tekobo

In Italy at the moment. Baby artichoke risotto for lunch was delicious.

Hi Paul. No, I did not use a drip pan. The set up is as per the photos - I didn't move or remove anything for the chickens' photo shoot. On low and slow cooks I put the smoke pot directly over the fire. That acts as my shield and I rarely use a drip pan for such cooks. No flare ups at all. I like rotisserie chicken for the crisp skin and the fact that the meat is "rarer" than it is for the low and slow smoked chicken. That said, I think you could cook hot and fast with the meat hanger, e.g. for a tandoori cook, but I have not tried that yet. Chances are you will need a drip pan for that but it depends on whether or not the longitudinal splitter could be used to keep the fire away from the drips. It is relatively easy to move the hook on the hanger to turn the chicken if you want a bit of the kiss of the fire on both sides. And yes, set up and clean up with the meat hanger is easier. No motor to haul out, attach and plug in. That said, I have no problem with cleaning the spit rotisserie. I just put the prongs in the dishwasher and run a sponge down the spit itself.

I have actually tried to make sourdough crumpets using left over starter. The results were disastrous. I made sure there were no pix. Jealous to hear of @Pequod's instant success, if the truth be told. Liking your bread Dave. Although I might prefer the pen holder. I love the idea of individual slots for each pen. No fighting to separate them to determine which is working and which is not.

No pix = Didn't happen, just sayin'!

The skin on the smoked chicken rendered beautifully. I did not eat the chicken immediately and I think that helped. Cooling the chickens down slowly and then refrigerating them meant that the moisture was retained and when we cut into them to make sandwiches for supper, the breasts were moist and delicious. You also got that "chicken jelly" near the bones and beneath the skin which added to the taste. The smoke flavour was good but I might try this again without extra smoke. Also plan to try tandoori and suya whole chicken. Options abound!

I tried out the MSR camping pot with my chicken smoking cook yesterday. I had let the fire get away from me and it was burning very hot when I put the pot on the coals. That is not normally a problem with a cast iron pot but the MSR pot heated up fast and gave off acrid white smoke. I left it to settle down and by the time I went back to check, all the wood chips were burned and there was no more smoke to be seen! Not a good start but I tried again, having got the fire back down to a low and slow temperature. I decided to use pellets instead of wood chips and this time everything went well. Once the smoke started to be generated I put my nose next to the top hat of the KK. No stingy eyes and nice smelling smoke. I didn't use any sort of screen to keep the holes clear and, as you will see from the photograph below, all the pellets burned well and there did not appear to be any smoke escaping from the top of the pot, meaning that the smoke was hopefully being driven into the coals below to achieve the desired clean smoke. This is a relatively small pot and so should fit even in the smallest of KKs. I bought mine in the UK on Amazon. LInk here to @PVPAUL's giving details to purchase in the US: Kudos to whoever first suggested this. I thought it was @Cheesehead_Griller but I can't find an "origin" post to link to.

Smoked whole chicken on the meat hanger is a GOOD thing. About 2.5 hours at 250F/120C in the end. Start drooling now...

Today is the day. I have had this meat hanger for at least six months and am finally going to use it. There used to be a great South African butcher in Leeds Market. He "retired" but was forced to continue making and selling sausages and smoked chickens from his home because his customers demanded it. I no longer work in Leeds and so I wrote to him to ask him if I was on the right track with my plans to brine and then smoke some whole chickens. This is five years after he was meant to have retired (he is now 74) and he was up bright and early this morning to continue our email conversation. It seems like I am on the right track. I aged the chickens in the dry ager for a week to build flavour. Then I wet brined them for 18 hours. One of them in a lemony coriander and fennel brine and the other in a beery, hot sauce brine. They have just gone into the heat soaked KK at about 140C. Smoking over a mix of apple and a little pecan. Photos to follow....

My husband was just saying how nice sourdough crumpets must be when you came up with this @Pequod. Please fail. I don't want the man thinking you are perfect and I am not.

That would be the normal approach but there were soooo many hard spices that I got the impression that Andi was expecting you to leave them in. I will see if I can get an answer from her....

You sent me off on a voyage of discovery. "Gloop" appears to be feature of Japanese curries because they use quite a heavy roux. If the internet is to be believed, curry was introduced to the Japanese by the British who brought it from India so it is not native to Japan and they have adapted it to suit their tastes. Hopefully if there are any Japanese KK'ers lurking here they will chime in with a more authoritative view.

Gosh, that looks really good @David Chang!

Hi Paul. I put the bottom half of my cast iron pot on top of the coals to heat up while the KK is heat soaking. It has eliminated the extra step of heating the cast iron pot separately. My fail is with the seal at the top of the pot because I rarely get around to making the dough ring to go around the top. I now have an MSR pot and am planning to try it out in the next couple of days. I think it is probably small enough to fit in a 19 or even a 16 but I'll be using it in my 32 and so cannot be definitive.

That sounds good @Aussie Ora. Also good to have you check in once in a while. Take care!

Yo @Aussie Ora great to hear from you and to see that you are still cooking up a storm. Don't be a stranger, we are missing your weird and wonderful sauce and rub combinations!