That’s hot. Seriously, the deal is great and the actual item - it’s hot! In 2 ways!
I’ve been tempted to buy this during the last two times I’ve seen it on woot…
Here’s one And durring october’s Woot-off
So many great things to be said, I might actually pull the trigger this time…
…maybe.
I’m in the same boat. Another day to sit on the fence about this one.
I have a wood grill that I use during the summer. But during the winter…I think this will be a much better. And I do like grilling.
I too, may have to pull the trigger on this finally.
Blast you, Woot!
I bought one of these the last time and used it camping and at home. It works pretty well. The only problem is I have a family of 6 so the Cobb does not hold enough food. If you are cooking for 2-3 people, or 4 people with small appetites this might work. It doesn’t use a lot of charcoal, and as long as you have time and patience to wait for the coals to catch, and for the food to cook, you will be pleased and the food tastes good. I also bought some of the add-ons from the Cobb website which was running a 50% special at the time. Everything worked except we couldn’t figure out how to use the smoker pot. I think the Cobb and accessories would be overpriced at the regular price and I think it is a lot of hype with slick as-seen-on-tv style marketing campaign, videos, etc., but at this discount price for the Cobb I think it is a reasonable purchase (as long as you don’t have too many mouths to feed).
I’ve had mine for about 2 years now, and love it. I can smoke 2 racks of ribs at once, or a tri-tip, a couple of Salmon or 3 pounds of boneless Chicken Thighs (perfect for freezing).
I find 13 briquettes work best for 2 1/2 hours’ worth of heat.
These blow-out sales are the best price for these Cobb units you’ll find. If you’ve been wanting one for awhile, get one now and cook up a smoking storm for the Holidays. Every year I take a sliced smoked Tri-Tip down to my local Post Office for the gang…it’s a great way to say Thanks.
Get one. You’ll like it. The build is excellent, the results are great. I mostly use Mesquite and Hickory, but have a nice selection of 8-10 smoking woods from Ebay to use for variety and experimenting.
I also use a small steel English Candy Tin for the smoking woods. Poked a couple of holes in the top, saved $12 and got a handful of candy to boot!
Cobb is an excellent grill, small, portable and reliable.
When I think of a smoker I think of something that generates some actual smoke to carry flavor and heat to the food. This is more like a charcoal-powered oven.
For reference, this is a smoker I built out of steel drums.
http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj155/dragonwisard/IMG_20101125_150036-1-1.jpg
Most recently I used it to 5 turkeys this past week (it can fit two at a time).
No, it’s not tiny and portable. But it actually smokes your food, and can cook for a crowd, not just 2-3 people. Actually,I could probably bolt it to a trailer, then it would be portable.
But the Cobb is not meant to replace something that cooks 5 turkeys. I’d have thought that was pretty obvious. It’s also not meant to replace a Buick, would you criticize it for being too small to fit the kids?
Thats why woot allows you to buy up to 3 of these, and thereby solving your “family of 6 issue.” 
Thanks for the candy tin tip! Can’t wait to get this and start smoking!
You add a smoker pot to hold wood chips to make it a smoker. Of course a can with some holes poked in it would be cheaper.
I also purchased one of these grills (stainless steel one, though) recently when it was on Woot. At the time, they offered the two black and red grills shown here along with the stainless steel one which is probably a bit higher quality than the black and red painted ones seen here (but I believe the price was a bit higher, too). I do not think that the Cobb grill is worth the regular price when they are not on sale, but at the sale price, you are getting what you pay for. Having said that, I would give the Cobb a much higher score on quality if they made some changes in their design. The first thing I notice was that when I added the liquid to the moat that it started to leak. Thinking that I had a defective grill, I called Cobb and found out that the inside base is 2 pieces welded together and is not water tight. Cobb knew as soon as I called why I was calling. I suggested that they make the unit water tight to avoid having the liquid leak out on whatever the unit is sitting on or drip as you move it around. This leakage also creates more work to clean the outer containing vessel which should not really be necessary if it did not leak (not to mention having to clean up the liquid on the surface where the grill is placed). The rep indicated that the next model may address this shortcoming. I am sure that making the unit one piece will increase the production cost, but then the unit would probably be well worth the regular price of more than $100. Hopefully, the company does well enough offering the unit at promo prices that they can re-invest a portion of their profits and produce a really nice 1 piece unit. I would probably buy one at the higher price if they did, and maybe Cobb might give me some credit on my current unit as a trade in. That would be nice.
Smoked foods are delicious, aren’t they?
But please do thorough internet research on the association between smoked foods and cancers of various types.
I purchased this on the first offering and do highly recommend. This isn’t meant to replace a standard grill, it’s more meant for folks with limited space or to grill on the go.
That said I live in NY and have a limited outdoor space to cook which has always been a bit frustrating. We’ve used this grill multiple times already as recently as last night to cook a porterhouse on.
That said, a couple of notes:
Make sure you put water in the moat, it keeps your food from drying out and it’ll help keep it clean. Adding a quartered lemon to the moat also helps in clean up, another person had mentioned once they were done cooking they dropped a few drops of liquid dishwashing detergent in the moat as well.
If it gets too difficult to clean, easy off oven cleaner will do quick work on it.
Natural hardwood lump charcoal works best in this baby, try to avoid those chemically laden kingsford briquettes since your cooking space is so condensed. The natural charcoal will impart a really nice flavor and burn much cleaner than something like kingsford. That said I highly recommend Ozark Oak, the best price I’ve found online including shipping is $9.99 a bag w/$5 shipping for 10 pounds. Buy 2 bags and you’re paying pretty close to what you’d pay at a local store.
Accessories: Truthfully, we use the grill rack, dome extender, and grill plate the most frequently. We also have the wok & the frying pan which I would imagine we’d use if/when we take this thing on the road. Right now we use it just at home.
Cooking: The average is around 10-12 coals needed for around 2 hours of cooking time. You should treat it like a standard grill…wait for the coals to turn white prior to cooking. Also, if you get the grill plate make sure you heat it up for 10 mins first to get some nice char marks on what ever you are cooking. Also, foods you are cooking longer than a minute or two on each side…don’t peak under the dome, you’re letting all the built up heat out.
I highly recommend this grill but again we don’t use it to cook for a large family, just for me and Mr. yrguide.
Got one of these off Woot a while ago, excellent to start learning how to smoke without a huge investment. Did 2 chicken breasts and turned out nice, moist and flavorful with little cleanup effort. Great for just 2 people, and very portable. Much more convenient than trying to fire up our big old charcoal grill for just 2 pieces of meat.
The Cobb is a decent little grill. I got mine about a year ago and have successfully used it quite a few times now. Clean up is a little involved (I recommend spraying everything with cooking spray and putting lime juice and water in the reservoir) but it’s not too bad.
I cooked a pork loin on mine last night and it came out amazing. I put a chipotle dry rub on it, cooked it for about 30 minutes, placed some soaked wood chips in with the coals and let it cook for another 30 minutes. After pulling the loin from the grill I let it sit for about 10 minutes. The pieces I was slicing off were extremely moist and a had really nice smoke/bbq ring to them. My wife and I ate the whole thing in one sitting…1.5 lbs worth! Yum!
I bought one of these the first time and couldn’t be happier. Both times this was on Woot previously, there was a link for 50% off accessories at Cobb America but can’t find it today.
This is oh so very tempting…
I like the idea.But I spent a long time making this out of Stainless. At 70 lbs, it’s not quite as portable:
During bad weather I use this
Nordic Indoor Smoker occasionally. It works surprisingly well.