Traeger Woodridge Review – Trusted Reviews

Design and features

• Heavy, compact build
• Huge internal capacity
• Easy pellet setup

Compared to grills like the Masterbuilt 560 and Ninja FlexFlame, the Traeger Woodridge looks fairly compact. There’s no big gravity-fed coal chamber, no drawers to store a big gas canister, nothing; though don’t expect this thing to be lightweight – as I found out during delivery. 

Though the box it comes in is smaller than what I’m used to with big BBQs, boy, is it heavy. At 63kg, it took quite a lot of effort to get it from my front door to my garden. And there were a lot of parts to put together. 

To be fair to Traeger, you can repurpose some of the cardboard packaging to help you better organise and differentiate between the many different parts (which are denoted by icons like chicken, fish, etc) – but it was still a job and a half that took up quite a lot of space in my garden. 

There is both a booklet and a video tutorial on the Traeger app to talk you through setup, but the video player was so hard to control in the app that I’d often miss what I had to do, so I stuck to the booklet. Traeger also supplies a pretty nice screwdriver, so you don’t need any of your own equipment to put it all together. 

Some parts were harder to put together than others, and really, this is a two-person job. But alone, it took me just over two hours to fully build.  

Once built, however, the Trager Woodridge looks and feels the part. It’s sturdy, well built and has a fairly low profile that doesn’t dominate the garden in the way that some premium BBQs and smokers can. 

It’s almost understated in how it looks, with simple Traeger branding and an all-black design. Either way, I really like the look, and I got quite a few compliments on the look of the kit at a BBQ I hosted at the weekend to really test what it could do. More on that a little later.

The Woodridge features what Trager calls its ‘Pop and Lock’ (POL for short) system, which lets you add official accessories to the sides of the BBQ, be it a storage bin, drink holder or paper towel holder, though none of these actually come in the box. What you won’t find, however, are accessories that extend what you can actually do with the grill; those from Ninja and Masterbuilt offer support for accessories like pizza ovens and rotisseries. The Woodridge is simply a BBQ, through and through. 

It does things a little differently though; rather than large lumps of coal or big gas canisters, the Woodridge is a pellet-style grill that uses wood pellets for fuel – a technology that the company itself pioneered back in the 1980s. 

It’s stored to the right of the cooking pit, accessible via a hatch that never gets warm, not even in use, making it easy to top up your fuel mid-cook. Just pour it in, the built-in auger grinds them, the heating element warms them, and the heat and smoke are indirectly funnelled into the pit via a fan. 

It does mean that starting the system is much easier than with gas or coal, as you simply need to set your temperature and press the ignition button to get started. The catch is that it can take a while to reach temperatures; I measured 20 minutes from ignition to reach a BBQ-ready temperature of around 200°C.

What sets premium grills like the Woodridge apart from cheaper coal BBQs is the ability to set the temperature yourself, much like a traditional oven. 

You can go as low as 80°C for low-and-slow smoke sessions and all the way up to 260°C for a more typical BBQ/searing experience. There’s no need to change modes or anything like that; just set the temperature you need, and it’ll monitor the temps with a built-in thermometer, only adding more fuel when necessary.

This is mainly done via a control panel to the right of the pit, with a low-res-style screen (with some fun animations) that lets you set not only the temperature but also a timer, as well as monitor the temperature via the built-in probe – though this can all also be managed from the Trager app for iOS and Android, once paired via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. 

There are actually two probe plugs on the panel, but only one comes with the kit. An additional probe would’ve been nice considering the price, especially for monitoring meat during longer, slower cooks that the Woodridge is suited to. There is at least a handy compartment in the pellet storage to keep it and the power plug safe when not in use. 

Look underneath the Woodridge and you’ll find a grease and ash collection pot. It’s pretty large compared to those I’ve used before, and even comes with a disposable aluminium foil cup inside to make getting rid of grease much easier – especially with a system beneath the grill that uses gravity to funnel most of it into the pot. It’s just a shame that you get a grand total of one disposable aluminium pot in the box. C’mon, Trager, stop being stingy. 

The best part about the Woodridge is the amount of cooking space you get. Unlike BBQs from Ninja and the like that look big but actually have a relatively small pit (due to the electronics and other components), I’d argue that the Woodridge does the opposite. It’s almost like a Tardis; it looks relatively compact from the outside, but open the lid and you’ll be greeted with a massive cooking area.

