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"The Girls" made me do this pizza cook, eh Troble. I did two identical pizzas and some days are stones and some days are diamonds. This was a diamond of a day. 10 inch pizza shell. Starting to dress them up. Dressed. Baked. Served.

Here are a couple of prime NY strips. I reverse seared them and initially smoked with hickory and Jealous Devil @ 250 degrees for an hour or so bringing the internal temp to 127 degrees. I then let them rest as the cooker climbed to 550 degree dome temp. Seared them for 1 minute a side just over the coals. I didn't take the time to take sexy pics of the finished product. Plating is not looking good and is "messy" per my wife Christine, but the cook looks great. I used Hardcore Carnivore "Black," which is why they look so dark prior to the sear.

This was a lot harder back in the day (my first, off-brand, Kamado, that shed its tiles then disintegrated in less time than I've owned my still-young KK).

Project looking great!!! This gave me a good laugh 😂

I built this rock wall on Saturday. I’m calling it “the dogs hind leg” that’s why Billie is very pleased with it. Cabinetry is nearly completed under the kitchen. And I have been getting very absorbed in concocting the perfect soil for the garden beds. I know there are a few keen gardeners here so I’ll explain my soil discoveries. Shale base where we live and if the clay/ shale is soft enough the clay content can be ok, however, it’s mostly hard rocky shale. Therefore, I’ve dug 15m3(530ft3) out of the garden beds( it’s a small back yard with minimal beds). My beds are averaging depths of about 2- 3 feet. I’ve barrowed and bucketed 12m3 of topsoil sourced from a local flower farm who are expanding their shade houses and were told the topsoil was rubbish for building foundations. Tested this, and found the soil had all the trace elements required, a ph level close to 6, and a structure of 32% sand, 57% silt, 11% clay. It’s perfect, apart from lacking organics. This is where the fun begins. We do some work with a local sugar mill and found they supply cane tops and molasses to a commercial recycling plant who supply 7000 tonnes of composted cow dung(80%) cane tops(15%) and chook dung with a sprinkling of molasses to nut growers and orchards across the east coast of Aus. 10m3 will be ordered to allow for shrinkage and a few spare m3 to share amongst the neighbours. Delivery charge is the same cost as the product and no difference up to 10m3. Who would have thought having dung delivered to your front door could be so exciting?. Also eagerly anticipating 2 exotic trees- exotic for our location, maybe weeds to others. Tabebuia Rosea and 2 Vera Cruz Rose Palmeri. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@MacKenzie I just read about 9 pages on this thread to catch up and now I’m starving. Gosh you make it look so easy truly inspiring

Nice pics Basher. I feel your pain.. each and every time a new piece is added to the backyard my dog christens it as his own. St Joseph is a favorite stop on his tour. Like the re:purposed front with the distressed wood, a mix of the old with the new. Cow manure, as a kid my dad had a truck load delivered to the house from a country farm just about every year and dumped in the driveway in front of the garage. Six feet high 12 feet wide and the neighbors loved it.lol From there it was all wheel barreled to the backyard and turned in,... over the course of decade or so the top soil grew to 2 ft. I swear if you dropped a seed the next day it would sprout. Jack in beanstalk woulda been proud.

I suspect no breaking down is needed. Once you see one KK it is hard not to want another in your life. You could emulate @Pequod's set up or you could go wild and pick another colour. We await your decision, with bated breath.

Olive and gold 23”/32” combo is tough to beat, but not very original. 😜

There's a tag inside each KK that would help figure this out. I bought my 23" well over a decade ago. I'm very proud of my serial number. Apparently there were only eight people before me.

Well let's see if that is how she remembers the conversation.

Today I made the decision. I will own a KK32BB. Within a year. I've been a happy Primo XL owner for about 4 years now. Love the versatility of ceramics but always wanted more. The wife and I are planning a major renovation of our garage and "back yard". Quotes bc w live in the urban hell know as Jersey City and what we consider outdoor space is laughable to most. That said, "it's gonna be freakin' goarjus" (a little NJ lingo there) ESPECIALLY w my blue ceramic sculpture that doubles as a cooker - I haven't decided between Terra Blue light, Terra Blue dark, or Cobalt. I can't WAIT to cook suckling pig and picanha on the rotisserie, make two pizzas at a time, and two briskets too. Welp, see you around.

