Leaderboard

Bench tops shape up this week. Just wondering if I should paint that racing strip Ducati red?[emoji33] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The KK has assumed its final resting spot. I took a picture of the view from my couch living room. The KK stands out and shines. Need to figure out a better way to anchor the wheels but I can’t wait for my first cook this Friday.....ribs

I finally splurged at my wife's request on a Big Bad 32" with the rotisserie, pizza stone, double drip pan, and cold smoker. Been reading through the forums and learned about the quality and passion for the KK's. This will be my first kamado grill, why waste money on the inferiors. A few questions as I prepare for the arrival of the beast. 1) Preferred fuel outside of cocochar and coffeechar, they have not yet arrived in the US. 2) Is BBG Guru necessary given how efficient the KK's are? 3) Any other tips are appreciated.

This could have been a KK bake and one day it will. Testing out slight improvements on my 15% fresh ground whole wheat bread that I use mainly for toast. It looking and tasting good to me. It is a 2 day process and this loaf was baked about 7:30 AM. Did the final fermentation in the cold room which runs about 55 F. It was in there for around 10 hours. Baked at 450F for 38 mins. right from the cold room. Down the centre of the loaf I spread about a good 2 inch strip with some of the bran that was sifted out of the flour, the rest went into my smoothie along with my fresh turmeric. Make no mistake fresh turmeric does have flavour, lots of it. The crumb.

I wanted a kamado for some time now, and refused to go with cheaper ones. Told the wife I didn't want to spend the money on a good kamado so will wait and save. Took a new job allowing her to quit her job. I honestly think she got tired of me saying how much I wanted a KK but didn't want to spend the $$$ said buy it and stop talking. I did get the basket splitter, forget to mention that. Plan on doing quite a few low n slows, so will get the BBQ Guru to make life easy. Look forward to tastier food than what I got on my weber kettle.

I have finally managed to find a reliable source for Uda (or Grains of Selim) in the UK. Given we're on lockdown, I think it's time for the suya to come out again.

Hello om21braz, I’ve been grilling my whole life with Webber charcoal and gas grills. About 2 years ago I purchased a Cookshack PG500 grill. The Memphis you have is the KK of pellet grills! I decided on purchasing 2 KK grills last year ( one for a vacation home and couldn’t be without one at home). To be honest I’ve not used my pellet grill since I got the KK. I’ve not really used it because I’m having too much fun with the KK’s. The big difference is that the KK is extremely tight so you don’t have the airflow / moisture Loss you have in all other grills. One of the coolest things is that not only is the KK versatile in being able to do anything from cold smoking to high temp pizzas but you also have a unique piece of art in your yard. I think you may experience the same thing with your pellet grill as I have, however it’s nice to still have this in your arsenal when your entertaining for large parties etc. I’m getting a bathroom remodel and guy doing the tile work is amazed at the quality and the look of the KK. If you can afford the Memphis I’m thinking that a KK is in your future! Good Luck. PVPAUL

I just switched over from a Weber Smokey mountain and have found cooking on the KK much easier and the food is the juiciest bbq I’ve ever cooked

A beautiful day yesterday (looks like today is going to be as well - hurray!), so off to the grill. Straight up pasta puttanesca with grilled Italian sausages - main grate, direct, 325F, no wood chunks. No pic, but I ate one of the leftover snags for lunch today as a classic grinder - sautéed peppers and onions with provolone and grainy mustard.

Two 40' Containers of Charcoal Scheduled!!! I have a container of CocoChar loaded last week, had to send it from a different port in Java to get around the freight issues but it looks like it worked.. A 40' container of Coffee Lump will load on the 7th.. 20' of 22 lb boxes and 20' of 44 lb polypropylene bags..

Tony, you sure did nail that dinner, it looks soooooo delicious, great colour too.

Last night's dinner was chicken adobo with fried rice. Chicken thighs with Badia Adobo seasoning, direct, apple wood chunk. Initially @ 325F, then flipped to skin side down and cranked up to 400F to get nice crispy skin. I think I nailed it! Plated with the fried rice, which I did in my paella pan and got a bit of nice crust. The sauce is coconut cream, tamari, sugar, rice vinegar, chicken stock and a LOT of garlic. I liked it!

Well done Mac. Yum. That looks nothing like my last pancake. [emoji24] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That’s just gorgeous. Love those blisters! 😷

You and your wife are going to enjoy the food that comes on your KK. It will be awesome and the KK will look awesome too.

