A slim, lightweight wood-fire or charcoal grill for go-anywhere searing is easy enough to find, but if you prefer the precise temperature control and smoke delivery of a pellet grill, your options become limited ... not to forget bulky, heavy, and often tied to an electrical socket.
Young gear brand Exit Outdoor has slimmed its Fire 'n' Go pellet grill down to help it cook at even the most distant secret camping spots. The grill uses a multi-folding construction to travel small and light, relying on an easily swappable battery pack for power. Bring the ease and flavor of wood pellet cooking anywhere the topo map points you.
One of our complaints about the Traeger Ranger, an early leader in the portable pellet grill space, was that the full-depth hopper took up a lot of space that could have otherwise held the food being cooked, leaving the grill itself feeling like a lot of bulk for the amount of cooking capacity.
Look around the market, and this drawback isn't limited to the Ranger, affecting virtually every portable pellet grill.
Judging by its photos and numbers, Exit clearly used the Ranger as a benchmark, designing the Fire 'n' Go from the ground up to prevent the common drawbacks of traditional portable pellet designs. It kicks that process off by pulling the pellet hopper out from under the lid, and placing at the front of the grill. The pellets are fed into the fanned flame by a rotating feeder below, with the digital control system adjusting the speed of the feeder and fan to maintain the set temperature.
With the hopper out of the way, the full area below the lid can be dedicated to cooking. Exit takes it a step further with an upper grate that adds 50% more space, bringing overall cooking area to 287 sq in (1,852 sq cm). That's 56% more than the 184 sq in (1,187 sq cm) of the single-level Ranger that Exit has in its sights, and it's also more than dual-level portable pellet grills like 256-sq in (1,652-sq cm) models from Cuisinart and Asmoke.
Pulling the hopper out from under the lid had the potential to create a new problem for Exit – adding extra volume to a fairly bulky piece of portable gear. As a workaround, Exit has created a folding design that relies on four fold-up corner legs and a fold-down upper chassis. This drops the grill down to a transport size of 17.3 x 21.7 x 9.7 inches (44 x 55 x 25 cm) , or 2.1 cu ft (59.5 L). That's well smaller than the 4-cu ft (113-L) Asmoke or Cuisinart or 3.2-cu ft (90.6-L) Traeger, making it easier to pack with all the other gear and boxes of a camping or tailgating trip.
Exit Outdoor isn't the first to untether its grill from the electrical grid with a battery pack, but that serves as another useful feature included on the Fire 'n' Go. The grill comes with two 2.0-Ah USB-C chargeable battery packs, each of which provides up to 10 hours of.grill time. Unlike the bulky external power packs needed to run non-battery-equipped electric pellet grills off-grid while primitive camping or RV boondocking, Exit's compact pack slides right into the side of the grill chassis, keeping things neat and compact.
At just under 41 lb (19.6 kg), the Fire 'n' Go isn't exactly a featherweight but it is well lighter than the 60-lb (27-kg) Traeger Ranger and also undercuts the 49-lb (17.7-kg) Asmoke and 44-lb (20-kg) Cuisinart. It's made from a combination of 304 stainless steel cooking components and heavy-duty structural steel and features rubber-covered handles for easy carrying.
As for actual grilling, smoking and cooking, the Fire 'n' Go brings an adjustable temperature range between 160 and 500 °F (71 and 260 °C) that allows for everything from low-and-slow BBQ to chargrilling. It also comes with a meat probe thermometer that plugs into the electronics panel to provide a reading on the LED display. It's designed to work with any hardwood pellets on the market and holds up to 3.5 lb (1.6 kg) in the hopper.
Exit is working to launch the Fire 'n' Go via a Indiegogo campaign, offering it for a pledge level of US$329, a 34% discount off the planned $499 MSRP. Its campaign raced past its $5K goal and is sitting at over $42K with 26 days left to go, as of publishing. Plans call for a quick turnaround with deliveries beginning next month, assuming everything goes smoothly.
It's demonstrated in the pitch video below.
Source: Exit Outdoor