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Yum Sent from my SM-T835 using Tapatalk

Rotisserie chicken two ways. On the left butter, olive oil, garlic, salt & pepper and rosemary, tarragon, thyme and fresh oregano on the right it’s Peruvian spiced chicken with pink Peruvian salt, garlic, black pepper, aji amarillo, aji panca & cumin teboko & Tonyb inspired crispy air fryed potatoes completed the meal and I can’t believe I’ve lived me entire life without air fryer potatoes holy smokes!

Pizza night. Sourdough crust with 10% fresh milled hard red wheat. DOP San Marzano tomatoes. Fresh mozzarella, prosciutto and artichoke hearts. Baked on the KK 23 with a baking steel for leopard spotted crust. There were no survivors.

I always fill up on lump and that concrete deflector makes a good stepping stone.

I made Japanese Curry Chicken today, actually had to start it yesterday. Made the Garam Marsala and the Curry Roux yesterday. Today it was just a case of cutting up some veggie, diced onions, sliced onion, celery, carrot, tomatoes, a bay leaf and chicken thighs. Layer them all in the Musui and cook for 60 mins. Nothing else added, no water no liquid of any sort. When the hour was up add the Curry Roux and let things sit for 10 mins with the lid no but no heat added. Plated with white rice. It was delicious, fortunately I had only made 65g of the curry roux, (ran out of ingredients) the recipe called for 100g but this was plenty hot enough for me with the 65g.

Looking good ready for a rest Sent from my SM-T835 using Tapatalk

You are the master of ribs Aussie. I can never find ribs in Brisbane with that much meat on them. At $20/kg they have about 60- 70% bone mass so I never buy them. Troble that bird looks plump and juicy. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Great cooks everyone. Gave some pork ribs a sprinkle of purple crack and salt on the bottom then hit the top with some blazing pepper steak rub with a dash of gunpowder.cant wait. On it goes ..... Sent from my SM-T835 using Tapatalk

Yum checkout the salad .nicley done Sent from my SM-T835 using Tapatalk

What a way for me to go to sleep, thinking about your wonderful cook, and the gorgeous colour on those chickens. Smells fantastic.

The pizza stone (if you ordered one, not standard equipment) has a very smooth surface and is shaped like the grates. The "deflector stone" is not polished and round. Like MacKenzie said, makes a nice stepping stone in a garden or a base for a bird bath. No one, not even Dennis, uses it for cooking. The only reason he keeps making them as part of the "standard equipment" is that converts from other kamado grills are used to having them with their old grills.

All these gorgeous pizza cooks, I'm inspired to going for it tonight. Last night was repeat of a recent favorite: Peri-Peri chicken thighs. Direct, 325F initially, bumped up to 375F to crisp up the skin, peach wood chunks. Plated with roasted garlic couscous, carrot salad, and a nice peanut sauce. My fav summertime wine - Vinho Verde (Broadbent).

And here it is. Plated Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hard to tell from the graph but I would bet you were close enough not to make much of a difference. You will also see less of a stall cooking at 275 than at 225.

Dennis has supported me and been extremely patient and thorough while working through my PERCEIVED issues. I've read about KK amazing customer service many, many times. That instills confidence before and during the purchase. Its extremely comforting if you need to exercise/experience it AFTER the purchase. Very thankful to Dennis and the supportive community here on this forum. Ive searched the forums for answers to maintenance questions, cooking ideas, etc. This is a great community and excellent resource too.

brisket & meater update. Brisket: Took a bit more time than expected to get to 203, thankfully nobody was relying on this for dinner. I put it in a Yeti overnight, but the temps got down to <140, so, into the fridge it went. I'll reheat for dinner tonight...haven't looked into recommendations on bringing it back up to temp, but I imagine I'll just put it back at 250 or so and check it periodically after 140 degrees. If anyone has reheated brisket, I'd love suggestions! Meater: Pretty happy with the first day (happy to answer any questions folks have, I'll be using it a lot in the coming 2 weeks to make sure I want to keep it). Re the Meater graphs below: green is ambient, purple is in the meat. Side note: I love having ambient and meat readings in the same place. The dip in ambient temp at ~6 hours was when I pulled & wrapped it. I left the probes in, thus the dip in temps. At 10h40m into the cook I opened the grill to feel the meat for a few seconds...temps in the dome didn't go up that much after, but they did inside the meat -- must have been that I increased airflow to the Meater probes inside the wrap. Or something. Shrug.