Looking great! Regarding the wheel chocks, does your KK move / roll when you open the dome or otherwise use it? Just curious with the greater weight of a 32 versus my 23, which doesn't move unless pushed. Is your patio sloped to shed rain?

welcome ! you'll have fun getting to know it. my 2 cents. charcoal: low-n-slows = Dennis's extruded. / day-to-day = fogo. BBQ guru = for low-n-slows i use a maverick for internal monitoring on things like hot-n-fast brisket.

Welcome aboard. Will answer your questions, but first explain that first statement: "at my wife's request." No comprendo. Most of us beg, manipulate, and end up in decades of servitude to get our first KK. What means: "at my wife's request?" 1) Any lump will do, but some brands are better than others. Some use Rockwood (I don't like it, but others do). Many use Fogo -- great stuff. Stay away from super-cheap lumps like "Cowboy". Royal Oak is passable. 2) No. I have one and use it only for overnight cooks just as insurance 3) Did you get a basket splitter? If not, add that to your order ASAP. One of the great strengths of the 32 is how perfect it is for 2 zone grilling. The splitter is a must have for this.

@Basher I like it! 😀

@Basher it’s almost done. Put the fridge in and slap some paint in there and it’ll be done. I sincerely appreciate all your help on this and appreciate the insight you provided. Thank you very much.

@jonj My uncle used the two step process on the teak bowl he made and it turned out great. Please let us know how it turns for you.

That’s a slick looking ODK Troble. Well done Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I love it.

Thanks all! I'm going to lurk awhile, maybe ask a few more questions here and there. I am not displeased with the Memphis, but it would be nice not to depend on electricity and a computer to get good results. Not to mention being able to get a little higher temps for pizza.

Delicious, Tony.

I could post pictures of the duck/andouille gumbo I am doing later this week, but I do not think it would be as impressive.....thank you, Lafayette, Louisiana.

Long time charcoal guy here (never owned a gas grill in my life and never will!) Closest that I've come to a pellet grill is I have a couple of friends who have them and they do turn out some nice food and are generally easy to use. However, you're going to quickly find, as others have said, that you're about to up your game with the KK. Just takes a few cooks to get the hang of setting the vents for different temperatures, as it is very repeatable. First rule of KK cooking - Don't chase the temperatures! For almost all cooks +/- 50F of cooking temperature from your "target" isn't going to make any noticeable difference in the final product. So, don't fret if you're off a bit and continually try and tweak the top vent to hit it exactly. As we homebrewers say, "Relax, have a homebrew." (which translates as - don't overthink this and make it complicated - it's not! Second rule of KK cooking - Go buy a bigger belt size! LOL!

I did not know about the first step oil procedure when I used the Boos cream on my side shelves. Read about it later, when I bought some for my Uncle who was making a nice wood bowl. I did rub in 3 applications of the "cream" until the wood stopped absorbing the coatings. I'm confident that the "cream" penetrated deep into wood....which I believe is the feature of using the oil first. I treated my shelves when the teak was new and it still had plenty of natural oil. @BARDSLJR may want to consider using the oil first, if he goes the Boos route.

My comment was of course tongue in cheek. I'm impressed at the commitment levels. Unfortunately and fortunately, we have a French bakery within 2 miles of our house. They import their flour from France and Italy. If you give the slightest indication that you have a comprehension of the French language, they will never speak English to you again. Like ever. So it does encourage a level of laziness on my part when it comes to trying to make my own bread. I'm still on my quest for the perfect chimichurri and peri-peri. I'm growing my own Peri Peri chillies which I got from Mozambique and this is the year that I will perfect it.

Absolutely superb Herbie! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Fish night! King Salmon cold smoked with KK coffee chunks for 1 hr then indirect cook while preparing to sear tuna. Sides include sweet potatoes and stir fry cabbage.

I agree with that, nothing like a plate of ribs or a nice tri tip or a nice juicy steak. Now I’m making myself hungry for some meat guess I’ll go check the freezer. Everybody stay safe and happy grilling.

