The Cuisinart Clermont Pellet Grill is in contrast to another pellet grill. Priced round $700, it’s like an out of doors oven with the advantage of smoke.
Disclosure Cuisinart compensated me for this evaluate. Opinions are my very own.
What makes the Cuisinart Clermont Pellet Grill & Smoker Completely different
Most pellet grills are designed just like a conventional offset smoker. They embrace one possibly two racks of cooking area with a lid that lifts up.
The Clermont however is designed extra like a business oven. It has two massive French-style glass doorways with two cooking racks that may be adjusted to 5 totally different ranges.
Identical to an oven, you need to use it to bake, roast and braise, however as a result of it’s a pellet grill, you can even use it to smoke, barbecue and even grill.
How is Grilling Completely different Than Barbecuing?
Barbecuing is a gradual and low course of, which entails cooking with hardwood, charcoal or wooden pellets over oblique warmth. The ambient temperature of the smoker heats the meat and breaks down collagen to create succulent dishes.
Grilling entails cooking straight over a fireplace supply sizzling and quick. Pellet grill producers have slowly been including this function to their merchandise to supply the flexibility of each cooking strategies.
The Cuisinart Sear Zone
Cuisinart launched the grill functionality into the Clermont by including a sear zone.
The grill has a drip protect that extends the size and width of the inside of the grill. Whereas it collects drips and guides the grease away from the fireplace, it additionally serves as a diffuser plate to create the oblique warmth zone for barbecuing and smoking.
Inside the drip protect, there are 5 slots. Whenever you need to barbecue, these slots might be coated with the sear shutter.
However once you’re able to grill, you merely slide the deal with within the entrance of the smoker to the left to show the slots. Then, as an alternative of cooking on one of many elevated racks, prepare dinner your meat straight over the flames on the cooking grate.
For all pellet grills, I prefer to cowl the drip protect with foil to make cleanup simpler. I checked with the Cuisinart engineers, they usually stated once you’re not utilizing the sear shutter, it’s completely fantastic to cowl the entire drip protect with foil. In actual fact, it makes the temperature a bit extra even. Relying on the way you lay the foil, it will probably affect how the grease flows, so keep watch over that.
To Get Began
Like most pellet grills, the Clermont is available in a whole lot of components and items and requires meeting. You don’t want any particular instruments although. You solely want a screwdriver and wrench, that are included with the {hardware}. Complete meeting time takes about 1 hour.
Along with the usual guide, one actually cool function that Cuisinart now presents is a digital meeting video utilizing the BILT App in your cellphone. I’ve put collectively my justifiable share of grills, and located this app made issues a lot simpler to grasp than the standard black and white drawings.
Cuisinart offers you with a QR code that you just scan along with your sensible cellphone. It leads you proper to the app. Simply obtain it, choose the Clermont and press begin.
The app performs an animated video for every step with textual content explaining what you’re alleged to do. I used the guide as a secondary reference simply to verify I used to be doing all the things proper.
It’s additionally useful that many of the components are labeled with stickers that simply peel off.
I used to be in a position to construct the bottom cart alone, however I wanted to name in reinforcements to raise the physique of the grill onto the cart.
Cuisinart will get bonus factors for not making me should assemble the digital elements. I at all times get nervous when grills require me to be concerned in these steps.
As soon as the physique was linked to the cart, the final steps had been including the cabinets and accent options.
Cuisinart Clermont Pellet Grill & Smoker Options
The outside accent options embrace a protracted counter, three instrument hooks, a paper towel holder, a deal with the place you possibly can hold a towel, two locking wheels and a big shelf that’s hidden by the glossy entrance base, which is a superb place to retailer pellets.
The counter runs 58.5″ x 7″ within the entrance and 11″ x 25″ on the left.
The within of the grill features a 16″ x 30″ cooking grate and two oven-style racks that may be adjusted to 5 totally different ranges in 2.5″ increments . That is very nice once you want extra room for cooking bigger meats like briskets or turkeys. You may also purchase extra racks, when you actually need to load the grill up.
