As homesteaders going on year six, we’ve made many changes from our city way of life. One big change is around our food. Besides growing our own food, raising up egg layers, making sausages from scratch and canning our own food we’ve also changed how we cook our food. Our biggest change is that we don’t go out to eat like we did before and we therefore have to cook a much larger percentage of our food, well almost all of it, ourselves.
We want to be able to smoke and preserve meat, we want to be able to bake year round and not overheat our house on a hot summer day and we love saving money by searing and grilling the perfect steak at home.
So when it was time to get a new grill we wanted to get a perfect grill for our situation. We ended up getting a pellet grill, in particular the Yodor Smoker S640s. Full disclosure we are not being paid to review this grill. This is our honest take on the grill after putting it through the wringer.
We went with this grill for several reasons including:
- Built in the USA
- Built like a tank, with heavy duty steel and weighing in at over 350 pounds
- The versatility- you can smoke, sear, grill and even bake in this grill!
- The pellets. With this grill we simply set a temperature and the pellets auto feed to stick to that temperature. This means we can cook low and slow or back at a steady temperature.
- The reviews. This particular grill has very good reviews
Cooking with the Yodor s640s
We’ve had the Yodor S640s for some time now and I can say it’s the best grill and it delivered the best tasting food over any grill that I’ve ever used. I tested it out with all sorts of foods. Here are a few experiments I ran:
Salmon- Marinated overnight and spiced with dil, drizzled with olive oil. At 140 degrees, the smoked salmon turned out perfectly cooked. It was moist and delicious. I use 1 of the 2 temperature probes that came with the grill. The probes display the internal temperature on the grill screen itself and on my Android phone using their app.
The burger and buns test- Great smoky taste and wonderfully juicy burgers. I slow smoked the burgers for 1 hour and then turned up the temp to finish them medium rare. The smoky flavor was great and again- with the temperature probes I cooked the burgers to a perfect temperature
Baking- We baked homemade hamburger buns in the grill! With the pellets auto feeding in we simply set the temperature and let them bake. These turned out great AND all that heat from baking was outdoors and didn’t overheat our homestead kitchen inside.
Smoking an entire turkey- My favorite meal ever. I cannot wait for Thanksgiving to do this again. The texture was just right, soft and juicy and delicious. And to think that I had never done this before!
Searing Steaks- With the Yodor you can remove the heat diffuser plate and get a nice flame going. I got the grill up to 700 degrees F! I got a nice sear and the steaks came out tender and appetizing, just like the steak at the fancy restaurants! Mighty impressive for the cheap steak that we had used (pretty hard getting meat these days).
Cons
As hard as we tried, we found only one con: the price. These grills are expensive, starting at $1,799, but given the features and functionality, the price is completely worth it. Also, it is made in America and I will have this grill for the rest of my life.
Pros
- Versatility- You can do a lot with your grill, from basic grilling, to searing steaks and even baking bread. The cast iron griddle adds even more convenience.
- Keep the heat outside- You wouldn’t want to bake or grill indoors and add to the summer heat. With this grill, you can do much more, outside and keep your home cool.
- Built like a tank- The shipment was a couple of hundred pounds. Pretty heavy, but easy to handle and assemble. (Check out our video for the assembly part.) It is built with 10-gauge steel, the kind of heavy-duty material that will last you a lifetime. It isn’t one of the Chinese-made grills that will end up rusting and falling apart. Also, the thick steel sheet keeps the heat inside and helps maintain temperatures consistently.
- Technologically advanced -The grill has a temperature probe that gives you the exact food temperature. The temperature probe and the thermostat are connected to an app that sends you notifications on your phone when your food is cooked. So, you are not hanging around the grill forever! All you need to do is set the time and temperature (the two factors that ruin most recipes- overcooked or undercooked!) and go about doing other stuff until you get a notification. You can set programs in the app, called Drive Programs. You can feed steps into the app. Easy to use.
- Unbeatable taste- It beats charcoal, propane, wood fire grills hands down. Awesome results. The turkey definitely didn’t look like it was cooked by a beginner!
In conclusion. I’ve cooked with charcoal and propane, I’ve cooked over wood fires and I’ve used smokers. By far the best results In terms of taste and nailing the perfect internal cooking temperature have come with this grill. I know that saying this is the best grill in the world will get on some people’s nerves, but for our situation as homesteaders who want to smoke, preserve, sear, grill and bake and keep the heat outdoors, with an American made product, there is no question in my mind this is the best grill in the world for our situation. Watch the full video on this grill.
Kerry W. Mann, Jr. moved to a 20-acre homestead in 2015, where he and his family use modern technology, including YouTube and Instructables, to learn new skills and teach homestead projects. Connect with Kerry on his Homestead How YouTube page, Instructables, Pinterest
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