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Accessories For A Traeger Grill
In recent years Traeger has been embracing innovation and versatility. This includes a lineup of accessories to help maintain your grill and you take your wood pellet grilling experience to the next level.
Some of Traeger’s most popular accessories are general-purpose items like a bucket lid sifter, grill basket, and grill cleaners that you would use with just about any model of the wood pellet grill.
Then Traeger also offers a lineup of accessories that are specifically tailored to certain models. This includes model-specific grill covers, optional shelves, model-specific grill blankets, and pellet hopper sensors that work with Traeger’s new D2 WiFIRE-enabled wood pellet grills.
Of these accessories, the model-specific grill cover should be your highest priority. If you like grilling seafood and vegetables, the stainless-steel grill basket can also come in very handy.
A model-specific grill blanket can also help protect your Traeger and maximize its performance during bad weather. Though it’s not important if you only plan to smoke meat on fair-weather days.
Many of the other accessories are more of luxury items to let you customize your Traeger to your style. Some like the bucket and lid can be sourced for cheaper at a hardware store.
While Traeger doesn’t sell a pizza stone accessory, one can come in handy for making smoky wood-fired pizza. Ideally, you want a cordierite pizza stone, that is just small enough to fit perfectly on your Traeger’s primary grill grate.
What Accessories Can You Get for a Traeger?
Traeger offers several general-purpose accessories, as well as accessories that are meant to pair with specific models. So, take note that things like the attachable accessory shelf won’t fit on every Traeger, and things like grill blankets and grill covers are meant to be model-specific.
The Traeger Bucket Lid & Filter makes it easy to sift your pellets before adding them to your Traeger’s hopper. It might seem like a simple thing, but it will go a long way toward preventing stray wood fibers from causing auger jams or dangerous burn-back fires.
The Traeger Stainless Steel Grill Basket is great for cooking vegetables and smaller pieces of meat that might otherwise end up falling through the grill grates. It’s dishwasher safe, so cleaning it is a breeze, and it works much better than improvising with heavy-duty aluminum foil.
The Traeger All-Natural Grill Cleaner is a great way to give your wood pellet grill a thorough deep cleaning. It does a great job of cleaning away stuck-on soot and grease without the toxic fumes left behind by chemical degreasers.
A Traeger Custom Grill Cover is a model-specific heavy-duty grill cover to help protect your investment from the elements. Some Traeger grills come with a cover, but if yours doesn’t, then this is a must-have item that you should consider buying on day one.
The Attachable Front Shelf is included in some Traeger grills like the Pro Series and can be fitted to most of their D2 grills in one form or another. Though it’s not compatible with 100% of their older grills and might not be compatible with Traegers that have the Pop And Lock (PAL) system.
Insulated Traeger Grill Blankets also tend to be model-specific, but there are some general fit versions that can be improvised over a wood pellet grill of roughly the same size. Grill blankets are great for maximizing smoke density and trapping heat on cold, windy or rainy days.
The Traeger Power Inverter is designed to let you take portable models like the Traeger Ranger and Traeger Scout camping where 120 Volt AC power isn’t available. You can connect it to a DC source, like your RV’s house battery bank to power the internal auger and fan.
The Traeger Wood Pellet Sensor comes standard on some of their high-end D2 Models like the Traeger Timberline. Though you can add a pellet sensor as an accessory to any WiFIRE-enabled Traeger grill, you will get an alert on your smartphone when the hopper starts to get low.
The Traeger Pop-And-Lock (PAL) is a series of accessories that you can attach to the front rail of high-end models like the Traeger Timberline. This is a suite of accessories that let you customize the wood pellet grill to your style.
Some of the most popular PAL accessories include a set of three tool hooks, different-sized folding shelves, a paper towel holder, and a convenient storage bin.
Which Accessories Should You Get for a Traeger?
There’s a good argument to be made for purchasing a Traeger grill cover with your wood pellet grill. These model-specific covers help protect your investment from the elements while preventing sun fading as well as the potential for rainwater to infiltrate the sensitive internal electronics.
