Stampede My impressions of the 590 after using for a while

[ARCbbq]

IMPRESSIONS OF MY REC TEC

My current Equipment: 590 Stampede w’ griddle, front folding shelf, 2 burner commercial propane grill with cast iron grates, 18" pizza stone, Lodge cast iron 14” round griddle. Indoor: Induction stove w’ convection oven, microwave, small electric griddle, lots of other cookware (insta-pot, pressure cookers, etc).

Earlier (no longer owned) outdoor equipment: weber charcoal grill, weber 2 burner, larger 4 burner gas grill. Used a wood burning concrete grill for years on the farm.

Opinion of Rec Tec 590:

Construction: Excellent – love the stainless, large pellet hopper,

Controls: Excellent, wireless & App works very well, temp probes - good, but haven't verified the accuracy yet.

Smoking & Roasting – Excellent. (I’ve done pork shoulder, ribs, chicken, pizza (on stone), breakfast items on griddle, etc).

Griddle: OK for occasional use. If you do a LOT of griddle cooking, buy a dedicated gas griddle with good grease drain & trap - if you have space & $. The griddle holds temp well however and is good size. Blue Rhino makes a nice small, portable griddle & of course Blackstone & others.

Searing: Fair – my 2 burner gas (goes to 700 deg) is much better and much quicker. Yes, I know you can buy a searing kit. My cast iron grates on the gas grill are essentially a searing kit.

Pizza – does good job, takes a while to heat (stone) up (500 deg). I’m going to try the stone & the Lodge cast iron on my gas grill for comparison.

Would I buy again – YES. The controls & construction are why I bought it, and I’m not disappointed. I avoided buying the Traeger and others for those reasons. But I’ll keep my 2-burner gas for the things It does well and the versatility of having a 2nd grill for larger groups.

 

[Luscombe]

Great summary, I appreciate the candor and agree with your comments. I have a Stampede and love it for what it does best, and it does a lot of things best! That said, high temp searing and cooking is not one of its strengths. Rather than buy another gas grill, I opted for a Camp Chef Sidekick. I think this is a perfect marriage for the Stampede. The Sidekick has a 30,000 BTU burner, cast iron griddle, BBQ box and pizza oven accessories that will allow high temp searing and pizza baking and my favorite, crisping up chicken wings and reverse searing.

 

[BethV]

Great summary, I appreciate the candor and agree with your comments. I have a Stampede and love it for what it does best, and it does a lot of things best! That said, high temp searing and cooking is not one of its strengths. Rather than buy another gas grill, I opted for a Camp Chef Sidekick. I think this is a perfect marriage for the Stampede. The Sidekick has a 30,000 BTU burner, cast iron griddle, BBQ box and pizza oven accessories that will allow high temp searing and pizza baking and my favorite, crisping up chicken wings and reverse searing.

@Luscombe I completely agree about the high temp searing. I only use my 590 for smoking. I love the idea of another smaller unit for high heat searing. I have a big Luxe gas grill but would much rather use a smaller unit. We don't use propane as we have natural gas hookups that are built into our outdoor counter. I just need to figure out a way to make this work with the natural gas. I'm not too handy so I would need to hire someone to do it for me if the unit would work with natural gas.

 

[ARCbbq]

@Luscombe I completely agree about the high temp searing. I only use my 590 for smoking. I love the idea of another smaller unit for high heat searing. I have a big Luxe gas grill but would much rather use a smaller unit. We don't use propane as we have natural gas hookups that are built into our outdoor counter. I just need to figure out a way to make this work with the natural gas. I'm not too handy so I would need to hire someone to do it for me if the unit would work with natural gas.

I converted a propane grill to natural gas a few years ago. Requires different size burner orifices because of the energy difference between natural gas and propane. Look up your grill model on the internet & see if they offer a conversion kit.

 

[ARCbbq]

@Luscombe I completely agree about the high temp searing. I only use my 590 for smoking. I love the idea of another smaller unit for high heat searing. I have a big Luxe gas grill but would much rather use a smaller unit. We don't use propane as we have natural gas hookups that are built into our outdoor counter. I just need to figure out a way to make this work with the natural gas. I'm not too handy so I would need to hire someone to do it for me if the unit would work with natural gas.

