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Sneak Peak ~ KK 3/8" A36 Baking Steel prototype

Dr. bosco Kk. Ph.D. Picked end of August for this purchase so don't disappoint. The cabinet is out of this world. Great quality and over enginered like everything else. Dennis added a gorgeous brush stainless insert. The cabinet is 4' in length and I had two drawers added for smaller items. The bottom is an open cavity and it is used to store my deflectors, and spare grates, rotisserie etc. Lots of room as the cabinet is deep. Dennis made me matchi stainless side tables, a left for the 23 and a right for the 32. When you order your cabinet keep in mind that you appear to be heading towards the 23/32 combo. I would make everything in one purchase of you can swing it to save on shipping, however, if not possible design the cabinet with the thought of your second one. My quarky OCD made me want the 23 on the left and 32 on the right for small to large and Dennis accommodated. My cover was made by Dennis as well. What they did was make three covers and stitched them all together. I keep a 3/4" space between the KK and the shelf top so the panels can slide down in between. Mid you were to go same setup as mine get the roti for the 32 as the motor has to sit on the right. The 23 you will need to roll it away from the table each time you want to spin.

2 qt fits perfect in my 23 and 32

I use a two quart Dutch oven, with three 1/8" holes drilled in the bottom. One hole might do, but I want to hedge my bets on a hole getting blocked, and the lid blowing loose. Similarly, not everyone feels the need to glue the lid on with flour paste. The paste reminds me of Morocco, and one really doesn't want the lid to come loose.

It weighs about 10 kilos / 22 lbs. It will have the oil gutter moved over about 1/2" dead center left and right where there will be holes in the side for some grabbers we will ship with the steel.. It has such a high heat transfer you can bake things quickly at lower temps than other stones.. This is the only way to do the cracker crust pizzas..

Getting four pork butts ready for Laurie's Greek Orthodox Church on Sunday. I cooked for them last year and they asked me back. Taking one for the team, trying bourbons for the Bour-BQ sauce from "Smoke & Spice". I'm not normally one for such adornments, but a friend made this and it's awesome; we both make it now for large events. I'll mix some in with the pulled pork for "sloppy joe" style sandwiches, with a layer of coleslaw. That works.

Howdy KKers! I've been craving smoked salmon lately, so the last time I was in Sam's Club, I bought a couple of fillets and cooked them last night for my dinner guests. Here is a pic of the fillets fresh from the packaging. I made up a dry brine of brown sugar, sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, cinnamon, and all spice. Here are the fillets' covered with the mixture. I covered the dish and put it in the refrigerator for about 15 hours. As you can see a great deal of moisture has been drawn out of the fish fillets. Rinse the fillets and pat them dry. Then set the fillets on a drying rack back in the refrigerator for about 4 - 5 hours. This is what your fillets should look like right before you place them in the cooking grate in your kamado. And it's on to the cooking grate in TheBeast. I smoked these fillets for about 2 hours @ 175F using Alder and Peach chunks. Here is a picture of the fillets right after they were pulled off the cooking grate. You can tell they are dome by the little droplets of the cream colored liquid that you can see on the fillets. Here is a closer picture of the cooked fillets. Finally, here is the plated shot. The fillets were served with KK roasted potatoes and a vinegar based cole slaw, the recipe of which is posted in the recipe section. As you can see, Pete The Salt Pig heartily approves of us eating heart healthy. This is an easy cook and only takes a few minutes prep time in the kitchen. Thanks for looking.

We are in the process of de-barking, cutting and chopping a big truck full of coffee wood for smoking. Would like your feedback.. How does this look size wise? I know other companies have bigger chunks but I prefer this size.. what about you?

Might be easiest if I just ask for the Bosco setup. That pebble is tremendous. More questions to come. Dealing with the install of the patio area at the moment.

Huh. I thought these were the affordable choices! I have to be able to drink the leftovers. I won't pretend that I can't navigate the cheap shelves at BevMo. There was a math department Christmas party some years ago, the department admin tried to wrap things up by 10pm. I ducked out with a determined look, so the grad students held off on bolting for the local bars. I returned with a "handle of Jack". The bottle lasted twenty minutes, and the legend will last twenty years. Then I bolted with the grad students for the local bars. Here is our "cooking Armagnac". I highly recommend it if you can find it. Have you seen the prices on the good stuff?

@Bruce Pearson - My cold smoker has shipped. 1st use will be to cold smoke some Alaskan King salmon! Better get some alder pellets to be ready when it arrives.

If you drop it, it won't break LOL.

