Leaderboard

I'm almost embarrassed to post this.......but had to share. Was invited to my daughters house for Thanksgiving. Volunteered to bring a ham. Bought a couple 6 lb. spiral slices hams from Sam's club. Decided to lightly smoke them while warming them up in the KK and then crank it up to glaze on the supplied topping. Simple, right? I put both hams in a 1/2 steam pan on top of a metal cookie sheet on top of the main grate. I put in just a cup or so of apple juice into the steam pan which lightly covered the bottom of the pan. I smoked the meat uncovered for 1 hour and then covered the pan with foil. The meat was taking longer than I expected, so I let the cooker temp climb to 375*. When the internal meat temp reached 125*, I planned to take the meat off, apply the glaze while the cooker temp climbed to 425*. This is where things went totally bad.......................... I grabbed the main cooking grate handles and started to lift the entire grate & food containers out the the KK, onto a table next to the grill. The foil covered the steam pan and the cookie tray, so I could not see into the steam pan. As I was lifting the grate & food out, I must have tilted the grate and about a cup or more of liquid poured down into the 375* KK. Down the front of the fire box and all over the heat deflector. Steam, smoke, cuss words were flying. I never dreamed that the steam pan would totally fill up with liquid and overflow on to the cookie sheet. Both were covered with foil and I didn't think to look. Rookie move!!! As a long time ceramic kamado owner, my first thought was......on my third cook........I ruined the KK firebox!!!!! I know for sure that any of my other ceramic fireboxes would have shattered at that temperature difference................liquid vs. ceramic. After calling myself every name in the book, I did a quick inspection.........the fire box was stained, but OK. The heat divider was covered with baked on apple & ham juice but was also still intact. I finished the cook, closed the vents and went to my daughters. After Thanksgiving dinner I headed home to thoroughly inspect the cooled down KK. The dried on liquid removed about a 1/16 inch from the top of heat deflector, when I scraped it off. Other than that and a few stains, the deflector was fine. I gently wire brushed the surface of the fire box to get the dried juice off the surface and other than a few stains, it also looked no worse for the wear!!! I cleaned out the ashes, put a new load of lump in and cranked the KK up to around 500* to burn off any remaining crud. The next day you could hardly tell some dumb$hit was trying to cook on it!!!! Moral of the story....be careful cooking with liquids inside your kamado and never ASSUME! and .................the KK construction difference shines through.............I'm 100% sure a standard ceramic firebox would have been in multiple pieces after a spill like mine. Humbly yours, Jon B.

I agree, Tony, but then I'm not buying, Midleton, so I can get the Dualit and the bonus is if there's a problem I can fix it myself.