Great summary, I appreciate the candor and agree with your comments. I have a Stampede and love it for what it does best, and it does a lot of things best! That said, high temp searing and cooking is not one of its strengths. Rather than buy another gas grill, I opted for a Camp Chef Sidekick. I think this is a perfect marriage for the Stampede. The Sidekick has a 30,000 BTU burner, cast iron griddle, BBQ box and pizza oven accessories that will allow high temp searing and pizza baking and my favorite, crisping up chicken wings and reverse searing.

Good idea about the sidekick. I already had the 2 burner gas grill, so just kept it. It has a secondary smaller warming rack and total rack space is about 400 sq inches. So the combination of the 590 and my other grill provides around 850 to 900 sq inches. I don't consider all of the grill space on the 590 useable - don't want to block all of the air flow, or have meat drip outside of the drip pan.

 

[tpack]

I agree with your assessment completely. It is a great tool that I added to my assortment of cooking grills. I haven't cooked a pork but yet, but my brisket turned out great. I do not thing my 590 will get the good smoke flavor and bark that my stick burner does though. I use mine for smoking 90% of the time. Never tried searing a steak though. my Weber Genesis does a great job @ 650+degrees and it only takes about 10-12 minutes to get hot and don`t have to worry about letting it cool down.

 

[ARCbbq]

Couple other things about the construction.

1). Like the handles - makes a design statement & ends stay fairly cool even if the oven is 500 deg.
2). Good quality and size fasteners - SS bolts, etc. No push on caps (thank goodness). I really like this when I did the assembly. Very different than the cheap stuff on competitors. You can get a pretty good feel for the quality of a grill just by looking at the fasteners.
3). The add-on front shelf is somewhat awkward because of the way it clicks into the protruding flanges. Not hard to lift up into place, but less so to disengage. I always put the cover on after a cook, so need to drop the shelf. The flanges protrude into the cover a little. And either pushing in the spring pins or deflecting the flanges to drop the shelf is kind of clunky. Frankly, not the best design. There are lots of ways to do a foldable shelf that I would prefer. The shelf is a little narrow and close to the hot surface. My other grill side shelves are one-handed lift / pull to engage, or pull / lift to drop. much easier. Nice that the 590 shelf is stainless, however.
4). Casters - The 590 ones work fine. Many people probably don't move the grill much, so they may not care. In my situation, the grill is under a roof in the lanai (Florida), and I always push it out into the open (get smoke away from house) for cooking. I would prefer that all 4 casters were rotating and lockable. I replaced the casters on my other grill with good ones (from Lowes - $9 each) and they work great for my situation. This wouldn't be a good business decision for Rec Tec since many people wouldn't care. It just works better for me.
5). Scraping the grate rods is always a pain. I won't use the brass or steel brush types since the brush fibers can break off and become part of your food (bad for digestion). I bought the SS scraper from Rec Tec which works just OK. My other grill (cast iron grate) has a simple folded metal plate scraper that has V grooves that fit the grate very well. It has worked really well for a number of years and doesn't gum up or wear out. I may make one to fit the Rec Tec grate rods. Seems like a good and cheap alternative - the SS rod assembly tolerance is probably tighter than my cast iron casting tolerance, so a V or U groove plate should work well. I always wash the grate afterwards as well - just use the scraper to remove the big stuff.
6). Would be nice to be able to remove pellets easily from the hopper for changing wood type. Some competitors have a provision for this. Not a big deal - but with a 30 lb hopper would have been nice.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Some good observations, and especially insightful about working within the capabilities of the cooker (great advice for just about anything). I'll toss out a few thoughts on some options beyond those already discussed. One thing to keep in mind is that each person has their own standards for "good" or "bad", so nothing is an absolute.

-Searing; for my tastes a pellet grill is not the best. One of my mottos is "Stripes are for show, full sear is for go." If I'm charcoal cooking I'm very often in two zone mode so have a griddle attachment for searing direct. But also have an IR burner on the gasser that does a fine job though more the stripe type.