The Stainless Steel Traeger grill basket is also a very tempting early accessory, as it lets you make vegetables and small pieces of meat like shrimp without having to worry about them falling through the grates. It’s a lot more convenient than improvising with heavy-duty aluminum foil.
A grill blanket comes in handy if you’re going to be smoking meat during cold, wet, or rainy weather. Though if you’re a fair-weather outdoor chef, it’s not really a “Must-Have” accessory.
The Attachable folding front shelf, the PAL accessories, and the pellet sensor are luxury items that are nice, but you can certainly forgo them if you’re working with a tight budget.
While it’s a very good idea to sift your wood pellets before adding them to a hopper, you can improvise with a cheap 5-gallon bucket from a hardware store and a coarse sieve from a Dollar discount store, without having to spend money on the Traeger branded bucket and lid.
Where Can You Get Accessories for a Traeger Grill?
Traeger accessories are sold at a lot of the same stores that carry their lineup of wood pellet grills. This includes Home Depot, Ace Hardware, Costco, Scheels, Runnings, and other licensed dealers.
You can also buy Traeger accessories online through Traeger’s website, Amazon, and third-party vendors like BBQ Guys. Though when you buy them online, there’s usually a small shipping and handling charge tacked on.
So, it’s probably best to look at a local retail store first. If they don’t have the Traeger accessories you want, ordering them online is a fine fallback plan.
Why Would You Need Accessories for a Traeger?
Some Traeger accessories like the model-specific grill cover and the insulated grill blanket help protect your investment or maximize the performance. Other accessories like the stainless steel grill basket add to the overall versatility of your new wood pellet grill.
Other accessories like the PAL system accessories, the front shelf, and the pellet sensor tend to be luxury items that help you customize your grill to your style, but they aren’t really necessities.
Other accessories like the bucket and lid sifter or the all-natural grill cleaner can come in handy, but there are certainly cheaper alternatives out there that can do the same job.
Can You Use a Pizza Stone in a Traeger?
If you love smoky wood-fired pizzas, then adding a simple aftermarket pizza stone to your arsenal of Traeger accessories is a great ideal. Just make sure that the diameter of the stone you want to use will fit on the primary grill grate of your specific Traeger model.
Ideally, you want a pizza stone made out of Cordierite, which does a better job of transferring heat and is less likely to fracture from thermal shock than a ceramic pizza stone.
Then give it a solid 30 minutes in the Traeger at 450 to 500 degrees to fully preheat before placing your fresh dough pizza on the stone.
Final Thoughts
Traeger has made a concerted effort to add a bevy of interesting accessories to help maximize the performance and versatility of their premium lineup of wood pellet grills. This includes several model-specific accessories like grill covers and attachable shelves, as well as insulated grill blankets.
They also offer some general accessories like their all-natural cleaner, stainless steel grill basket, and bucket with lid sifter which can come in handy. Though some of these accessories you can improvise with things you can buy at most hardware stores.
Other high-end accessories like the pellet hopper sensor and the PAL (Pop-And-Lock) accessories are only available for high-end Traegers like the Timberline or other new D2 WiFIRE-enabled wood pellet grills.
The highest priority of all these accessories is probably the model-specific grill cover, which will protect your investment from day one. The stainless-steel grill basket can also come in handy if you like to grill vegetables and small pieces of meat without having to worry about them falling through the grill grates.
You’ll really only need a model-specific grill blanket that can also help protect your Traeger and maximize its performance during bad weather. A lot of the other accessories are more luxury items to let you customize your Traeger.
Even though Traeger doesn’t sell a branded pizza stone, you might want to add a Cordierite stone to your accessory list. Just make sure that the diameter of the pizza stone is less than the width of your Traeger’s primary grill grate.
Robert is a certified Pitmaster, with over a decade of experience in smoking the best meats you’ll ever feast upon. He also has a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Texas at San Antonio. When he’s not researching technical topics, he’s most likely barbecuing in his backyard.