Ha! There's a problem with my spreadsheet-based incremental development approach to tuning recipes: So far, no matter where I start, I end up with the same standard recipe. I came back from Morocco two summers ago making their thick flat bread, kept tweaking it, and ended up right back where I was before the trip. These days, I'm working on sourdough rye / pumpernickel / mountain bread. I figure if I keep the rye at 50% this won't turn back into my standard recipe. What I do for unusual grains is have a "guest" slot in my standard recipe, 10% of some odd grain I have around. 10% never throws off the results, but we can taste it. 20%, even what's supposed to be another version of hard wheat, and the bread can act funny. At 10%, I do like emmer in the guest slot. As for sourdough ancestry, I'm somewhat of a heretic. I once took home some "California Gold Rush" sourdough starter from the founder of Shenandoah Vineyards (now long retired) and lost it. There's a lot of malarky out there on how one even gets a starter going. The truth is that unless something fairly awful wins fast, the culture is taken over by whatever rides in on one's starter flour. When one gets starter from someone, that culture is exactly like the aliens that shepherded life on this planet billions of years ago: It keeps the peace and watches over the nascent local culture until it can get established, then disappears without a trace. One might just as well use a bit of yeast and save lots of trouble. But wouldn't the yeast take over? If one bakes regularly, one's kitchen is permeated with yeast, like a French vineyard that ferments using whatever comes in on the grapes themselves. Yeast will always be a component of one's sourdough. The other components will coexist just fine. For other fermentation processes such as the hot sauce I make, I don't trust what's on the chiles. Of course, we have supply chains we don't understand; perhaps garden-grown chiles would be different. But there's a spectacular local pickle shop that relies only on the natural produce to get fermentation going; I love their products but I've reached the uncomfortable realization that they don't keep. Huh. I did lose my starter last year sometime, forgetting it a week too long in the fridge, and I tested my theories: Just add a half teaspoon of yeast to a flour/water mixture, and feed it each day as if it is starter. One actually doesn't need to wait more than a day to make bread with this culture, it just becomes more sourdough-like with time. That's exactly what happened with mine. On my recent Giusto's grain run, through miscommunication we ended up with a 50 lb sack of rye berries rather that 25 lbs. I've been using straight freshly ground rye to feed our starter. Wow. It adapted instantly. You could probably just stare cross-eyed at a straight rye starter mixture, and have it take off like gangbusters. Though after reading about ergot (a toxin common in the Middle Ages, where one believes one is hallucinating that one's limbs are falling off, except they actually are falling off), I'm happy having some yeast supervise the starter.

Welcome, you will find the KK amazingly easy to control and your cooks are going to taste better, I kid you not.

I have had good luck with Boos cutting board cream

And this company has good products. https://www.realmilkpaint.com Remember that oil finishes are "in the wood" not on the wood finishes. You wipe them on and let as much soak in as possible the wipe clean.. you can repeat but only if more is absorbed, it's not supposed to sit on top of the wood like varnish or polyurethane.

@tony b yep I’m definitely doing herbs. Rosemary, thyme, basil for sure. Also going to do some form of tomatoes we eat a lot of cherries so that’s possible, maybe some red or yellow peppers. Outside that everything else is up in the air

My "garden" consists of pots on my deck (keeps the critters from snacking out). I typically grow tomatoes (cherry varieties do well in containers), chile peppers, and a variety of herbs - chives, basil, thyme, rosemary - occasionally, sage, mint, or tarragon - whatever you like to cook with.

Herb and vegetable boxes went in today....getting close....now have to decide what to plant

Bard I have been using danish oil on my timber. My KK remains new and does not need any, however, I have a hardwood deck table that is semi exposed and the danish oil made a remarkable difference. Danish oil is a combination of Tung oil, linseed oil, and citrus oil. I like it for a few reasons, 1. It can be applied with a rag and really easy to apply without messy clean ups. 2. It smells delightful, fresh and citrus like. 3. It can be touched up without needing to sand it back to a base. 4. It’s food grade. The product I have settled on is called Organoil Danish Oil. https://prep-productions.com/product-item/danish-oil/ There are other danish oils in the market. Give it a go and let us know how you find it. I just bought 4 litres more today for the Benchtops on my new ODK. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Milk Street has a new Suya recipe up -- free for now: https://www.177milkstreet.com/recipes/suya-spiced-pork-tenderloins?allow_token=365e2b8c-db0c-4640-8186-6bd8cdbb8c70&utm_source=Christopher+Kimball’s+Milk+Street&utm_campaign=f2050184ae-FTW_PANROASTEDPORK&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c373980eee-f2050184ae-114842961&mc_cid=f2050184ae&mc_eid=a4a9a551e0