At one point I learned the classification of Parisian bread types. At one extreme there's the white flour, yeast-raised baguette that one really should snack on during the walk home, for it will already be stale on arrival. At the other extreme are higher extraction breads featuring rye and natural leavening, and they have the longest shelf life, even in the same form factor as a baguette. There's a similar continuum of sourdough effects. In San Francisco one expects sourdough to be sour. Not the Kaffir lime juice the Thais would use to clean engine parts, but sour. The French consider that a failing, mishandled sourdough. Sourdough should impart a more complex flavor, but by managing hydration and timing it need only be somewhat sour. Like smoke or breasts; if one is insecure about misidentifying objects of lust on the search for good BBQ, one wants obvious confirmation. The French are more subtle. I find that with some rye and some sourdough levain, my breads keep longer, even if I also add a bit of yeast. And the yeast offers insurance.

I have packets of vac sealed yeast in my freezer. Works great. That said, I use very little commercial yeast thanks to my sourdough starter.

That would work. I purchased an air tight container that holds a 1lb bag and keep it in the freezer. Probably about 3 years old at this point but still works just fine.

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@Wingman505 @MacKenzie gave me this recipe and it’s served me well https://pin.it/4pdzASj

Haven't eaten there, but I was the "dumb end of the board" helping my woodworker neighbor install a fancy shed for extra storage, before their remodel. Thomas Keller pays attention to detail, I got to meet him twice. I mentioned using his sous vide cookbook, and he didn't look surprised at all. He later asked about the roof color, and I suggested no, it should match on Google Earth. That elicited a bit of surprise. The veggies being dropped off were mind-boggling. Our favorite sous vide vegetable is also potatoes. I've sold friends on sous vide this way, that feel they have meat otherwise mastered: Peel and quarter (or to size) potatoes, vacuum pack, and cook sous vide at 185 F or above (this is the threshold for most vegetables to actually cook) for one to two hours (to taste, revisit this on subsequent trials). Chill the packs completely, ideally overnight, or in ice water if in a hurry. A few hours before cooking, open the packs and spread out the potatoes on a cooling rack, with a fan blowing on them, to dry off as much surface moisture as possible. (A brief time in a dehydrator would also work, but that's more cleanup.) To serve, fry hard in ghee, with salt and pepper to taste, till they pick up lots of color and cook completely through. Twice-cooked starch is transcendent. That's the whole idea behind french fries done right. This is a riff on that. Thomas Keller discourages sous vide for most vegetables. I don't make complete dishes from his first cookbook, The French Laundry, but there are some amazing techniques in there. For example, cooking lobster just long enough to remove and reserve the meat, then using the shells for stock, then gently cooking the meat in mostly butter, some water (which translates well to sous vide). I've used this to top a gumbo to die for. His favorite vegetable technique is "big pot boiling". I mean big, like a 16 quart pot. (There is online debate on how big is necessary. Diminishing returns, of course, but people are revealing that they can't tell the difference, not that you can't. It's not easy to cook beyond one's perceptions; I'm convinced Keller is a super-taster.) Nearly fill with water salted to sea water (decide to taste), bring to hard boil, and plunge vegetables to cook exactly to taste. Plunge next into ice water to arrest cooking. This preserves flavor and color, which matters at his prices. If you save tomato harvests as we do by skinning, partially dehydrating with salt till "gooshy", and freezing, then adding those tomatoes to Blue Lake green beans cooked big pot boiling and dressed with your favorite vinaigrette makes the best green bean salad I've ever made. I've brought this as a vegetable side to Thanksgiving by very serious cooks; this is the only "pot luck" veggie course I know that can break through the cacophony of other dishes.

Glx my wife is not a fan of the strong smoke flavour so I haven’t used it in cooks, however, I have used it numerous times for cold smoking herbs, cheese, spices, fish and my dad really enjoys my cold smoked tea. You have reminded me that I need to smoke some more- when I can get my KK off my deck and outside in the new ODK. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ha. My misplaced anxiety is about using yeast. I feel like I would be straying from developing my sourdough craft. HOWEVER I love baguettes and @Pequod's (brioche) buns have got me drooling. Another rule to be broken. Soon. @Syzygies what do you call farro? At first I was reluctant to buy yet another grain and then, when I asked at my local whole food shop, they had no idea what farro was and had to look it up. From what I have read spelt, einkorn and emmer are all sometimes called farro. The good news is I won't have to buy any different grains but it would be helpful to know if you Americans have a different/specific meaning when you say farro. Welcome to the thread Sue! Hope to hear from you again soon. Keen to know what you meant about my "spelt seedling" pack from Austria. I did try to sprout them but had zero success so they are definitely not for making sprouts. If they are pre-sprouted it might be the equivalent of malted grain but I really don't know and the company never answered my email enquiry.

I think the smoker accessory is great. You need the right pellets to keep it alight but once you get that right you can set and forget it. I still use the smoke pot, usually for low and slow cooks because I don't think the pull through is as good on those cooks but others may have a different experience.

