeger’s main models, and every single one is predictable, fun and produces great food. Now we’ve gone from being weekend warriors on the grill to cooking four to six nights a week on the grill. From baking eggplant parmesan to whipping up a perfectly reverse-seared steak, the versatility of the grill makes cooking at home really fun and ultimately pretty fast.

This chapter is intended to give you a quick overview of the models and pellets offered by Traeger, advice on sourcing your meat, the few tools I believe are must-haves for successful Traegering and information on some spices, rubs and sauces I recommend if you’re not making your own. And, of course, I’ve outlined some common techniques in detail that are referenced throughout the recipes.

Note that while my focus is on Traeger pellet grills, much of this information applies to pellet smoker grills under other brand names. Each grill brand has unique features and capabilities, but generally speaking, they can cook at low temperatures with large amounts of smoke and also at higher temperatures for searing, fast cooking and more traditional