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Took advantage of the break in temperatures yesterday to get to have dinner on the deck, which I hadn't been able to tolerate for almost 2 weeks! Uncle Dougie's marinated chicken with zucchini kabobs and leftover polenta (it's on a grill mat and it still wanted to run off and into the fire!) Cooked direct on the main grate @ 350F. Plated with a nice chenin blanc/viognier blend and a nice salad.

I just took delivery of my new grill. I got it uncrated and placed on the deck. I had 12 people over this weekend for a pool party. The new one wasn't ready yet so I used my old original Kamado. We did two pork butts, two dozen brats and dogs and a few chickens. The new grill looks so nice and clean I might not fire it up for a while!

Nope no Naked Reef - LOL Just a few simple tests to confirm my suspicions.

OK, So here are the pics as promised. The chicken turned out very good.....over shot the temp of the bird slightly but it was still very good. We liked the roadside Chicken recipe as well. The pic of the plated food also includes what we call Zucchini casserole. It’s basically sliced zucchini, tomatoes, onion with mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. It’s a staple side dish that typically OD on by the end of summer! Overall I liked the rotisserie cook and plan do do more of this! Paul

I agree, this grill is gorgeous in your setting. You are missing out on the best bit. Get cooking!

I did the two pork butts at 325 for about 6 hours with the last three hour wrapped in foil. Pulled off at 205 and it was very moist. A friend who was there called me today to tell me he went Sunday night to a Truck Diner who specializes in pork butt. He said as usual it couldn't even compare to mine. I am thinking the food won't get much better but I will look better making it! Just like when I spent 4K on new golf clubs. My game stayed the same but at least now I can look like a golfer.

Wow Syz, nice to see you are still around and kickin' on this group (and putting up math problems....LOL). FYI, my handle used to be Drunk_J many years back when I admined this forum. Life changes took me away from cooking for many years, but getting back started again with my two beautiful KKs. Anyway, I don't worry with math, just plug in the BBQ guru, stick a probe in the meat and one in the pit, setup the temp and it shuts down when target is acquired.....LOL. The lazy man's way and how I like it. No math, no thinking and really little skill involved with these grills and a temp controller....😁 Hey, who took away all my cool custom emots? Grrr. -=J

Just barely off the seat, so long as I see wisps of smoke coming out. If it's closed too tightly, I'll get a stream of smoke coming out of the temperature probe plug or even around the vent door when the fan is running. Even with the lower flow Guru fan, I never run it with the damper wide open. It's usually less than 1/2 open.

Mission accomplished.

Bruce, the best way to cook chicken is on the KK. It comes out so so so moist, you'll love.

Lovely looking meals all. And yes Mac, you have made me overeat at breakfast. Again.

Argh we sent you a latch for a 28mm tiled grill and yours is 25mm tiles. Will get you a proper fitting one sent out! This grill is so early we had not CNC cut the Komodo Kamado nameplates yet..

On my K7 I have it so the 400 is at 12 o'clock. That way I can see what the temp is without having to go outside. If the gauge moves it messes up my system.

TONY B! That looks delicious I’ve never cooked chicken on my KK guess I’ll give it a try.

My thermometer is very loose without the clamp, each to their own but I like my thermometer to stay put when I open the lid. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@MacKenzie the problem without a damper on a KK is more than just fan output. Think about how small of a bottom vent opening you have for low-n-slow. The fan opening will now be your bottom vent opening. That opening needs to be closed down fairly small otherwise when the fans not blowing you have a huge bottom vent opening. This is really just a KK issue since low-n-slow requires very minimal vent openings compared to regular ceramic Kamados. Hopefully that made sense.

Well done Merrill. Very unique. If KK's are male or female, you definitely have a lady. And I think she is very pretty.

It will be interesting to see what you say after you've done some KK cooks.

Tony, I just came back and he is sure he can do it but just not sure the best way right now. He has to think about it and I can understand that. I am glad you mentioned that in time to get it done.

Tony, great looking dinner, lovely colour on the chicken.

Wait until you do that cook over on the KK, it will taste even better.

True, but most of us have tossed it and don't use it at all. No risk of the thermometer falling out.

I made chilli con carne tonight which we had with a baked potato. I’m absolutely loving the purple crack on everything at the moment, the new batch tastes so fresh! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@tekobo, I am trying to eliminate those awful outdated treasures. Trying not to buy much until I eat more of what's in the freezer. I hope those chicken sausages were the last of the old stuff. Here's breakfast, maybe that will inspire your lunch. LOL

Once they pass the quick Q+A, how about an essay question, something like: Compare and contrast the effects of direct and indirect cooking with a focus on conduction, convection, and radiation. Bonus points awarded for calculating the heat transfer rate in each scenario. Be sure to show your calculations for each including full formulas used to derive answers. Granted, they can bypass all of this if they know the secret phrase “I have cash and will pay the full asking price!”