-Griddle; A while back the folks at Griddle Hack had a promo going so I got one for the 590. I've got a write up on it elsewhere on this site. It maintains 400ish degrees very well and the grease run off trough. while looking a bit hokey, does a good job of integrating with the RT system. I haven't done a heavy cook of bacon to really challenge it, but then I prefer baked bacon texture rather than fried, so that won't ever be a problem for my rig. I wouldn't recommend this hardware for everyone, even though it is good quality and works well, only for those with limited space/equipment alternatives.

-Front shelf; I did my own more than a year ago well before RT offered one for the Stampede. As such, it's better sized (depth mostly), and the hinge function is probably more sturdy as well as easy to use. Theirs is okay, which is faint praise.

-Pizza; I tried pizza on the RT early on and found it adequate, but not the best for home made, Neapolitan (or near) style. As a convection oven it works fine for a take and bake style pizza, but that's not my preference. As the OP suggested, using a gas grill has been the most effective (albeit not only) pizza cooking device I have. I do have a rotisserie burner on the back wall which is the key, especially for getting the top finish I prefer. I did one a couple nights ago where I got the stone temp up to the low 700s, and hit the top with some good heat. If folks have a gasser than can crank the heat I encourage trying this method. You'll see fire brick as a "roof" here, but I've gotten equal results from a second stone.

Here's some pics

 

[Bullporky]

@Uncle Bob that looks amazing!

 

[ARCbbq]

Some good observations, and especially insightful about working within the capabilities of the cooker (great advice for just about anything). I'll toss out a few thoughts on some options beyond those already discussed. One thing to keep in mind is that each person has their own standards for "good" or "bad", so nothing is an absolute.

-Searing; for my tastes a pellet grill is not the best. One of my mottos is "Stripes are for show, full sear is for go." If I'm charcoal cooking I'm very often in two zone mode so have a griddle attachment for searing direct. But also have an IR burner on the gasser that does a fine job though more the stripe type.

-Griddle; A while back the folks at Griddle Hack had a promo going so I got one for the 590. I've got a write up on it elsewhere on this site. It maintains 400ish degrees very well and the grease run off trough. while looking a bit hokey, does a good job of integrating with the RT system. I haven't done a heavy cook of bacon to really challenge it, but then I prefer baked bacon texture rather than fried, so that won't ever be a problem for my rig. I wouldn't recommend this hardware for everyone, even though it is good quality and works well, only for those with limited space/equipment alternatives.

-Front shelf; I did my own more than a year ago well before RT offered one for the Stampede. As such, it's better sized (depth mostly), and the hinge function is probably more sturdy as well as easy to use. Theirs is okay, which is faint praise.

-Pizza; I tried pizza on the RT early on and found it adequate, but not the best for home made, Neapolitan (or near) style. As a convection oven it works fine for a take and bake style pizza, but that's not my preference. As the OP suggested, using a gas grill has been the most effective (albeit not only) pizza cooking device I have. I do have a rotisserie burner on the back wall which is the key, especially for getting the top finish I prefer. I did one a couple nights ago where I got the stone temp up to the low 700s, and hit the top with some good heat. If folks have a gasser than can crank the heat I encourage trying this method. You'll see fire brick as a "roof" here, but I've gotten equal results from a second stone.View attachment 6003View attachment 6004View attachment 6005View attachment 6003View attachment 6004View attachment 6005 Here's some pics

Good looking pizza! We always make our own also. Been using the 590 for the last 4 pizzas to see how good they can be. I may try one on the Rec Tec griddle just for grins. but in general I think it will take a while to get the griddle up to max temp. Looking forward to my next one on my gas grill & stone or cast iron griddle. Also have been reading other web sites and books about methods of making dough & also cooking on stone vs cast iron vs steel. Will do a post when I'm further along and have tried a number of things.

 

[scotts]

Couple other things about the construction.

