Hardwood pellets are going to be the best pellets for smoking as they provide a much longer burn time, other than fruit pellets. Hickory pellets are the most used to BBQ. Mainly because hickory will release a strong bodied flavour that enhances most meat products.

Where possible avoid soaking your pellets. They are made using a compressed sawdust which means if you were to soak them it would cause the compression to expand and likely fall apart. Furthermore, soaking the pellets will not only highly reduce the effectiveness but also could potentially damage your smoker.

Pellet's are not as quick at burning as wood chips but provide you that deep smoke flavour. Moreover, the pellets burn at much higher temperatures than wood chips so can be used to cook a wider variety of meat cuts. However, wood chips don't require quite as much processing as they are not compressed like pellets.