Brisk It’s beginner-friendly smart smoker is more than $100 off for Labor Day

My desire to make authentic-tasing barbecue at home was always tempered by the intimidation of regularly using a smoker. I’ve tried a couple of smart smokers before, but none were as easy to set up, cook with, and maintain as Brisk It’s Zelos-450. An early Labor Day deal has dropped its price to around $328.99 ($121 off) at Amazon, Walmart, and from Brisk It.

The Zelos-450 has 450 square inches of cooking space, and can reach up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit, though you’ll mostly be cooking at temperatures well below the maximum when smoking. It burns pellets to create smoke, but is powered by electricity, which means you’ll need to have an accessible outlet to cook with it.

The smoker took about an hour (and two people) to fully assemble, including setting up an account in the Brisk It mobile app, and connecting Zelos-450 to my Wi-Fi network. Wi-Fi connectivity allows you to ignite and shut down the smoker or adjust its temperature mid-cook from your smartphone. It also allows you to access Brisk It’s Vera AI, an optional virtual assistant that can create recipes and manage your cooks automatically based on voice and text prompts or a photo.

I’ve used Vera for inspiration, but mostly stuck to recipes I found in cookbooks or online. Having a smart guide can be helpful, but I’m glad Brisk It isn’t overly pushy about using it. You can ignore most of its smart or connected features entirely by igniting and managing the smoker from its control panel. At minimum I recommend turning on app notifications to get an alert when the smoker has reached your desired temperature.

I’ve cooked wings, pork butt, ribs, burgers, chicken thighs, and sausage on the Zelos 450, and the results were surprisingly good considering my novice status. Meat was tender, with a lot of smoky flavor, and required very little maintenance. The smoker comes with a meat probe, so I could quickly check the internal temperature of larger cuts from my phone and get an alert when they were done. When cooking smaller items, I relied on a previous-generation Typur InstaProbe Instant Read Meat Thermometer to take readings manually, which worked really well.

One of my concerns before trying the smoker was having to maintain its supply of wood pellets, but the Zelos 450 has been pretty conservative about using them, so I haven’t had to top up the supply frequently. Cooking on the Zelos-450 requires time and patience (upwards of 18 hours for brisket). You can cook food a lot more quickly on a grill or in a pan, but the flavor, in my experience, makes smoking them worth the wait. I highly recommend picking up Brisk-It’s Waterproof Smoker Cover.