Before you fire up your pellet grill for its first cook, it’s important to perform a burn off (sometimes referred to as "burn-in") to get rid of machine packing oils still in the grill body. Trust us, you don’t want that stuff on your food.

Start by removing all packaging from the unit and taking out all the inner parts of the grill. This includes cooking or warming grates, heat diffusers, and anything around the fire pot that’s easily removable. Wash all grill components with hot and mildly soapy water, then thoroughly rinse and dry them before putting the grill back together.

Once your grill is fully assembled, add pellets to your hopper and plug it in. Set your grill to its highest temperature setting, which will differ depending on your model, so that the burn-off process will be as effective as possible. When your grill reaches its highest heat setting, simply close the lid and let it burn off any remaining oils for 30 minutes. From there, you can either put your pellet grill into its shutdown cycle or start cooking. We know which option we’d choose.