Resident mathematician here. Any pit controller (BBQ Guru, Billows, ...) is implementing a classic feedback mechanism: proportional–integral–derivative controller If your fan is always on at 200 F, always off at 240 F, and on part of the time in between, proportionate to the pit temperature, then your pit will stabilize at some temperature between 200 F and 240 F. Where? It depends on everything. Same as a hiker climbing a mountain, and a hiker descending a mountain, they have to cross paths somewhere. Not necessarily at the halfway point, just somewhere along the trail. Suppose that you want to stabilize at exactly 220 F? The PID mechanism learns the system it's controlling, and adjusts the fan rate to nudge where your pit stabilizes. Every pit is different. It doesn't matter, the PID mechanism figures it out. I have several sizes of fans for my BBQ Guru. It doesn't matter, the PID mechanism figures it out. Here we get abstract. Abstraction is easy, it's forgetting part of a problem that turns out to be irrelevant. Here, your PID controller sees the effect of turning a system on and off at regular intervals, as measured by the pit thermometer. It has no clue what your pit looks like. It has no clue what your fan looks like. It sees a system, as a black box that it controls. Where am I going with this? If the Signals fan output is 12V like all standard computer case fans, then it can control any fan you like, such as a BBQ Guru fan that happens to perfectly fit the existing Guru port in our KKs. There are several complications here. First, there are two flavors of fan control: On/off, and pulse code modulation. In other words, one could run a fan faster or slower as needed, rather than cycling it on and off. The BBQ Guru fan doesn't support this. Can anyone who has a Billows tell us? Does it run at a variable rate, or does it cycle on and off? Second, we have a cabling problem. The Billows connects via a USB-C cable to the fan adapter. Now, frequently USB-C is used merely for charging, in which case we need to splice the appropriate wires on a USB-C cable to make something a Guru fan can plug into. Billows Replacement Fan Adapter (Single) Third, the Signals needs to recognize that a Billows is attached. Here, hopefully it actually detects the fan adapter. Can anyone who has a Billows play with this? Does Signals "see" a Billows attached when the fan adapter is attached, but the Billows itself is not? I'm not hopeful here. Many devices can tell when a USB cable is successful. We're talking a ten cent circuit, to insure that the Signals handshakes with the Billows via the adapter. If they engineered this way, then we can't swap in our fan of choice. If the handshaking is only with the adapter, then swapping in our fan of choice will be easy. The PID mechanism doesn't care, it sees a black box.

This morning I found another treasure at the bottom of the freezer and it wasn't fish. It turned out to be chicken and garlic sausages from 2015. WOW. I decided to make patties with the sausage meat and do a Mac & Cheese. Everything was cooked on the KK and the MAc & Cheese was browned under the stove broiler. I did add 3 or 4 Thai hot chili peppers to the mac & cheese, that turned out to be a nice touch. Plated.

Feeding Laurie's church today. Four pork butts in bourbon sauce, pot beans, cole slaw. Dry rub was California and Guajillo chiles, salt, pepper, and pimenton. We'll serve butt mixed with sauce on buns (sloppy joe style). I used dry ice to chill the six quarts of bourbon sauce, from a liter of bourbon. Fun play break (the dog was concerned) but next time I'll stick to conventional ice. I thought this main grill mound of four butts was being clever, and I'd do it again, but it has unintended consequences. That's more thermal mass on the main grill than I'm used to, causing a greater disparity between a pit probe reading anchored to that grill, and a pit probe reading through the Tel-Tru dome hole. More reliable to just cook with the dome hole, and make adjustments as needed. Also, the mound has a greater "effective mass" than a single ten pound butt, and so it cooks slower. 19 hours at 225 F is not enough. Though, as I've said before, I think the "disintegrating rope" standard for pulled pork is a scam, and I've never had decent pulled pork commercially in the Carolinas. I'd rather undershoot, than dry out the butts this way. Mine are more work to pull, but I like the juicy, tender result. Still, I'll move up from 225 F to somewhere near the recently more popular 275 F next year, and we'll figure out how to adjust the timing. The pot clamped for travel is the 22 quart Optio Sauce Pot 3095, our favorite big pot. There's a shorter version, but too short to cook four pounds of pot beans. After a brief hard boil, the beans simmered overnight in a 240 F oven.

Note the "No Shmucks" clause in my Craigslist posting. I'm thinking I might need a qualifying quiz for prospective buyers before I let them take it. 1. What is a reverse sear? 2. What is a chook? 3. What is "the stall"? 4. Lump or briquettes? 5. What is two-zone cooking? Must score 100% or you are, in fact, a shmuck.

It appears so, you could say, peaceful meadows. Going to make it a point to try all the flavors like the ice cream shop, you know Lay's potato chips, betcha can't eat just one.

Huh. An artist worries about "thick over thin" with oil paints, so they don't look like a yahoo after they're dead, with their paintings all cracked in museums. I do believe they're still having fun. When any of us brings a tray of ribs to the cooker, it's completely instinctive to consider: If I miss the lip of the cooker low, I'll spill my ribs onto the ground. If I miss the lip of the cooker high, I'll be fine. I do believe they're still having fun. When Dennis worries about heat transfer coefficients for his pizza stones, I know he's having fun. This isn't about having fun or not having fun, it's about the various realms in which each of us daydream. We're all having fun.

Take the clamp off the thermometer and put it in your spare parts box. You don't need a clamp on the inside or outside. I never installed the clamp on either of my KK's.