Smart pellet grills offer an easy, albeit expensive, way to serve up delicious smoked food without having to constantly monitor cooking temperatures and fuel the fire. The Brisk It Origin 940 is no different. With 940 square inches of grilling space, precise temperature control, and a user-friendly mobile app, the Origin 940 lets you roast, smoke, bake, and barbecue without having to deal with the mess of charcoal grilling or the taste of lighter fluid. It delivered tasty smoked and grilled food in testing and was relatively easy to assemble. At $1,099.99, the Origin 940 doesn’t come cheap, but its price is in line with grills from Traeger and Weber. The addition of AI-generated recipes makes it one of the smartest grills we’ve tested and earns it an Editors' Choice award.

Design and Features: A Typical Pellet Grill With Extra Smarts

The Origin 940 works like any other pellet grill: It requires a 110V GFCI outlet and uses an auger mechanism that feeds the pellets into a firepot where they are ignited by a hot-rod component. A single fan and PID (proportional integral derivative) algorithm technology control the cooking chamber temperature, which can reach up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.

As with the Traeger Ironwood 650 ($1,299.99), you can use the Origin 940 to grill, sear, roast, bake, and smoke your food. It is equipped with embedded 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios, and it comes with a user-friendly mobile app that lets you turn the grill on and off, ignite the pellets, adjust cooking temps, and access recipes that you can send to the grill.

Made from rolled and stainless steel and weighing 167 pounds, the Origin 940 has a sturdy look and feel. It has a black powder-coat finish and measures 46 by 55.4 by 26 inches (HWD). The pill-shaped cooking chamber contains two porcelain-coated racks and offers 940 square inches of grilling space (590 on the bottom rack and 350 on the top rack). The chamber lid has a silver stainless steel handle, and just above the handle is a silver stainless steel Brisk It emblem.

There's a 16.5-by-9.5-inch shelf on the right side of the grill, and on the left side is the pellet hopper with a 4-inch LCD control panel mounted on the front. The hopper holds 22 pounds of pellets and becomes narrower at the bottom to prevent pellets from becoming jammed up in the upper part of the hopper (also known as tunneling). Inside the cooking chamber, there’s a slanted grease tray that catches drippings and directs them to a pull-out tray for grease and ash box below the shelf on the right. An adjustable Wi-Fi antenna is mounted upside-down on the stand below the control panel. The two large wheels on the right side and two smaller steering wheels on the left make it easy to move the grill from place to place.

The control panel has a knob for scrolling through and selecting the various menu items. There’s a Menu button for settings, an Ignite button for lighting the grill, and two probe inputs. The display shows the current grill temperature, the target temperature, the Wi-Fi status, and any maintenance notifications. Tap the Menu button to access settings for timers, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, priming the auger, calibrating the probes, and pairing the grill with your phone.

What sets the Origin 940 apart from smart grills such as the Traeger Ironwood 650 is that it uses generative AI technology, dubbed Vera, to offer up countless recipes that you can send directly to the grill. You can use your voice or text entries to search for recipes using simple keywords such as “salmon” or “rib eye." You can tell Vera what ingredients you have and it will generate a recipe, or ask for a specific recipe such as smoked trout or Korean short ribs.

To activate Vera, tap the orange circle on the app’s main screen. When the Vera screen opens, you can issue voice commands by tapping the microphone icon or typing in the text bar. Once you download a recipe, the grill takes over and sets the correct temperature and a timer. You’ll receive notifications when it’s time to flip or baste your food, change the cooking temperature, add ingredients, and when the cooking cycle has been completed. The recipes also provide food preparation steps and finishing touches.

When you open the mobile app, you’ll see a large round temperature gauge that shows the target and current chamber temperatures. If you’ve downloaded a recipe to the grill, the name will appear in a panel at the top of the screen along with the current step in the recipe. Below the gauge are two probe temperature readings, two Set Timer buttons, a button for keeping cooked food warm, a favorite recipe button that brings up saved recipes, and a slider for igniting and shutting down the grill. Other controls include a Powersmoke button that adds extra smoke to the cooking process and a gear icon for accessing the settings menu. Within settings, you can access the Vera AI screen, edit the name of the grill, view current temperature graphs, schedule an ignition time, update the firmware, prime the auger, and season the grill. You can also access an online manual and enable Stall Detection, which lets you know if the internal temperature of your meat has stopped increasing (stalled).

