Have you ever been disappointed by the lack of smoke flavor produced by your pellet grill? You spend all this time and money trying to produce that perfect, smoky bite and delicious as it may be, the smoke flavor just falls short. In fact this shortcoming has earned pellet grills the nickname Easy Bake Ovens.
With the addition of one feature, the Camp Chef Woodwind Pro totally erases that issue! I’ve been using the Camp Chef Woodwind Pro as my daily driver for about 8 months now. I’ve cooked hundreds of pounds of meat on this grill, everything from briskets to burgers. I know this grill inside and out. These are all the things I love about it.
Jump to Section
Looking sharp!
As far as looks go, I think this thing looks like a million bucks. I’m a sucker for the black on stainless look. On older versions of the Camp Chef Woodwind it was reversed, the body was black and the lid was stainless steel. I actually think this looks way, way better. The Woodwind Pro has these super sturdy, angled legs, and a really beefy lower shelf. I roll this in and out of my garage every time I use it. Nothing has loosened up and it just feels super, super sturdy.
It has a really nice gasket that runs all around where the lid seals on the body and you can see on the lid itself the lid is also insulated. Since the lid is so thick, it actually sits down next to the gasket and seals on two faces. You still get a little bit of smoke leakage, but overall it seals pretty well and stays really well insulated.
Pellet Grill & Smoker for Outdoor Cooking - Comes with WIFI Connectivity - Sidekick Compatible - 811 Sq In Total Rack Surface Area
But how much MEAT can I cook?
I have the 24in model of the Camp Chef Woodwind Pro. I can easily fit four full size briskets, four full pork butts, and easily eight racks of pork ribs. If you need more capacity than that, they also sell a 36 in model. This grill comes standard with the second shelf. It’s actually two separate shelves, but this is super great for keeping your food away from the radiant heat source. It produces overall much better quality barbecue than cooking directly on the main grate. I think this is a really critical feature to have in a pellet grill.
Rolling, rolling, rolling…
The Camp Chef Woodwind Pro has these awesome, rotating, locking casters on all four corners of the bottom of the grill. This makes it super easy to maneuver the grill and they all lock. My only gripe is that I wish that the wheels were a little bit bigger so they could roll over cracks, rocks, sticks and stuff a little bit easier. Overall, it maneuvers really easily.
Clean Up Time
Now we’re going to take a look at the ash cleanout feature that’s on the fire pot. There is a cup that comes on and off underneath the grill, and on the side there’s this little knob and lever. I pull the lever back and forth a few times and it drops the used ash from the fire pot down into the cup. Once all the embers are out, you take the cup off and dump it in your garbage. Then replace the cup. It is super simple, super easy, and makes it so you don’t have to take the whole grill apart to clean the ash out of the fire pot.
Sidekick (no, not Robin)
The Camp Chef Woodwind Pro comes standard with the shelf, but you can upgrade to get some propane features that will attach to the side called a Sidekick . You have several options, such as a gas grill or gas griddle attachment for the side. They also sell a pizza oven.
“I could look at that backside all day”
On the back, you have these adjustable vents for air flow. These are really nice and they call this kind a Down and Out System. The smoke actually kind of rolls around in the chamber and then comes up and out so there’s virtually no risk of any snow or water getting into the cooking chamber and onto your food.
Also on the back, there’s a pellet dump tube. You hook a bucket on a tab and pull on the lever on the side and your pellets will dump out that shoot. This is useful if you wanted to swap your pellets or you needed to get the pellets out of the hopper to do some maintenance.
The Hopper
The Camp Chef Woodwind Pro has a 22 lb capacity pellet hopper. I’ve never run out of pellets mid cook. It would be nice for it to be a little bit bigger, but 22 lbs is fine. The pellet hopper also has a viewing window on the front so you can see the exact level of your pellets while you’re cooking or before you cook. This grill also has this bottle opener so if you like to drink beer while you’re cooking barbecue you’re in luck!
Control Central
The controller on this grill has a weatherproof cover on it to protect it. It is a full colored display. There is a knob that rotates through the different settings and then you just push on the knob to make your selection. There’s not a whole lot that you can change, but it’s got light mode and dark mode. You can change the units between Fahrenheit and Celsius, but overall it’s a very intuitive controller.
This grill comes with four numbered temperature probe ports on the side. It’s really nice this came with the four color coded probes. They plug into the side and then they snake through a little port on the side of the cooking chamber.
The app and the Wi-Fi connectivity are super reliable. I have never had any issues connecting to the Wi-Fi which is really convenient.
The Magical Smoke Feature
This is the Camp Chef Woodwind Pro Smoke Box. It’s essentially a metal drawer that you can add chunks of wood or wood chips to. You could even add charcoal to it to enhance the flavor of the barbecue or whatever you’re cooking on your Camp Chef.
I thought at first this was a little bit of a gimmick, but I wanted to try it out and I can tell you after putting hundreds of hours on this smoker: this produces the best tasting barbecue of any pellet grill I’ve ever used! It is removable and it has holes in the bottom for air flow. It has a gasket to seal up so no smoke and heat escapes. This gasket is getting kind of beat up. I use this grill all the time and I’m pushing this in, pulling it out, over and over and over again.
On top of the fire pot there’s a louver and so if I have this all the way open it’ll let heat and fire from the fire pot come up and ignite whatever fuel I have in the firebox. If I want to shut it off, to close off that heat or let it smolder. Or at the end of a cook, I’ll close it to try to stop it from burning and get the fire to go out faster. This feature is a total game changer for your barbecue. This is no gimmick. This is the best!
The Cons
As much as I love the Camp Chef Woodwind Pro, it does have a couple issues that really grind my gears. The first one, is it leaks just a little bit of grease from the cooking chamber where the grease tray runs down. All that grease pools and runs out the shoot, but it leaks a little bit and that just is super annoying.
The only other thing that I don’t like about the Camp Chef Woodwind Pro is there’s no dedicated cord wrap. Since the handle is designed on the side, you can just wrap the cord around it. This is what I do, but I just wish on a $1,200 grill that they would have put a dedicated cord wrap on the back of the pellet grill.
Summary
The Camp Chef Woodwind Pro is my favorite pellet grill because it produces delicious, smoky food that I’m proud of, and that my family and friends love. Mission accomplished!