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Kinda,sorta but it"s more of a badge of honor...Winston Churchill thing, good show and all that. Burning the coconut shell as I'm assuming is a less darkening charcoal. I have six boxes in the garage unopened and haven't been drawn to because of the comfortable charcoal I burn. They won't go bad and when I do break one open I'll let you know as well as the KK community. Procrastinator, yes.

Everything looks delicious! I love the marbling on those chuck roasts.

Looks good Aussie!

I'm pretty happy with my Pharos manual coffee grinder. One gets the burrs in a much more expensive electric grinder, without the motor. And the whole kickstarter thing: One gets excited over untested products. Sounds too much like dating to me.

Tee hee. Does that mean I am now a proper, grown up KK owner now?

Thank you for all the congratulations and positive comments! I did mention that I would be cooking a pig on the 42 for a wedding reception Luau on Saturday. After recovering from the job I can now share a comments and pictures along with the sequence of my first 4 cooks. I will say that Soy and sugar can make for a very messy cleanup, which I did not enjoy performing. So here goes: Monday: KK retrieved, a very good day! Tuesday: 18 Racks of Baby Backs. No time for pics after I got it started so just 1 below. I shot for the DENNIS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS... mistakenly thinking I could easily cook 18 Racks of Baby Backs simultaneously. I miscalculated and placed the first 9 racks on the lower grate, the additional 9 racks on the Upper Grate (not the main grate). Charcoal basket splitter was at about 20% capacity with Coco Char. I don't recommend this configuration! What I should have done was: Light the coco char in the center of the basket, place a couple of heat deflectors covered with foil with attendant drip pans, then used the main grate and upper grate for the cook. I also would recommend splitting the cook into 2 sessions 4 rack on on grate and 5 on the other. This would improve the airflow and browning/bark on the rib racks. I survived the cook, took almost 8 hours, and I had to add coco char, and rotate the ribs between grates to get the desired results. Lots more work that I wanted to do, and a horrendous amount of cleanup. Wednesday: 40 lbs of Korean Beef Spareribs This was a cook that blew my mind! After I spent a whole work day cooking baby backs, I was afraid I would find myself spending another long night working this ribs through their cooking process. Not so! I received the cross-cut short Ribs (Korean style doesn't separate the individual ribs but rather cross cuts through the bones, my ribs were only 1/4" thick) on Monday and marinated them in traditional Brown Sugar Rub, Soy, garlic, onion, ginger and diced asian pears overnight. I loaded the basket with hardwood lump charcoal and lit in 4 placed across the bottom of the cooker, closed the lid and heat soaked to 325. Took about an hour to get to operating temperature. Then I opened up and started laying on the ribs from left to right. by the time I go the ribs laid out, it was time to flip. So I flipped, then started retrieving. About an hour later, I was done! Great results, but a very crusty set of stainless to deal with, burnt on marinade was a real pain to clean! One note, because the cook went so fast, I had to leave the top open, this allowed tons of airflow to the coals and when I was done and closed the lid, my temp soared to 550 degrees at shut down. This caused the grill to start off-gassing for a short while so I had to babysit the KK for a couple more hours pressing down the tiles as a few started to bubble from beneath. No big deal as the hardwood charcoal was basically consumed during the cook, so I didn't have a long session before cooling took me below the level of gassing off. Thursday: 60 lbs of Teriyaki Chicken thighs Pretty much the same as the Korean ribs. Went quick (less than an hour)! Surface area of the main grate is amazing to work with. Same lengthy cleanup though. Almost 2 hours of scrubbing grates after a full overnight soak. did not get any photos of the chicken cook. Friday: Took the day off, went and got the pig. Not a big pig, just 45 lbs. it was to be more of a center piece than the main course per the client. I had to deliver the pig by 1PM on Saturday and didn't really know what to expect from a heat soak and cook time perspective to on Friday night at about 8pm, I assembled the cook. 16 lbs of coco char in the center of the charcoal basket, no splitter installed, and lit the coals for a low n slow. I then installed supports and 2 center head deflectors covered in foil to keep them clean, placed the two drip pans on top of the deflectors and installed the main grate. I used my digit Wifi to keep the temp at 225 and let her go all night long. I got up a 4:30 AM and prepped the pig with just some salt and pepper in the cavity, a few herbs as well. I foiled the tail and ears to prevent them from over browning and stuff a ball of foil in the pigs mouth to enable placement of garnish after the cook. Put the pig in place on the grate and monitored till internal hindquarter reached 180 degrees, then I cranked up the heat to 325 to finish of the cook! at 1PM I pulled the pig at 192 degrees. That said my 16lbs of coco char burned for 17 hours and still had plenty left! A buddy and I used a couple of pitchforks to lift of the pig and serve at the wedding. Everything went very well and I will remember this week my whole life! What fun cooking with such a great and versatile tool! I was concerned that As Porky Pig would say: "th, th, th, thaat's all Folks.. !!!!