CookinPellets 40-Pound Longhorn Blend Premium Natural Grill Smoker Smoking Mesquite/Cherry/Maple Hardwood Wood Pellets, (2 Pack)

These are the best hard wood pellets! Hardly any dust at the bottom of bag.They burn slow unlike some other brands out there.Gives meat great flavor. Sooo good!

I smoke a lot of meats, must've bought around 500 lbs. of pellets by now. There's a lot of different qualities that you need to shop for when you enjoy this hobby. The way I judge the different brands include:- How much dust is in the bag? The dust is not good at all for the smoker and it can be adjudicated somewhat by just being careful not to dump it in, but it's easier if there isn't much there to sort out from the beginning.- Does the smoker hold temperature steady? Some pellets burn way too hot or leave too much ash and this results in the temperature fluctuation. CookinPellets have been working great and the consumption level seems to be no different than other brands.- Single variety or mixed? This is a personal choice and I honestly can't tell the difference between something smoked with a pure apple or cherry pellet vs. a mix. This mix is a great one though as it has a lot of fruitwoods and avoids the harshness that might come with just a mesquite or similar. Some people really think this matters a lot, but I don't really care.- Value? I burn a lot of pellets, so I don't want to spend a ton of money. This product on Amazon is at a very attractive price point.I should add that I also use these in my pellet pizza oven. Although the pellet pizza ovens are a lot more work than the propane ones, I found that these CookinPellets worked very good in that application as well.

Have repurchased several times. These pellets are great, provides excellent flavor to meat, low ash and low dust. Only complaint is packaging is a little lacking as sometimes the bag is torn and some unknown quantity of pellets are out in the street somewhere.

I would categorize myself as an above-average smoker grill guy for several years now, but not quite in the expert class! I run two pellet grills and have found these pellets to be the most versatile of any, and with great smoke flavor for almost any meat--but definitely superior to anything for both baby back ribs and brisket. The pellets do burn faster than some other brands, but they provide very uniform heat and smoke and with great flavor. I use these almost 90% of the time now, occasionally I will use a specific wood for fish or something like that, but for the basic pork and beef cuts I almost always default to this brand now because I know it's going to turn out great.

If you are at all cooking something slow - and - low, get these pellets now. I was very disappointed in the amount of smoke produced by the branded pellets that I purchased with my Grill. I wanted a nice hearty bbq-joint deep smoke to my meat, and got just a hint of smoke to my meat after cooking at 180 for a few hours.Much research brought me to these pellets. These provide an awesome robust flavor when used at low heat on the pellet grill. My ribs had a beautiful smoke ring. My whole chickens were nice and smokey. My sausages tasted like they'd been hanging out in a forest fire (in a good way).For high temperatures, anything over 275 or so, there is really no difference and you may as well just use up the remaining factory branded pellets to keep the grill hot. The smoke produced at that temperature is pretty minimal and there is no difference, at least to my taste buds, between these and the factory pellets with all of their fillers.I'm hooked now. I should just have a pallet of these bad boys delivered to my house every few months or so.If you know of an even better pellet to smoke with, I'm all ears, but for now this is it.UPDATE: I had to drop a star from my review. I have a Traeger Pro Elite grill and live where it usually doesn't rain very often. We got a good dose of rain just after Thanksgiving, and I forgot to put my cover over my grill after the turkey was cooked (not sure if it would've helped). While I didn't find any standing water anywhere in my pellet hopper, I found that some of the pellets had turned to sawdust and formed back together into a giant pellet in my hopper. That wasn't a huge problem in itself, but the lump of pellets that were in the auger did the same thing and the motor would not turn the auger at all. I had to tear apart my feed system and really work to break up the lump of wood that had formed around the auger. Took far too long, and needless to say I didn't get to smoke my chicken that night either. I'm not sure if some rain water was able to seep into the grill (I didn't see any standing water at all) or if it was just the moisture in the air, but be careful with these as once they are broken down and reform they become very hard to break apart. I might start emptying my hopper after each use, especially in the "winter" months.