Pretty lucky that I have a butcher that scores well Sent from my SM-T835 using Tapatalk

Wrapped at 166-173 on the Meater probes (which have performed great, more on that later). Wasn’t as mahogany as Franklin talks about or pics I’ve seen, but...I guess I was worried about it drying out. Thoughts? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks .... I have another quest...do you guys generally fill the charcoal basket all the way up for ribs or a brisket or do you manage any differently? I have some of the coco char on order but am using Big Egg now. I seem to run out of charcoal in the past and it feels as though it takes forever to heat back up but I just recently learned through the forum not to use the big concrete deflector in my grill so that may have been why.

Just going by what he wrote in his book. When you've cooked as many briskets as he has, you can fly by the seat of your pants (gauging by color). Plus, he's talking about all the variables - type of smokers (all of his are off-set stick burners), green vs aged wood (He doesn't use charcoal), etc. So, just experiment and see what techniques work best for you is the main point. What I wrote works for me. YMMV

To echo Tony's "Every grill is a little different", on mine, if the tabs on the damper are at 3 and 9 o'clock, if I"m targeting 250, I grab the 9 o'clock tab and move it counter clockwise to the 6 o'clock position, so ~ 1/4 turn off the seat. On the bottom, I have the lager vent open so about 1/2 of it is open. On firing it up, it depends on what you are going for, a long low and slow or a hot grilling session. For a hot grilling session I open the top damper fully open and pull out the bottom vent to allow as much airflow as possible and light multiple area's of charcoal, once i see the dome temp come up to ~100f I will come back in 5 minutes or so and bring the top damper back to desired position and push the bottom damper back in, then set the left rotary dial so it is 1/2 open. Regards.

Welcome back, Bruce! 1. Every grill is a bit different, so there's no "universal" damper settings. Looks like you're going to have to set up the cooler of adult beverages and spend an afternoon re-learning your grill! But, your initial guess at 225F is pretty off - at least on mine (23"). It's like a 1/8 turn (just barely off the seat) on the top. Bottom vent opening isn't critical, as long as it's open enough for the airflow needed to support the temperature you're shooting for. One and Half turns on mine would get me somewhere around 550F or higher. 2. The Maguire polish is only for esthetics, not for any required maintenance on your KK. Patching the grout is the only thing you need to do. 3. I open my top vent a couple of turns during initial startup to make sure the coals are going OK. Once dome temperature gets within 50F of my target, I close it back down to where I think it should be. Normally, I only light one spot of charcoal for a low & slow cook, but if you want to speed things up a little, and don't mind burning up a bit more charcoal, you can always light a couple of spots. Have fun re-learning your grill. Post pics of those amazing cooks that are coming!

Sounds like Franklin cares more about the color of the brisket for when to wrap.. Not related to the stall. He also does not always wrap.. Talks about it in the first two minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMIlyzRFUjU

@Scott.W - to be clear here, when we say "deflector" we're NOT talking about the big ceramic one that came with your KK. It would take bloody forever to heat up both that deflector and the pizza stone. Waste a lot of charcoal in the process, too! Some folks (Syz & MacKenzie) with the double bottom drip pan have used that on the main grate to success with the pizza stone on the upper grate. I have yet to try it myself, but I'm inspired to it - maybe tonight??

@oakland I just bought a meater probe. Keep us/me updated would love to hear how good the Bluetooth range is.

Thanks! All we have is time these days, so that's the easy part :). Also giving my new meater probes a first run. Forgot to check the calibration, but they're all reading the same so...

Brisket today. 2nd attempt in recent times. Following Franklin and this board’s recs (thanks especially Tony b!). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes to good airflow. When I use a heat deflector there is an air gap between it and the cooking surface. Here are two different configurations I use and why I use them. Here I’m using repurposed GrillGratesTM as a heat deflector below a baking steel at around 550. Baking steels have about 15 times the heat transfer rate of stone, so are great at leopard spotting a thin NY style pizza. BUT, they will get too hot without a heat deflector. In this version I’m going with the KK baking stone and no deflector at around 475. The KK baking stone is perfect for this style of pizza - a thin crust varietal unique to the south side of Chicago and proven superior to all others. At these temps and that thick stone, no heat deflector needed, but it wouldn’t hurt if I’d used one.

Pizza night. Cheese pizza, pepperoni, Hawaiian, veggie. 6 weeks of consecutive pizza cooking and I can say my crust game is improving. I finally nailed the sauce and will be using this recipe going forward

Memorial Day Weekend, so Shanks for the Memories! Moroccan spiced honey lamb shanks from my pal Adam Perry Lang. Reducing the glaze after an all afternoon braise. Perfect with pearl couscous and a nice Petit Verdot from a winery up the road.