It is not how I recall that one... @Wingman505 is batting .333 🤣

Crikey! Please tell me you still argon your wine.

Oh yeah, those things are everywhere come harvest time here in NM around August through October. I don't like Autumn roast (green and red mix) so we buy roasted chile early during the harvest to avoid the red. We buy a lot of red as well, but we like to keep them separate. We take the 30 pound boxes home, allow them to cool for half the day, then we pull out three Foodsavers, de-stem the chiles, pre freeze the chile so we don't suck up juices into the sealers, seal, and put into one of our freezers in the garage. It takes up quite a bit of space! We could buy a roaster for our disk-it, but there's a place here in Albuquerque named "Nelson's Meats" that uses pizza ovens to roast the chile. The overs hit the chile from both sides simultaneously so you get an even, all-around char. Another tip is to not bother peeling them prior to freezing into portions. My wife puts the frozen chile in the microwave and it steams them a little making the peels fall right off. We New Mexicans use chile in almost everything!

Wingman , "I also got impatient and got the KK off of the pallet with a small assist from my tiny wife. " and Christine said," hmmm... Interesting. That's not exactly how I remember that."

The deposit was paid today for a 23" KK. I got the one with bells and whistles. Judging by other orders- most recently Hammo- coming into The Port of Brisbane it's expected to be about 3 months away. Summer will be kicking in by then, however, before the KK arrives I have plenty of work to do in preparation. Our house is a timber "workers cottage" built in 1913 so during summer all doors and windows are open to breathe. Given the back deck is attached to the house, the smoke doesn't go down that well from the back deck. My back yard is a mess and the current ODK sits on the deck so a new ODK needs to be built to house the KK, and other toys. It'll be detached and far enough away so the smoke doesn't cause a problem to house. I had in mind something like this- A mate of mine has been milling some grade 1 blue gum hardwood timber from his property and kindly wants to donate some 150mm posts and slabs for the bench. It'll cost about 10 years of cook ups. I also found some cool river stones carved into bench top sinks. I think they might be from Indonesia. We have street gas that I can run to the ODK so the gas burner will always be on tap with no need to refill bottles. And the KK can just rolllllll around at will.

Welcome JC. Cobalt blue pebble was my second choice. Haven’t got their yet. Congrats on the decision to invest in the KK and also your backyard. Truth be told, I started a complete Reno of my backyard so I could house the KK. Haven’t finished yet! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I had a plant growing in the backyard and thought it may be related to your post because I view narrow boat travelers on Youtube that have come across this same herb in the UK. So, here are a couple of pics and although they differ from yours somewhat in leaf design they matched the travelers video exactly. So, I went out into the yard and snipped a small leaf.. I chewed it a swallowed it, it had light taste of garlic, I hit the bonanza. Well, I'm hoping it was and not poison Ivy or Sumac........these things have a way of coming around, so to speak. Let me know, wild garlic in my backyard, it is New England............

A trail blazer and a treasure hunter combined, an oppurtunist. The price tag would always scare me away, I succumbed. No looking back. Unfortunately Syzygies 10 years don't make an antique even though it has a little patina and rust. I have some old high school shirts if anyone is interested.

Still got the bong?

Thanks Troble. Tyrus my mum used to send me down the paddock with a wheelbarrow and pay me 50 cents for every load of cow dung I could bring back for her garden. I’m still the only bloke I know who winds the windows down when I pass a cattle truck! [emoji23] Unfortunately, after composting for 16 weeks, this dung won’t smell. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Oh is that Steve Sando swinging the hammer? I still reckon that’s Bruce Pearson. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I really like JD too. I'm currently using it and we're going to be smoking spatchcock chickens tonight with a cast iron below them filled with potatoes, onions, etc. We'll have the fat drip into the potatoes. I like Fogo. I think it smells better than JD, but you can't avoid the quebracho wood smell. It is what it is. It's not offensive... just different. The huge pieces of Super Premium are nice when you're filling an empty basket, but not so great when you're just topping off. It'll be interesting to compare JD against Fogo quebracho. Then my Coffee char comes in!

Yes, vacuum sealing works just fine.

You know you can freeze yeast and it will keep a looong time. Keep this in mind for the next pandemic.

This is their branding, consistent across the product line. I told you Steve Sando was charismatic. Have you seen our "Forged by the Gods" model?

Nice! I just sent it to @Christinelynn and I's email. We're having trouble finding yeast. We're about to spend $15 online. I also want to make an authentic sauce so I'll be looking around for that. I'm sure the book I bought will have some great sauce recipes.

