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I've been due for these and should cook them more often! Sweet Italian cooked with onions and fire cooked with melted mixed cheeses. Grilled/smoked over the fire with my 007 and this basket sure does come in handy!

Thursday was my last day of students so we celebrated this weekend with a little BBQ. I tried out pork belly burnt ends (super fabulous). I pretty much followed John Setzler's timing, just made me own rub was the only difference, a 12 lb brisket, used my new homemade coleslaw dressing, funeral potatoes, Aaron Franklin's "regular sauce" - my older some helped me with this, and cheesecake from the cake bible- my younger son helped me with that. Lots of fun and we had hardly any left overs! I was shocked. Apparently I took no pictures of sides or the finished brisket. Dang it. Trust me it was moist. I mostly wanted to document the pork belly as that was new to me.

Marinated some pork tenderloin cubes overnight in a sauce of sriracha sauce, brown sugar and cornstarch. Saved a little to brush on the cubes once they were cooked. Going for a spin. Part way through you can hear the male pheasant calling, dinner at MacKenzie's. Cooked. Brushed with more sriracha and brown sugar sauce. Plated with some micro greens from the planter on the deck and sprinkled some onion chives and garlic chives. It will be much easier when I get my OctoFork Skewers. Hint hint.

Well, after the 1st use of the Meater, I'd have to say that it met my expectations. Was easy to set up the cook. Was fun to watch the displays (there's even a time vs temp graph display). The meat thermometer end tracked along with my Thermopen, so it's pretty accurate. Unfortunately, I forgot to hook up my Maverick along side it to see how well the "ambient temperature" probe (on the opposite end) tracked. It was reading 325F at equilibrium, and I had the dome thermometer reading 375F. Makes sense, as the meat was on the "cool side" of the basket splitter. The one thing - the ambient temperature reading is very slow. While it finally reached equilibrium, it took quite a while to do so - like 15 minutes (but, the KK wasn't heat soaked, so it might have still been coming up to temp, as well for part of that time.) That was also true of the "Time Remaining" display. It took maybe 5 minutes after starting to begin to give an actual time (probably due to the algorithm that they use to do the calculation.) On most cooks where you would use the Meater, these time delays shouldn't be an issue. And, to be on the safe side, I pulled the Meater probe out of the tri-tip before I put in on the direct (hot) side of the grill to reverse sear, as I dropped down to the lower grate for that part of the cook. Like I said before, the jury is still out on a final verdict until I get a few more cooks under my belt with it to see how reliable it is under different conditions, like direct heat in a rotisserie cook. I also need to use it in a very long cook (10+ hours) to see how well the Meater stays charged. Would hate to have it peter out before the end of a brisket or pork butt cook. Per the instructions, it takes about 3 hours to fully recharge, so that could be a major flaw if it doesn't last long enough. One would think the designers would have thought of that and made sure the battery they chose would do the job. We'll see.

What's not to love about bacon wrapped around anything??

Nice reward! Purple Crack eggs are still a winner! @Jon B. - I designed it, but didn't build it myself. The contractor located a foundry up in Dubuque that made the stairs. One of the scariest sights as a homeowner is watching a boom crane in your driveway, with the boom over the top of your house, lowering down a 2000+ lb staircase!!

Can you say "Arrested!"

Nothing good, CSC.[emoji41]

Bacon wrapped bacon

Today I mixed up Batch #2 of the now infamous Purple Crack. Found the "perfect" salt to make it with, too! Mixed 1 oz of Taz pepper berried to 1.5 oz of the Aussie Flake salt. I found that equal parts just wasn't salty enough, so I bumped it up 50%. Nice!

Grilled Spanish Mackerel with homemade sweet chilli sauce. Served with ponzu Udon noodles and grilled honey, ginger cabbage. I've never had Mackerel before so I figured I would give it a try. Was trying to recreate a fish cook that a local Chinese restaurant does. Dinner came out as planned. The sweet chilli sauce had a great flavor but was a tad on the hot side. I warned everyone to come to dinner with their big boy panties on - LOL I now have a couple of recipes that tasted great. In the future will make homemade Ponzu and Sweet Chilli Sauce instead of buying it. I very loosely followed my recipe notes. I'm missing a few process pictures - oh well.......

Looks really good MacKenzie.

I think you need a 5/16 stainless shaft. Maybe Dennis can supply you with one. Make sure it's long that square hole goes all the way to the other side of the motor box. I have that same motor and used a square shaft that came with my KK setup for some reason it doesn't go all the through the brass drive. Hope all works out for you.

I always like your cooks Mac, they are all mouthwatering!

Man those look yummy,

Any IPA will do fine! lol

Sounds like a Dennis call to me. However, he's on a "hippy retreat" getting his body and soul cleansed, so he's a little hard to contact right now.

