Leaderboard

Yesterday I was walking through Walmart (Yea I know - LOL) and they had one of those cooking stations setup. I almost never try the food at those stations but there was two old ladies urging me to try some sausage. We hadn't eaten lunch yet and I'll admit I was a bit hungry at the time so I walked away chewing on a piece of sausage they had cooked.  Turned out it was pretty good sausage. We were already planning on having shrimp and grits for dinner so why not add some sausage. I cooked the sausage and shrimp in a wok basket on the 16" KK. Meanwhile Mrs skreef cooked the grits and made a spicy tomato cream sauce.  Grits with melted Asiago cheese in a pool of the tomato cream sauce with grilled sausage and shrimp. A quick and easy meal that tasted delicious. 

I done my maiden rotisserie cook this evening, I decided to cook both the chicken and pumpkin using the rotisserie and for a first attempt they were both a success. I started off with the chicken indirect and the pumpkin direct over the coals. Once the pumpkin had cooked, I removed the basket and flipped the chicken over the direct side to finish cooking. Another 25 minutes or so and we had this. And unfortunately I was looking forward to it so much I forgot to get a completed cook pic, but here is a piece plated. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

On this side, I put a tilt out trash can with a trash chute above it as well as an access door for storage. This side has a warming drawer and some double drawers below. At this point, nearly all of the cement board is up with most of the components installed. The plumber still needs to install the sink/faucet and the electrician will finish up after that. I have a guy coming next week to talk about installing the stonework. I had planned on doing it myself but at this point, I just want to get it done. I will say I am finally able to start enjoying it. This morning was a good test. Temps in the mid 30's, rainy, and heaters on high. EVO fired up

My, what big ears you have, Pequod.[emoji16][emoji16][emoji16]

Today’s loaf. And a closeup of the ear. Just because.

Seriously though, that is a lovely loaf of bread.

As I near completion of the outdoor kitchen, I thought I would start this thread and post some pics. We decided to do this last winter and started speaking to a few contractors about what we wanted. I sketched out the design in sketchup to show them exactly what I wanted. We needed to renovate the back porch and part of the concrete deck. I also wanted to add a new porch that would house the outdoor kitchen and provide a comfortable place to cook year round. It was April before we settled on a contractor and he couldn't start until June 11th. He anticipated 2 months of work. There goes the summer. Before pictures don't get much better than this. Ok, so it wasn't always like this. This is after the spring monsoon when I had all of the concrete demolition. I quickly realized I needed to think about drainage because most of this would be concrete and the rest would be mud under the new deck. $4k later, I had a new French drain system. The original plan was to leave the roof on the back porch and demo everything else. Once the contractor got into it, he thought it would be better to take it all out and start from scratch. it didn't affect our cost at all, win for us. The deck also came down and the new one started to go up. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel at this point and even felt like cooking again (although it could be a bit hazardous getting across the deck joists).

What a project, indeed. Can't wait to see it with all the bows nicely tied up.

I'm really enjoying cooking on it and I think it will really complement cooking on the kk. I can see a lot of cooks that I will use both of them, especially anything that needs searing.

Really great redo and additions. That will be a fantastic cooking space. Can't wait to see the pictures with the stone installed.

THAT, is an outdoor kitchen. I love all that outdoor living area. The EVO seemed to be doing a great job on breakfast.

Dinner is looking really tasty, nice spin. I expect you will use it quite often now that you it all connected.

Wow! Stunning!

That looks absolutely delicious.

So now I have the entire footprint of the project. The back porch is up, the new porch for the outdoor kitchen is going up and the deck for the bar area has been put down. The bar is going to be in the foreground. The contractors are nearly finished. There original target date was August 11th; the actual finish was the end of September. A couple of posts still needed to be wrapped but I already started working on the outdoor kitchen. I planned on doing most of it myself but called in pros for plumbing, electric, and the granite. The kitchen has a steel frame and I found it much easier to work with than I anticipated. I used bbqcoach for a lot of the parts including all framing, most of the doors and drawers. One of the best things I did was add a couple of IR heaters to the kitchen. I have tested them down to 37 degrees and so far so good. The other best thing I did was add whole house audio. I have 3 outdoor zones; one in the ODK, one on the back porch, and speakers on the other side of the pool. The granite went in week before last and the cement board started going on. The picture below shows the whole house audio controls for the ODK and pool. I chose a sink big enough to fit the occasional grill grate. This is the bar. In the foreground, I put a drop in cooler and the round thing is my new EVO griddle.