Installation and Performance: The Brisk It Aces Pork, Fish, and Burgers

The Brisk It must be assembled and seasoned before first use, so plan accordingly. I needed a little more than an hour to attach the legs and wheels and assemble everything, but it was easy thanks to precise illustrated instructions and clearly labeled hardware. You’ll need an extra set of hands when it comes time to turn the chamber upside-down to attach the legs and again when it comes time to turn the grill upright. Once everything was assembled, I downloaded the mobile app, created an account, and plugged the grill into a GFCI outlet.

I powered up the grill and connected it to my phone via Bluetooth, selected my Wi-Fi SSID when prompted, and entered my Wi-Fi password. Once the grill was online, I added pellets to the hopper and followed the on-screen instructions to prime the auger. Once the auger started turning, the GFCI outlet’s breaker tripped, so I turned off the grill, reset the outlet, and tried again. Unfortunately, the outlet tripped again and continued to do so after several attempts. After some troubleshooting with tech support, it was determined that a bad control panel may have been the issue, so the folks at Brisk It sent me a new controller. I had to remove several screws and disconnect a bunch of wires to remove the old panel before I could replace it with the new one. It wasn’t very difficult but there wasn’t much room to get my hands into the smallish wiring compartment. With the new control panel installed, the grill worked without issue. I primed the auger and followed the app instructions to season the grill, which took around 30 minutes, and was ready to go.

For my first grilling test, I ignited the grill and asked Vera for a recipe for one of my favorite smoked dishes, pulled pork. I was presented with a recipe for Perfect Pulled Pork, sent it to the grill, and followed the preparation instructions to trim the fat from the pork and season it with the rub of my choice. The recipe automatically set the chamber target temperature to 225 degrees and the probe target temperature to 160 degrees. When it reached the target temperature, I inserted a probe into the meat, placed it on the grill fat side up, and closed the lid. I let it cook low and slow for six hours, basting it every half hour with an apple cider vinegar and sugar mixture, and when prompted, I wrapped the meat in foil and returned it to the grill for another four hours at 250 degrees. I finally received a notification (after a full 10 hours of cooking time) that the internal temperature had reached its target, so I removed the meat from the grill and let it sit for an hour before pulling it with two forks. The pork was very tender and easy to shred, and it tasted incredible.

For my next test, I asked Vera for a recipe for striped bass, and it came back with a very simple recipe that called for grilling a whole bass rubbed with salt and pepper and whatever herbs you wish to use. I added a few slices of lemon to the cavity along with some oregano and garlic powder, sent the recipe to the grill, and it automatically set the temperature to 375 degrees, set an internal temperature target of 145 degrees, and set a timer for 30 minutes. I placed the fish on the grill, inserted a probe, and let it cook for 15 minutes before flipping it. I let it cook for another 15 minutes, at which point the probe read 145 degrees. I removed the fish and let it rest for 5 minutes before digging in. The bass was delicious and perfectly cooked, with just a hint of wood-fired flavor.

For my final test, I decided to wing it and grilled up a couple of hamburgers, hot dogs, and ears of local corn without asking Vera for a recipe. The grill handled this most basic of barbecue tasks with aplomb and everything came out perfectly cooked. Cleanup was fast and easy thanks to the ash cleanout drawer that lets you empty the firepot without having to take out the grates, drip tray, and heat baffle.

The Verdict: Wood Fire Plus Generative AI Equals a Grilling Win

If you want to give your barbecued food the smoky goodness of wood-fired grilling, the Brisk It Origin 940 Smart Grill has you covered. It uses real wood pellets and algorithm calculations to provide precise temperature control for every kind of cooking, from low and slow smoking to high-heat searing. Moreover, this is the first grill we’ve seen that uses generative AI technology to provide scores of recipes that you can send directly from your phone to the grill for a fully automated, can’t-miss cooking experience. It's expensive, but it's also one of the most technically advanced grills we’ve tested, and it delivers the goods, earning our Editors’ Choice award for smart outdoor grills.