The total grill area measures 116.8 x 127 x 68.6cm, split into two low-level panels, plus a second panel you can attach a little higher up – ideal for grilling sausages evenly and cooking chicken without pre-cooking it in the oven. 

That’s a combined space of 5550 sq. cm., and Traeger claims that you can fit eight large racks of ribs or four full chickens in the BBQ – something that I can certainly attest to after doing both a low-and-slow smoke session and a typical high-heat BBQ to see what the Woodridge can do. And it’s safe to say that I was very impressed. 

Performance

• Excellent low-and-slow
• Massive crowd capacity
• Slow, pellet-hungry heating

I’m a big BBQ guy, and my speciality is low-and-slow cooks – typically beef short ribs, briskets, pork ribs and the like, typically for anywhere from six to 12 hours depending on the size of the meat. 

And, with Texans in the good ol’ US setting the best example of what you can do with these smokers, I spent days and days watching videos and learning about the best techniques when I was first getting started. That also means that, in a bid to avoid spending ages converting Freedom Units to Metric, I tend to work in Fahrenheit when grilling despite being in the UK.

I think that kind of works in Traeger’s favour here; while it of course supports both Fahrenheit and Celsius, the 5-degree temperature increments are arguably better suited to US measurements, especially when cooking at specific temperatures like 225°F for the perfect low-and-slow cook. That translates to 107.2°C, so you’ll have to choose between 105°C and 110°C. It’s not a massive difference, but it’s slightly annoying.   

To test the smoking side of things, I loaded the Woodridge up with three (perfectly seasoned, might I add) 1KG racks of pork ribs and a 1.5KG beef short rib, set it to 225°F, and let it do its thing. 

Now I was concerned about the lack of visible smoke coming from the back compared to my old Masterbuilt, but I needn’t have been worried; after about four hours, a wonderful bark had formed across all the meat. I then wrapped them, put them back in for a few more hours at the same 225°F and they came out perfectly. They fell away from the bone as expected, with plenty of juice and a sweet, smoky exterior. Safe to say those went within 10-15 minutes of plating up.

It’s not just a smoker though; the Woodridge functions perfectly well as a regular high-temp BBQ with temps up to 500°F/260°C, and with such a massive cooking area available, I could seriously load up the grill – so much so that I comfortably cooked for around 20 people without anyone waiting ages or going hungry. 

The bottom plate is closer to the heat source and, as such, gets that chargrilled look and flavour a little quicker – ideal for burgers, lamb chops, pork and the like – while the top rack makes getting evenly cooked sausages much easier. 

And with the ability to set a steady temperature, I didn’t need to cook the 20+ chicken wings in the oven beforehand; I simply left them on the top rack to cook like they were in an oven, with a few minutes on the bottom plate at the end to really boost that smoky flavour. 

Even though the burgers, chicken and the like were only on the grill for a fraction of the time the pork and beef ribs were, there was still a noticeable pink smoke ring, especially when biting into the beef burgers and lamb kebabs. And the juice; oh, the juice. With the stable temperatures, it’s much easier to keep your meat juicy, rather than scorched and dry. 

Of course, no BBQ is perfect, and the Woodridge has a few areas where I’m left wanting more; mainly with temperatures and fuel usage. I suppose they’re both tied together, really.

Because it uses wood pellets and electricity to control the heat of the BBQ, it can take quite a bit longer than regular gas or coal BBQs to reach temperature. I mentioned earlier that it took 20 minutes to reach 400°F, but it’s not just at startup; it also takes a while to get back up to temperature once you’ve opened the lid. 

And if the lid is open for a while, like when I’m flipping 10+ burgers, minted lamb chops etc, the temperature can drop by as much as 100°F – and it can take another five minutes or so to get back to the set temperature. 

On my trusty Masterbuilt 560, which I’ve been using for the past five years, it takes only 10 minutes to reach temperature, and it returns to the set temperature within a minute or so after the lid closes.

You might assume that’d translate to better fuel efficiency, but that’s not really the case. During my (admittedly long) day of low-and-slow smoking and grilling, I went through roughly 13.5kg of pellets. For context, Trager recommends using only its official pellets, and at the time of writing, a 9kg bag costs between £25 and £35. 

There’s no two ways around it; that’s a pretty expensive way to BBQ, especially compared to coal, gas and electric alternatives. You do get a consistently fantastic smoky taste that’s more challenging to replicate on other high-end BBQs, but there is a cost to it – literally. 

Should you buy it?