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Was thinking what to cook for dinner Dee wanted to do a potato bake so I thought I would combine the two. The potato bakewhilst I was waiting for Ora to get to 350f I fried up some baconand gave the thighs bit of thisand a bit of rub and gave them a quick browning put the potato bake on after half an hour I added the thighsa bit more rub and the baconlooking ready to goand plated tasted pretty good Outback Kamado Bar and Grill[emoji621]

What is in a potato bake?

While I was enjoying my sandwich and brew my night blooming cereus put out another blossom. It was about 10 inches in diameter. And after the party it looked like this when I got up.

Yummy

Looks good, but why do your grates still shine!? My grates are pretty much black after 3 cooks!

Tasty looking cook!

I like the one dish meal. Looks delicious. Reef's Bistro

Now that looks delicious aussie. Wonderful cook

Aussie, your casserole sure looks extra tasty. [emoji3][emoji4]

That looks great, Aussie. Those must be small eggs or very large avocados.

I've been doing this a long time. What do I actually use, some or all of the time? A second charcoal basket, to save extruded coconut charcoal between low & slow cooks, while I use lump charcoal for high temp cooks. A terra cotta plant saucer for storing the spare basket, to contain ashes. (If one can afford to do so, one could simply use charcoal from KK for everything. We've thought about it, even 500 F chicken tastes better over charcoal from Dennis.) A basket splitter, to make more efficient use of good lump charcoal for small cooks. The splitter constrains the airflow to pass through the fire, even for a small fire. A cover. It rains here part of the year, and this keeps moisture out. Two long neck "weed burner" propane torches, with hose clamps added on the neck so that they balance on the rim of the KK, for lighting fires. A paint brush and a soft cloth dust mask for removing ash. A plastic painter's pan to set below the ash door, for collecting the ash as one brushes it out. This lives in the most recent empty charcoal bag converted to ash storage. Obviously, cold ashes only. Silicone heat resistant gloves. And other gloves, but these take the most heat. There are many options. A 3/8" wrench for scraping grill grates. Get one with the correct round to match the grate. (This is radically better than grill floss or countless other options. Anyone in a reasonable state of mental health will tell you that they're happy with the best solution they've found so far for a problem. Only trust comparisons, when someone has alternated between the two best candidates long enough to break their prejudices.) A metal water heater pan, some improvised way to plug the hole (figure this out at the store), and heavy duty scrubbies from the painting aisle (these blow away anything for the kitchen) for soaking and cleaning grills. (I'll sometimes trust a high heat cook instead, after a good wrench scraping.) I happen to have an electric pressure washer, for deck maintenance. After large low & slows (feeding 60 with pulled pork or brisket) it does a wonderful job of cleaning all grates (again, in the water heater pan). A paella pan, to use as heat deflector and drip pan. Line with foil for easy cleanup. (An official KK drip pan looks worth it to me; it will likely be my next purchase.) Two bath towels, and a cooler, for resting and transporting monumental meats. Heavy duty aluminum foil, for lining the plant saucer (easy disposal once the fat cools) and for wrapping monumental meats to rest in a cooler. Pink butcher paper, for following Austin Franklin barbecue technique. (The white is no better than aluminum foil; the pink breathes.) The official KK pizza stone, for bread or pizza. (I used to use a custom rectangular FibraMent-D baking stone, for two loaves of bread. Dennis got the pizza stone right, and I no longer use anything else.) A Baking Steel, for burgers or Japanese or Spanish griddle technique. The 15" by 1/4" round also fits an indoor oven and can be lifted by anyone. A 16" by 1/2" can be custom ordered, for more thermal punch. A Steam Pan, as described in KK as Steam Oven for Bread. A giant cast iron frying pan with the handle sawed off, filled with two spools of stainless steel chain, to go on the lower rack for bread cooks. (A KK single bottom drip pan would work here without rusting. Buy two, or keep moving the chain as needed.) Freeze 350g of ice in ziplock or vacuum seal bags, and slide the ice in to generate (after a delay making it possible to close the lid safely) enough steam to replicate a commercial bread oven. This is detailed in Keller's Bouchon Bakery but not original to them. This is superior to baking bread in a Dutch oven. Keller took much flack for this on other forums, from fools with zero understanding of physics who think that 10g of water from a plant spritzer suffices. A Smoke Pot, as described in A Dutch Oven Smoke Pot. Find a one or two quart cast iron Dutch oven, drill three 1/8" holes in the bottom, add smoking wood, and seal the lid on with flour paste. Nestle in with the charcoal, and heat it as much as possible while torch lighting the fuel directly under the pot. For low & slow cooks this controls smoke, avoiding nasty combustion byproducts; above 300 F even smoke from such a pot will taste as nasty as open wood. Try this at your own risk, you may be ordered to never use smoke any other way. I'm planning to test an all metal Kleen Kanteen as an easier alternative; I haven't yet. (One needs to work through an obsession with excessive smoke, if one has had one's heart broken too often on the BBQ trail from restaurants with inadequate smoke. There's a sweet spot where smoke is one more flavor in balance; find it.) A DigiQ DX2 BBQ Guru setup, for absolute control of longer cooks. This is indeed optional but very nice; I went years without after my previous unit died of old age. Then I committed to some major cooks for parties where I needed to be sure. A KK is remarkably stable, but if one goes eight hours without checking it can find a new equilibrium as the fire evolves. A Solo Stove Campfire, as described in Solo Stove. It provides a nimble way to make small fires away from the KK. For example, I now use mine to preheat my smoke pot. The applications are endless, and it's fun to use. What have I tried and discarded or given away? A rotisserie. Have you tried cleaning one of these!? I have found ways I actively prefer for cooking anything on the KK that one might use a rotisserie to cook. Chicken, direct at 500 F over a nearly spent fire, and tend it a few times. (If you do have an electric pressure washer handy, then cleaning a rotisserie would not be an ordeal. I don't miss mine. It was fussy.) As a rule, avoid all aspirational purchases in life. There's only so much one needs to do before baby comes home, one can figure out the rest as one goes. Try life without a rotisserie, for example, and see if a BBQ Guru is indicated.