Nice. What kind of chile peppers? Looks like anchos to me.

I might have to find myself a dealer for this stuff. I'm close to a big party college - I wonder what would happen if I started asking around about purple crack.

Been awhile since I posted. Hello Everyone. I've been around a long time. After 10 years my 4pm05 died recently....probably 25% age and the rest due to the fact that I upgraded from the OTB to the 32" Bad Boy so it's got a lot more weight to drive. Anyway I ordered the 4pm08 but my spit drive connector rods that came with the 32" don't fit into the heavy duty motor. I know the collective brain trust will steer me in the right direction. Thanks in advance!

@MacKenzie - dadgum, that's a wonderful meal! Bravo!

2 or 3? geez @MacKenzie - I'd eat 2 or 3 DOZEN! @Keith OctoForks - those do look scrumptIous and droolicious. I'm showing up at your door for Game 3; what kind of beer do you like?

Nice plate! I like spanish mackerel and that is a tasty looking cook.

Well worth it ckreef and so easy to use Outback Kamado Bar and Grill

Wouldn't I like to have 2 or 3 of those beauties.

Especially having done it twice! First with the POSK - only 2 of us muscling it up those stairs with a refrigerator dolly - one agonizing step at a time! And then the second time with the KK. Which is why I got smarter the second time around and built the ramp and recruited more beefy guys!

That's the nice thing about this Ponzu base - it has all the other stuff in it except the soy sauce, so you can tailor it to the style of soy that you like. So, you just have to mix it with the soy sauce and you're good to go. I found that it wasn't cost effective to make it entirely from scratch - too many of the ingredients are on the esoteric side of things, i.e., pricey!

I did some frozen plate cut sweet potatoes last evening, some good.[emoji11]

Excellent cook that is a beautiful plate job indeed

Nice spin, MacKenzie.

I was skeptical at first, but after MacKenzie raved about her's, I took the plunge. Have to admit that I like it, for spuds in particular. Will likely use mine tonight to do some potato wedges to go with the tri-tip and corn on the cob on the KK.

TY Ken and no eyes staring you down - LOL

Absolutely beautiful cook. Congrats and kudos to ya!

Now that's a cook I could really get into! I've never done bacon wrapped ribs, but ow I've gotta try it! Thanks, @Keith OctoForks for a beautiful cook.

I need to get an air fryer one of these days.

Nice those carrots look yummy

Looking good Aussie

HURRAY! After a 2 year wait, my Meater probe arrived today. Charged it up and downloaded the app onto my phone. It sync'ed right up. Now, for the "proof of the pudding." I need to do a cook with it to see how it actually performs "under fire" - literally!

Every once in a while I get a craving for potato sticks. Today's mission is to make them for the first time in the air fryer. Cut and soaking. First batch done. A mess of sticks. Finger food lunch.

I've had this in my freezer after picking it up on sale a while back. It is a Snake River Farms gold grade brisket and weighed in at 15.4 lbs before trimming. I LOVE the marbling on this one. It is my second brisket on the kk. Here it is bottom side up after trimming. I really didn't do much to the bottom. I seasoned with kosher salt and coarse ground pepper. I put it on a heat soaked kk at 225 with some hickory and pecan chunks in my smoke pot at 8pm last night. I had the cyber Q going and a temperature probe in the brisket. Just before midnight, I spritzed it a bit to make the rub stick and added more rub and went to bed. The internal temp at this time was 132. (It was just under 32 when I started). I woke up around 7 without any alarms going off and the kk was humming along at 225 with just a whiff of smoke. Oh yeah. Internal temp is 172. It has plenty of bark so I wrapped it in pink butcher paper and put it back on the kk. When I was trimming, I cut a little off the flat perpendicular to the grain to give me a starting point when i slice it. This little piece was just a couple of inches long sitting on the grill for 9+ hours and should have been a brick. Nope.

This brisket turned out incredible. I took it off when it hit 200 about 18 hours into the cook. It was seriously tender when probed and I put it in a cooler wrapped in a towel for about 3 hours. Here is how it looked when i took it out to slice. I didn't get any pics of it sliced because it was so juicy and my hands were too much of a mess to touch the camera plus people were waiting. My main decision was whether to have a slice or make a nice sandwich. I tried a couple of new (to me) recipes from Aaron Franklin's book. His "regular" sauce is fantastic and I recommend it. I also made his coleslaw and it is also great and goes great with the brisket. The sandwich won out. I used a pepperidge farm onion roll with sliced pickles, brisket, sauce, and coleslaw. Best sandwich ever. I added some chopped brisket to the baked beans as well. This was one of those cooks that was fun all the way through. The kk performed flawlessly as usual and the brisket was the best I've had.