Pequod your breads look yummy big ears and all. Instant pot apple butter sounds good too.

The better to hear you with Mac

OK, here is the epilogue to this story. Can it be done? Absolutely! After many hours of experimentation and managing challenges during the 4 cooks of 4 Briskets each, I can offer the following advice: 1 - Fill your charcoal basket with double the charcoal you thought you would need. Brisket is not predictable from cook to cook and more meat means more mass. More mass means more time. More time means more charcoal. I came very close to running out during cook 3 and it really messed with my sanity in the middle of Sunday night. Trust that the cook will shut down in an orderly when you close the vents, even if you have 20 extra lbs of fuel in the basket 2- cooking more than 4 brisket would require a very robust rendered fat capture strategy. I used two foil covered heat deflectors of a centered load of charcoal with 2 large HD Foil roasting pans (2 liters of water in each) to catch fat. The briskets were aligned with the pans on the main and grates. This worked very well, but note that after two consecutive cooks, I filled almost 4 750ml wine bottles with the rendered fat. Had I stacked 3 over 3, I'm pretty sure at least 1L of fat would have landed in the firebox below. That would not be good! 3- I cooked the briskets at 240 degrees. I think that preserved the low and slow technique but did help with move me through the stall. i never did wrap a brisket for the cooks and the bark was AWESOME. Rub was Aaron Franklin's secret recipe (1 part coarse ground pepper and 1 part Himalayan salt) 4- I did use my CyberQ wifi to manage temp. That provided some very much needed confidence in the overnight hours except when I ran low on fuel. See item 1 5 - the jiggle at 190 to 200, which was the range I pulled off all meat, was very much what you would see on YouTube. Give'em a push and what them Hula dance. I pulled all meat at once since I knew my slices would be 1/4" and toughness would not be a problem 6 - Rested for 4 hours, then refrigerated overnight, in the morning I sliced it cold, vacuum-sealed and returned to the fridge. 2 hours before service I dropped them in a 140 degree water bath, held them for 2 hours, then plated and served. You would never have known that this brisket was cooked days earlier. Each vacuum-sealed bag had the same Jiggle as the freshly cooked brisket and if you pushed too hard on the bag, you could leave a divot. The moisture content and all else were perfect. we served 95lb's of Brisket to 500 people in less than 2 hours (along with Salmon, Chicken and many other items) and everyone enjoyed the meal. Nobody knew we were cooking Brisket in ice-chests. It took longer to empty the water from those Ice chests than to clean up the mess from Service! In closing I would like to thank all who commented and encouraged me on this forum. I have a new arrow in my quiver and would highly recommend that anyone who wants to have a predictable smoked brisket dinner service for a large group use this outline and add your own knowledge and special touches. You will not be disappointed! A few photos: the room before service with the basic structure for the main courses and desserts laid out: the line up end: unfortunately I did not have time to get any photos of the final product, you'll just have to trust me, it was loved by all! Merry Christmas Forum, I'm going to take a long nap!

This loaf was done in a Lodge combo cooker in the oven as I’m tweaking too many variables already — new proofer, different ratios of spelt and rye, hydration, etc. Next weekend I’ll take it to the KK and use @Syzygies steam oven technique. The fall leaves should make a nice backdrop too. Properly scored bread will have pronounced ears, but will it listen?

I'm so glad you are back posting @Pequod. Now I can talk about bread ears with the best of them.

Love those ears and crumb. :

Today I made some instant pot apple butter, a loaf of sourdough (proofed in my proofer), and some yogurt (also in the proofer). Yogurt is kid of boring, but here’s the apple butter and bread. Pretty decent crumb. Nice ears too.