Thanks Ken I'll give it a try. have a great weekend

@Bruce Pearson - thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it greatly. Here is the slaw recipe. IT was from Herman's Seafood House here in OKC that was quite famous. Here is a recipe for cole slaw, not original to me, from a famous seafood restaurant here in OKC that people rave about. Herman’s Cole SlawIngredients:1 head cabbage, thinly sliced 2 onions, thinly sliced1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar1 cup cider vinegar1 teaspoon dry mustard2 teaspoons salt1 teaspoon celery seed1 clove garlic, minced1/2 - 3/4 cup vegetable oil (Use 1/2 cup of oil for a more vinegar taste)2 bottles of sliced pimentosDirections:Shred cabbage & onions. Cover with the 1/2 cup sugar. Set aside for about one hour. Boil vinegar, 2 Tbsp sugar, mustard, salt, and celery seed; pour over cabbage while hot. Add grated diced pimientos. Add garlic & salad oil. Let set 24 hours; serve cold. It is quite tart, so add sugar "to taste". Will keep in refrigerator for weeks.My guests like this slaw so much that it has become standard fare whenever I entertain. Enjoy! Let me how you like it. It's simple, quick, and because it is vinegar based, I have no worries about temps on tables. NOTE: I tend to use Splenda as some of my guest are diabetics. 1 to 1 substitution works just fine. Here is the link to the original post here at the KK Forum.

Hello Ken wow that looks so tasty and the Cole slaw almost looks like kimchi did you say the receipts are here in the forum? i'm going to have to try that. It's kind of funny that you posted this cooking salmon today because last night about two in the morning I was looking on YouTube on how to cold smoke some salmon, I just bought the cold smoker and figure that'll be the first thing I do is make some smoke salmon. Have a great weekend

So my sister is hosting a Pelotonia prep ride fund raiser tomorrow, and I was asked to make smoked pulled pork for the picnic afterwards. By her calculations, she is requiring over 50lbs of pork(before cooking) for the event. The challenge: Could I stuff six pork shoulders, 54lbs worth, on my 23" KK? The answer: No problem. Could have fit a seventh shoulder on the top rack if I needed without much issue, which would have taken the total amount of meat north of 60lbs on a 23" KK. That's a lot of meat! I'll follow up tomorrow with the results of this stuffed KK cook. Wish me luck!

That box in the top photo is our charcoal box.. I believe they are 2.5" tall. does that help?

2 qt is perfect in my 23 also.

Looks great Ken. I know they tasted fantastic. You forgot the rest of Salt Petes quote "heart healthy and pork free food".

@Stile88 - it was a really tasty treat. That something like this salmon dish is so tasty and yet so easily made almost is beyond belief. Thanks!

Wonderful cook Ken love salmon on the grill that is a perfect dinner yum yum

If we're talking md high heat (350* - 550*) there are two basic ways to run your vents. . If you want a large bed of coals for direct grilling (hamburgers etc...) - open the top vent more. (2-3 turns) This allows a bunch of heat to escape so you have to set the bottom vent more open to maintain a given temp. This makes a larger bed of coals good for direct grilling. . If you you are doing indirect cooking (baking, casseroles etc...) then a large bed of coals is not needed only temperature. In this case set your top vent in the .5-1.5 turns. That traps more heat in the KK and you can run with a smaller bottom vent setting. . A good real world example is rotisserie chicken. I like doing it at 400* basically direct. . If I set my top vent at 1 turn and the bottom vent to a setting for 400* there is a fairly small bed of coals but it does get the job done. . What I've found is if I set the top vent to 2-3 turns (lots of heat escaping). It makes me have a more open bottom vent and a larger bed of coals to maintain 400*. Doing my vents this way just makes better rotisserie chicken. Better skin color that is crisper. Internally the chicken is basically the same since both methods are at 400* . For me it's all about what I'm cooking at what temp to determine the top vent setting then run the bottom vent at whatever setting it takes to maintain my temp. Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