1). Like the handles - makes a design statement & ends stay fairly cool even if the oven is 500 deg.
2). Good quality and size fasteners - SS bolts, etc. No push on caps (thank goodness). I really like this when I did the assembly. Very different than the cheap stuff on competitors. You can get a pretty good feel for the quality of a grill just by looking at the fasteners.
3). The add-on front shelf is somewhat awkward because of the way it clicks into the protruding flanges. Not hard to lift up into place, but less so to disengage. I always put the cover on after a cook, so need to drop the shelf. The flanges protrude into the cover a little. And either pushing in the spring pins or deflecting the flanges to drop the shelf is kind of clunky. Frankly, not the best design. There are lots of ways to do a foldable shelf that I would prefer. The shelf is a little narrow and close to the hot surface. My other grill side shelves are one-handed lift / pull to engage, or pull / lift to drop. much easier. Nice that the 590 shelf is stainless, however.
4). Casters - The 590 ones work fine. Many people probably don't move the grill much, so they may not care. In my situation, the grill is under a roof in the lanai (Florida), and I always push it out into the open (get smoke away from house) for cooking. I would prefer that all 4 casters were rotating and lockable. I replaced the casters on my other grill with good ones (from Lowes - $9 each) and they work great for my situation. This wouldn't be a good business decision for Rec Tec since many people wouldn't care. It just works better for me.
5). Scraping the grate rods is always a pain. I won't use the brass or steel brush types since the brush fibers can break off and become part of your food (bad for digestion). I bought the SS scraper from Rec Tec which works just OK. My other grill (cast iron grate) has a simple folded metal plate scraper that has V grooves that fit the grate very well. It has worked really well for a number of years and doesn't gum up or wear out. I may make one to fit the Rec Tec grate rods. Seems like a good and cheap alternative - the SS rod assembly tolerance is probably tighter than my cast iron casting tolerance, so a V or U groove plate should work well. I always wash the grate afterwards as well - just use the scraper to remove the big stuff.
6). Would be nice to be able to remove pellets easily from the hopper for changing wood type. Some competitors have a provision for this. Not a big deal - but with a 30 lb hopper would have been nice.

For #6, I removed the grate in the pellet hopper and vacuum out the pellets into a 5 gallon bucket using Bucket Head 5 Gal. Wet/Dry Vacuum that I got at Home Depot for about $25.

 

[Simarti28]

IMPRESSIONS OF MY REC TEC

My current Equipment: 590 Stampede w’ griddle, front folding shelf, 2 burner commercial propane grill with cast iron grates, 18" pizza stone, Lodge cast iron 14” round griddle. Indoor: Induction stove w’ convection oven, microwave, small electric griddle, lots of other cookware (insta-pot, pressure cookers, etc).

Earlier (no longer owned) outdoor equipment: weber charcoal grill, weber 2 burner, larger 4 burner gas grill. Used a wood burning concrete grill for years on the farm.

Opinion of Rec Tec 590:

Construction: Excellent – love the stainless, large pellet hopper,

Controls: Excellent, wireless & App works very well, temp probes - good, but haven't verified the accuracy yet.

Smoking & Roasting – Excellent. (I’ve done pork shoulder, ribs, chicken, pizza (on stone), breakfast items on griddle, etc).

Griddle: OK for occasional use. If you do a LOT of griddle cooking, buy a dedicated gas griddle with good grease drain & trap - if you have space & $. The griddle holds temp well however and is good size. Blue Rhino makes a nice small, portable griddle & of course Blackstone & others.

Searing: Fair – my 2 burner gas (goes to 700 deg) is much better and much quicker. Yes, I know you can buy a searing kit. My cast iron grates on the gas grill are essentially a searing kit.

Pizza – does good job, takes a while to heat (stone) up (500 deg). I’m going to try the stone & the Lodge cast iron on my gas grill for comparison.

Would I buy again – YES. The controls & construction are why I bought it, and I’m not disappointed. I avoided buying the Traeger and others for those reasons. But I’ll keep my 2-burner gas for the things It does well and the versatility of having a 2nd grill for larger groups.

Thanks for the feedback. I’ve been thinking about upgrading to the 590 from the 340. I bought the bundle that came with sear grates and they work well for steaks and other meats. Also try cooking the pizza directly on the grate vs a stone. I cook mine at 400F for 15-20 min directly on the drill.