Green Mountain Pellet Grill Modifications

My newest grill purchase is a Green Mountain pellet grill and the model is the Daniel Boone which is their smallest grill.  This grill has about 425 square inches of cooking space on the standard grid.  The cooking chamber is 13-1/2 inches tall which will make it possible to make several easy modifications to improve and add several new cooking options to this already great little cooker.  This cooker has a great digital controller with a meat probe and will go down to a low of 150 degrees to make it possible to smoke many of the very low temp items like sausage, fish, and jerky etc.. It will go up to 500 degrees on the high side which should be good enough for baking and items like pizza.  It has some other rinky-dink options like a low pellet alarm which may be more problems than it is worth.

The best part of this new cooker is the price at $759 dollars and I got my local dealer to throw in the rain cover and deliver it to my home which is about 60 miles away for a charge of just $8.95 cents.

I selected this cooker on price and features and I have made several modifications to improve the cooker that I will share with you.

This is for the GMG owners and others who may have interest in this fine pellet cooker.

These are some of the modifications I have made to my new GMG Daniel Boone Pellet Cooker and thought maybe some of the other owners out there might have some interest.

I will apologize in advance for the poor lighting for my pictures...they were taken in a dark garage.

Enlarging the food probe hole.

The standard hole in the cooker is about 1/8" and will allow just one probe to go thru so I used a 5/16" drill and opened it up to fit several probes at the same time. 

Raised or second cooking grid.

I purchased an aftermarket Charbroil 8000 series (14-3/4” by 26-5/8”) heavy duty porcelain covered cooking grid and then used a hacksaw to cut it right down the middle of the width to give me two pieces measuring about 14-3/4” by 13-1/8”. This is about the largest two grid setup that will still go into the opening of the cooker. 

I used some carriage bolts, fender washers, lock washers, and some nuts to build my raised grids for the cooker. 

This picture shows a pork steak and hot wing cook using one side of my raised grid. I haven’t tried it yet but I believe a fellow could do a whole case of pork butts using the raised grids. 

Rotisserie Setups

One of the reasons I purchased  this cooker over several others was the extreme height available inside the cooking chamber of the GMG. I figured this height would allow me to modify some of my rotisserie setups to fit without a ton of work. I do love rotisserie setups and put them on most of my smaller cookers.

After carefully laying out and marking where I wanted my spit holes, I used a 3/4” hole cutter to make a hole in each side of the cooker. 

For the motor or chimney side of the cooker, I purchased a MB3B all Stainless Steel inverted 3” rotisserie motor mount from CLA Grills and mounted it on the side of the cooker.

My heavy duty battery operated 3” rotisserie motor in the mount. 

For the pellet hopper side of the cooker, I purchased a 1/2” spit rod bushing from 4 The Grill  and this will fit 5/16” - 3/8” - and 1/2” spit rods. This will allow me to use about any length and outside diameter of the spit rods. I plan to use my Weber Kettle and my Hasty Bake rotisserie setups on my Daniel Boone. 

This picture shows my standard spit rod setup in the cooker. This setup is nice for a couple of whole chickens or maybe a couple of turkey breasts along with many other rotisserie treats. 

This is my favorite basket setup and is used for many veggies, slab potatoes, chicken wings, thighs, legs, and will even hold two whole butterflied chickens. 

This is my Shish Kabob setup and is a treat to use. 

This picture shows my Ez-Que setup on my GMG. I have both the 6” and 8” cradles and have adapted them as well for this cooker. This company is no longer in business but did produce some of the finest rotisserie setups ever for the backyard cookers. This setup will probably get more use than the other setups in my Daniel Boone cooker. 

These modifications have turned this good little cooker into one great cooker and I have just one more modification to do to my cooker. I plan to fabricate a Direct Grill type of insert so I can cook my steaks and chops direct and over the flame from the firebox. I now have all my parts together and will get started soon.