My parts came in today and everything works great now! I heated the grill to 525 F for 20 minutes to burn off the "newness" and then seasoned the cast iron "grid" with one coating of PAM, then about six coatings of vegetable oil. Everything went well with the first batch of boneless chicken breasts!

I just bought a used Thermador CGB48RSBU (NG) All-in-One Grill fairly cheap at a garage sale. Weighs over 400 lbs with the cabinet & quite dirty/smokey x lots of use. I now see it is no longer being made/sold so wonder if I got a lemon! It is stainless steel & I saw it listed when new for a small fortune ($5000+) but now wonder why it is no longer being made/sold new? Appreciate anyone who has/had one & ( & their comments about the Thermador brand) about using it.

I second on the smoked salmon. Smoked sturgeon is even better. We use Traeger pellets; for smoking we sometimes chip our own apple and cherry we've pruned and dried. But that takes a powerful chipper. The Traeger grills are different. For one thing, they run on electricity. That means you do have to have reasonable access to a power source. We have an outlet on the patio. Because of the way air circulates, you don't need a rotisserie and there are no flareups. That can be a big consideration for people who find grilling intimidating. I would compare it to learning how to use a new range. If you can figure out appliances, a Traeger is no problem. There are Traeger owners nationwide. It's a friendly group and I'm betting you could call Traeger to hook you up with someone in your area willing to show you how they work. Seeing the real thing can make a big difference. Then you can decide, "Yes, this is just what I want," or maybe you'll decide, "This isn't for me." Everyone has preferences. I've also linked below to the page on the Traeger site that explains how they work. That might help too. Carol Here is a link that might be useful: How Traegers Work

DH is a Weber charcoal grill afficianado - I pretty much stay away from the grill - which pleases both of us. So BBQ forums are one thing I don't do much with. We recently got a Big Green Egg however which was kind of my idea based on all kinds of things I won't bore you with. One thing we learned about when we were looking into the BGE was lump charcoal vs. the briquettes we'd always used. Now that we've used it I would never go back to briquettes - we now use it in our Webers and our BGE. So that's something you might want to look into if you aren't already familiar with it.