Re: Steam for Bread I'm back at bread experiments. I bought two rolls of stainless steel chain at Home Depot; thanks for the tip. The skillet and chain together weigh 28.4 lbs, more than enough to turn ice into 350 grams of steam. It turns out that one wants steam at the very beginning, so there's no need to feed in water as one bakes. Ice is nearly as efficient as water and far more convenient. My preferred setup is now pizza stone on main grill, and steam skillet directly on the charcoal basket, the other grills removed. One can then throw a piece of ice onto the chains through the main grill hinged door, which I've never used in my life up till now. I then close down the intake and top vents for a few minutes, to trap the steam. The fire resumes just fine later. The KK cooks by radiant heat to a greater extent than an indoor oven. I moved to the main grill to actually get further from the walls, and I'm baking at 400 F with similar effect to an indoor oven at 460 F. Others have had this experience, adjusting baking to the KK. Does anyone have a good guess as to the internal volume of a KK? I'm guessing in the neighborhood of 140 liters, about the same as an indoor oven. Water expands by 1600x as it turns to steam, so Bouchon Bakery's advice to use 350 grams of water will produce 560 liters of steam, enough to fill the KK four times over. Yes, one feels steam rushing out, but there is steam left to do the job. The bread shown is 650g total flour: 40% red winter wheat and 12% rye freshly ground and sieved to 82% extraction, and 48% white flour. It is 71% hydration (baker's percentages), 15% sourdough leaven and 2% salt (both by flour weight), 1/4 tsp yeast, and 40 ppm of ascorbic acid (to help the gluten in the "green" freshly ground flour). Bulk rise 3:20, proof rise 2:30, bake for 30 minutes. (I use a speadsheet to generate each recipe from this data.)