Like all pellet grills, the grill is fueled by pellets which can be fed into the fireplace pot with an auger. There’s an igniter inside the fireplace pot that burns the pellets with the assistance of a fan.
There are two thermometer probe jacks situated contained in the grill on the fitting. It is a sensible placement, since you don’t should run wires exterior. It retains the outside of your grill trying sharp.
The Grease Tray
The drip protect I discussed above performs an necessary position, as a result of it routes the grease to the grease tray. This prevents flare ups and bitter the aroma that may happen when grease burns.
The grease tray might be accessed from the left aspect of the grill. After each few cooks, pull this pan out and discard the grease.
It’s 8.25″ x 4.25″, so you possibly can line it with a 2-lb foil loaf pan. It can be washed with cleaning soap and water.
Cleansing Out Ashes
After every prepare dinner, it’s necessary to scrub the ashes out of the fireplace pot. There’s a launch on the left aspect of the grill simply above the grease tray. Simply pull this open, and the ashes will fall into a set drawer.
The ash drawer is a bit more difficult to get to. It’s at the back of the grill, so when you have the grill towards a wall, you could have to drag the grill out a bit to entry it. Happily, the drawer is 40 sq. inches, so that you don’t should empty the pan after each prepare dinner.
However, the grill exhaust flows out the again, so that you shouldn’t park the grill too near a wall anyhow.
After a number of cooks, there may also be some ash residue inside the underside inside of the grill. It’s because the inner fan blows the sunshine stuff round. You should use a paper towel to push these ashes into the outlet behind the fireplace pot, they usually’ll fall proper into the ash drawer.
Pellet Hopper
The pellet hopper holds 40 kilos of pellets and consists of an inside mild. The thermometers retailer within the lid once you’re not utilizing them.
Double French-Type Doorways
This pellet grill has by far the perfect viewing window of any pellet grill I’ve cooked on due to the double French-style doorways.
As an alternative of a lid that opens up, the twin doorways pull open like a cupboard. They’re 17″ tall and 15.25″ large with 13.5″ x 10″ home windows and lengthy sturdy handles.
Whenever you activate the 2 10-watt halogen inside lights, you possibly can even view your meals at evening with out letting any warmth escape.
The doorways are a bit cosy to drag open, which helps preserve the warmth in. You do must open the fitting one first. Simply give it a superb tug.
The Management Panel
I really like that the 12″ management panel has brilliant, daring numbers. Once I’m not utilizing the app, I can view the readings from throughout the yard, which provides me peace of thoughts.
Not like the Cuisinart Woodcreek Pellet Grill, which lets you alter the temperature in 25-50F-degree intervals, the Clermont dial goes as little as 160F and might be elevated in 5F-degree intervals to 600F. That’s a function I actually like, as a result of it permits me to smoke jerky and sear a steak.
Along with the precise grill temp, the panel additionally consists of readouts for the goal grill temp, probe temps and visible alerts for when the auger, fan and igniter are on. When you’re low on pellets, the low pellet mild will seem and an alert will sound.
I’ve discovered that the low-pellet alert may be very delicate and has gone off even when the pellets weren’t low. The engineers at Cuisinart are conscious of that, and have already re-engineered a brand new alert system for the newer fashions.
There are 4 buttons on the panel to activate the grill and hopper lights, to prime the auger (which hundreds pellets on demand) and to energy the grill on and off.
The dial is used to set the goal grill and probe temps. Press it as soon as for the grill, twice for probe one and 3 times for probe 2.
Wi-fi Monitoring
When you like to watch your grill or meat temps out of your cellphone, simply obtain the Cuisinart Simple Join™ BBQ App on the App Store or Google Play.
It connects to your wi-fi web at residence. You’ll be able to set alerts primarily based on temperature or time. The app additionally contains a historical past setting, so you possibly can return and take a look at earlier cooks as you hone your abilities and recipes.
Cowl
Since this grill has electrical elements and runs on wooden pellets that dissolve after they get moist, I like to recommend retaining this on a coated patio with the additional safety of a grill cowl.