I bought Ken Forkish's "The Elements of Pizza." I want to cook NY style pizza. There's many here that are making amazing pies and I want to get to that skill level.

I use the smoker about 1/2 the time for BBQ, usually when the meat load is such I don't want to fool around moving it to add wood during the cook. I have two different sized dutch ovens ready to turn into small and medium smoke pots, but, well, they are down in priority on the work list...

I think this be the best mine I’ve ever seen on this site. 😀 @Basher project looks fantastic. That rock wall turned out great and that cabinetry is looking fabulous. You must be excited. Great work

I like spelt, but not nearly as much as she does it seems.

Congratulations in advance, Wingman and Christine! Two is much better.

I took the brute force route and used a dead blow hammer to move the handles into the ideal position. They moved out with a few medium weight hits each. They're perfectly straight and the drip an now fits great. Thanks for the tip!

Aussie, that is certainly tasty looking dinner.

Burger lunch today.

I can’t tell everyone how excited I am to be a part of this community. I’ve coveted one of these cookers for a long time and somehow convinced my off duty supervisor (wife) to purchase one yesterday evening. We bought a 32” Big Bad in olive & gold pebble tile. We purchased multiple accessories including the coal basket divider, dual bottom drip pan, teak side shelves, grate handles, and baking stone. I currently own a BGE XL and a Kamado Joe Classic 2. I will be selling the XL for sure and the jury is still out as to wether I’ll sell the KJ. I look forward to discussing KK with everyone here!

The Kiwis would call this pork and pooha. The packet called the pork a scotch roast! Not sure about this cut? Carved a bit like a rib fillet. Spinach came from the garden as did the basil for the feta and cherry tomatoes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We purchased the house off 3 brothers- their father built the house. The 3 brothers lived through WWII and between the 3 of them they had 3 legs. The last brother alive had 2 legs! Do the maths. When we moved in, the toilet in the house had a dirt floor. This was considered a step up from the original long drop in the back corner of the garden. Tough to access during thunder storms! Is there something about old men and young men where they cant aim straight? Man that dirt floor absorbed everything. Could have bottled it and sold it to a footy player for a half time wake up! For 2 years after we moved in the old fella would pop up in the back yard out of habit and walk into the back door.To him It was still his home. We didn't mind, he was a pretty good bloke and he filled us in on the history of the area while i made him a cuppa.

Funny ... I have been hoarding my cocochar from when I bought my kk - only use it on mission critical low and slow's (it can fire my kk for at least 2 days). Still have 10 boxes and just added 15 more plus 15 of the coffeechar

I did a little research on pellets. For BBQ there are two main types of pellets. Heat pellets. These are usually a blend of oak and a flavor wood with a relatively high percentage of oak. They do this because oak burns hot, long and leaves little ash behind (compared to other types of wood). This type of pellet is mainly used in pellet grills. The other type of pellet is smoking pellets. These can be singled wood or a wood blend. These are used in things like the Hot/Cold Smoker, pellet trays etc... They generally give a better smoke profile for that type of wood. Both types of pellets can be used interchangeably but might give less than optimum results used for the wrong application. The source of the wood also varies. The cheaper pellets are usually made with scrap lumber and sawdust leftover from other industries such as oak furniture companies. The problem is oak furniture companies usually use kiln dried wood. The kiln drying process causes a lot of the smoke profile to be lost. Some pellet manufactures use various fillers. This stretches their wood farther so they can sell a low cost pellet but who wants fillers when your smoking an expensive piece of meat? The better pellet manufacturers use virgin wood. They chip it green, dry it out then turn it into shavings. Sometimes they leave the bark on and sometimes they strip it off depending on the pellet they are making. Pellets made from virgin wood give a stronger smoke profile for the type of wood. There is more to making pellets than all that but I figured armed with that information I could source out a decent pellet manufacturer. I decided on Lumber Jack Pellets. They use all virgin wood and strip the bark at times depending on the blend. http://bbqlumberjack.com/our-pellets/ They don't sell to the general public so I order some from here. https://bbqpelletsonline.com/index.php/products/buy-individual-bags/Lumber-Jack-Pellets-10-20-and-40-w-free-shipping-c14087011 I bought 3 x 10 lb bags. Hickory Blend. 60% red oak, 40% hickory. Should have a fairly robust smoke profile that I'll use for beef. Fruitwood Blend. 80% cherry, 20% apple. Should be a sweeter, lighter smoke profile for pork. Rosemary, Thyme, Basil. An oak base with rosemary, thyme and basil. It sounds interesting and will try it with chicken and fish There you have it, hopefully I didn't bore you too much. Will report back again once I get a chance to use these pellets.