The degradation of beans in the freezer is dated information and/or resulted from not storing properly (non-vac'd beans; freezer temps > -10ºF). On coffee forums, Home Barista especially, there have been blind/semi-blind taste tests and the results have shown if there is a flavor degradation most coffee aficionados can't taste the difference. Having said that nothing gets better in the freezer. I keep my roasted frozen bean storage to generally less than 1-year and most often 6-months or less. I have not had Counter Culture beans/bean bags in hand but suspect they're similar to what most roasters use. They are not vacuum sealed but generally just sealed. Roasted coffee beans give off CO2...which is arrested apart of proper deep freeze storage. The problem for me with freezing the entire bag...I can't consume the beans before peak flavor has lapsed. And opening/closing a frozen bag isn't ideal...with the moisture accumulation (relatively warm & moist air condensing onto the cold dry beans...). Do your own taste test. I think you will discover, as I have, there is no taste degradation for properly frozen whole roasted beans. Just be sure to freeze them on the uphill side of the bean's degradation/rest period. Or even fresher...then let them sit at room temp in the jar to rest to where you like the respective bean's flavor. FWIW: Beans have different peak post roast flavor periods. Some beans, especially naturals, are peaking 4-6 days or so post roast. Whereas I've had some beans, notably Rwandan beans and lighter roasts in general, that hit their peak 2-3 weeks(!) post roast.

We have been working on the issues, first was the adjustable bracket which covered all the variations in motor sockets. We no longer need the outside drive shaft to be adjustable so we have solid ones. the last is we now have cradles with pins instead of threads.. Solid shafts were sent before the factory closed for Idul Fitri. If they are not there now they will be any minute now.

I finally had the time to try a rotisserie cook after all the trials and tribulations of getting this thing to work right! Had to do a whole chicken. Injected with Butcher's BBQ Rotisserie Chicken marinade and rubbed the skin with baking powder and kosher salt and let rest uncovered in the fridge overnight. Just before going on the KK, I brushed on some oil and dusted the outside all over with Yardbird rub. Into the rotisserie basket and onto the KK, preheated to 300F (final target was 350F for the 1st hour and 400F for the last 30 minutes or until done). Smoking pot with one chunk of pecan and two chunks of peach wood. Just about done. I noticed a lot of smoke in the grill. When I checked, I saw that I had leaks around the lid of the smoker pot. Never have had that happen before. No harm, no foul in my book. Done. Had been on the KK for about 1 hour and a half. Breast was 155F IT, legs were at 175F. Let rest for about 10 minutes while I finished up the sides. Plated with some cheese risotto and sauteed yellow squash, zucchini and mushrooms. Have to say that it was one of the best chickens that I've ever done. Seriously tasty. Skin wasn't quite as crispy as I wanted, but that's a tweak for next time. Maybe a tad more time on the KK at the higher temp.

Smoke pots Warning: Any tentative experiments with this approach must take place while the women are out of town. There's a "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" aspect to smoke. Men have been on the road their whole lives searching for great 'cue, and like love itself, all too often to be disappointed. The usual tipoff? The smoke, or lack thereof. We learn to seek out intense smoke. Women have a more refined palate, and are open to smoke as one more seasoning, to balance in a great dish. They break down and let us buy a yard oven (oh the lucky few of us that get to be indoor dogs, they keep the rest of us out in the yard and the garage and the shop, better than letting us have any designs on the house itself), only to then wonder if dinner is going to taste like a forest fire for the rest of their lives. Smoke has many components, good and bad. When a chunk of wood burns out in the open, one gets all of these, good and bad. Creosote in particular is rather nasty, though a faint tinge does reassure us menfolk that there was smoke. One needs to read up on classic barbecue technique, as used at scale by dedicated professionals. Smoke comes from wood as a fuel source, but that wood is burned down to embers in a separate fire, then transferred to the cooking pit. How are we to replicate this? My approach, after many experiments, is to drill three 1/8" holes into the bottom of a two quart cast iron Dutch oven, fill it with wood chunks and chips, seal on the top with flour water paste, and nestle this smoke pot into the charcoal. Light the charcoal under the smoke pot with a weed burner propane torch, and let the fire come up to the desired cooking temperature. The smoke pot itself will get going in the same interval. Easiest to mix and apply the flour paste in a ziplock bag with the corner nicked (poor man's piping bag, as for filling ravioli). Many indigenous cultures use flour paste to improve the fit on rickety cookware, this is not a new idea. Here, we want absolutely no convection through the Dutch oven, even if the lid gets knocked. Others have improved the idea of a "smoke pot" to a "smoke bomb": A piece of stainless steel pipe with screw on end caps, and a few holes in the middle. Pricey, but no flour paste. Avoid other metals that aren't appropriate around fire and food. This approach is like distillation. Armagnac tastes better than moonshine in part because only some components are allowed through in the distillation process. Here, the wood releases gases, some of which burn, but the wood never actually catches fire. Note the substantial quantity of smoking wood involved; unless burned down to embers, one never uses that much wood out in the open. In any case, Laurie actually bought me our Komodo Kamado (and I do get the occasional say inside the house), but the rest of this parable holds true. I do not have permission to generate smoke any other way, ever again. She can taste the difference, and so can everyone else.