Syzygies

Yes, that is generally how I plan to use my Milwaukee blower. I like that it's cordless, and infinitely variable. Before this I was creating towering infernos in 30 seconds with a small shop vac, but that was overkill.

At the time I recognized this as a pointless exercise; I was playing. This was a fortuitous pointless exercise, because when I then used the Guru port to introduce a large volume of air, I got away with it.

After cleaning ashes with a brush, I wore a dust mask and played with my new blower, to get the inside of my KK spotless. Then, setting up an extruded coconut ring around a piece of coffee charcoal, under an apple-filled smoke pot (for salmon on a bed of basil), I noticed that the fit is pretty good to blow air into the guru port. Got my fire to speed in a nice hurry.

Arbitrary flow control, 3 position switch and feathering the on button. Da bomb for starting fires. Tool only shown; takes M18 system battery.

Start with your sharpening kit. Spend what's left of your budget on the knives themselves. There are many approaches, but Shapton GlassStones get my Fujitake VG10 Chef's Knives twice as sharp as I thought possible. Check the hardness on your knife steel; there's a separate line for traditional, softer Japanese carbon steel knives, but these stones are suited for modern Japanese knives, and also work far better than traditional Japanese water stones on western knives like Wüsthof. That frustration, trying a waterstone you bought in your twenties on a western knife? It wasn't you. I rarely use the 1000 stone, working instead 2000, 4000, 8000 as my knives need refreshing. The 1000 is useful for reclaiming a dull or western knife. I believed the same for the 500 stone, and I rarely use it, but it's heavily discounted if one buys the set. Then, of course, who cuts the barber? One absolutely needs a diamond stone to flatten and clean the water stone surfaces every time, or one is missing out on most of the performance. $476 for the 2000, 4000, 8000 and both accessories, or $547 ($71 more) to include the 500 and 1000 stones. Shapton GlassStone 500 Grit ($55) Shapton GlassStone 1000 Grit ($63) Shapton GlassStone 2000 Grit ($71) Shapton GlassStone 4000 Grit ($80) Shapton GlassStone 8000 Grit ($113) Shapton Glass 4pc Set 500x, 1k, 4k, 8k ($264) Shapton Sharpening Stone Holder ($116) Atoma 1200x Diamond Plate ($96)

@golfingfool I cook with parchment paper for other purposes. On the KK, it's the safest way to transfer a pair of unbaked bread loaves from the kitchen to the fire (using a pizza peel). I was taught to steam fish en papillote by making an airtight package with parchment paper; the paper traps steam as the fish bakes. So would aluminum foil. So would white parchment paper, though I don't know that the white parchment paper is even food-safe when heated; the coating on white parchment paper was never designed to take heat, though it might. Pink parchment paper is lousy for en papillote, because it passes some but not all of the steam. This is exactly why people prefer it for barbecue. If you're happy with parchment paper, you'll probably be even happier with pink butcher paper. Here is my Amazon source for pink butcher paper, $37 for 150'. Pink/Peach Butcher Paper Roll 24" X 150' in Durable Carry Tube, FDA Approved, MADE 100% in the USA, The ORIGINAL meat smoking paper for Texas style BBQ

It's like pushing all the buttons in an elevator, only this elevator is like that scene in Being John Malkovich, all the buttons say "at". @mguerra One needs to type "at" then start typing a user, and wait for the pull-down menu to select said user. Otherwise one gets text, no highlighting, no notification. In my experience (Chrome on Mac) very buggy, editing can hang, harder to enter return for a new line, necessary to save and edit some more. There is probably (what I observe, not what I've read) a limit of one user per post that one can tag in this way. @tony b I can get around this by editing again. Perhaps it's one tag per edit? @Stile88 not for everyone. For you? @ckreef my second tag in same editing session. Sometimes one can? Buggy. @Syzygies and of course one can tag oneself. When I first learned the programming language APL, there was an operator that deleted other functions. Of course it wouldn't work on itself.

We're discussing low consequence science, and I have no doubt that you cook spectacularly well (and I would love to test this assumption if I ever get the chance!). However, anyone can cook better; that's what keeps us excited by the process. You would question the scientific approach in your statement if you substituted "surgery", "late 18th century", and "sterilization", and if you were the patient. For me, it is high consequence when I find myself thinking similar thoughts, because I fear aging. While I have a family history of brain hardware failure, I fear the software failure that can come first. Have I lost interest in revisiting questions I thought I had settled? As a mathematician, that would be career-ending. I came into BBQ in a period when "3:2:1" ribs were all the rage, the conventional norm and the unquestioned advice given to all newcomers. I basically did nothing but experiment in my first several years with a ceramic cooker, and I thought that foiled barbecue was absolutely wretched. One might as well use a crock pot. Much later, when Aaron Franklin's book came out, I was struck by his careful use of pink butcher paper. I made new experiments, and came to appreciate it. There's a parallel here with sous vide. Many people just don't see the need for it. The best cooks I know can outdo sous vide for traditional applications like steak, if they bring their A game with absolutely undivided attention, and nothing goes wrong. Any idiot can achieve better results than before with sous vide. So why would anybody want to be "any idiot" when we all aspire to be masters of technique? Life happens. I also need to fit in two errands, one of which becomes an unexpectedly long distraction. My guests are two hours late. That sort of thing. It is good to know robust techniques, over techniques that are superior in ideal circumstances. An MLB baseball season is 162 games; everything that can go wrong, will, and robust techniques win pennants. Aaron Franklin needs to hold finished barbecue for varying time intervals. We can't always count on guests that are ready to eat, to the minute, when I say the barbecue is done. I love how pink butcher paper holds barbecue. I recently included one rack of ribs as a teaser appetizer for a gumbo party, where I was already using my KK for other ingredients. The gumbo required all of my attention, and the meal timing was uncertain. While I prefer fairly plain ribs (no sauce with jars from the pantry to mask inferior pork) cooked never wrapped, here I wrapped in pink butcher paper for the last hour or two. These were the best ribs I've ever cooked.

By convention the white paper is wax coated, and the pink is not. Imagine how confusing it could be without such a convention?

I wasn't familiar with baking soda in rubs; I found this page informative: How should baking soda be used to tenderize meat?

I'll be smoking some pork chops and Catalan sausages for Creole Gumbo. Overnight "dry-brine" (rub to us) as advocated by Justin Smillie's Slow Fires.

My favorite pork chops are from The Local Butcher Shop, sous vide five hours at 136 F with 1% sea salt, Madagascar black pepper and agridulce pimenton, then finished quickly over coffee charcoal. I get flareup I'd like to minimize, so these greats look interesting.

My New England cousin used to put ketchup on her eggs, when she was a kid. That passed for novelty, when I was a kid. Sriracha would be better. Or a good homemade harissa.

Another way this can happen: Eating unlucky Chinese pine nuts. "Pine Mouth" and Consumption of Pine Nuts Ever heard of 'pine nut syndrome'? Neither had I, until I got it Laurie and I poured out two expensive bottles of red wine, cursing our luck that two in a row were corked. Then we remembered the catered banquet we'd attended, with pine nuts in the salad. One could actually feel sorry for the caterers, as they operate on margins that don't leave room for addressing this issue. On the other hand, rejecting inconvenient information is a loathsome trait, when the welfare of others is involved. One is playing roulette eating any pine nuts that cost less that $50/pound.

When my POSK7 (pre Komodo Kamado) lost its tiles I coated it in black material, and saved on fuel! On a hot day it wasn't far from low & slow temperatures before I lit the fire.