Leaderboard

Right after the tomatoes I started on cheese burgers. The cheese was a Guinness flavoured cheddar cheese that I love. Dressed the bun with some pickled peppers and tomato slices. Burger off the KK and onto the bun, then topped with the cheese.

The weather in the UK has been miserable. It's like someone flicked the winter switch and I don't think it has stopped raining in the last 24 hours. We felt Sunday would be a good day for a 'pub lunch' aka Sunday roast so laid in ingredients and set the challenge of cooking most of it in our 19KK. Despite it raining constantly. It was also 6 degrees. So, we cooked a 1.6KG topside of beef (sourced from a farm about 2 miles from us) and added the traditional Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes and decided to go with cauliflower cheese as another side. It was just the two of us and a dog who very much wanted in on the action. If you've never done a traditional English Sunday roast, it's about sequencing and timing if you want to eat everything hot. We did a rub on the topside and gave it 45 mins while the KK was bedding in - quite simple - salt/black pepper/olive oil together with tiny amount of oregano and braai spice (I made it a while ago and think I had cumin seed, coriander seed, cayenne, chilli, salt,thyme in the mixture). Put a small piece of coffee wood in once we were ready to cook. Took it off with internal temperature at 52°C but ambient on the Meater+ was about 50°C out on the TelTru in the dome. Not that much of an issue as I was only interested in the internal temperature but I would have expected them to be much closer in a heat soaked KK after temps had stabilised with the meat in. Yorkshires came out well - second time doing them in the KK (210°C for 20mins). Put some water in to increase vapour in the KK. We have a range cooker and all the ovens have a fan assist function which produces a lot of steam and makes for incredibly good Yorkshires. On our first attempt, we'd found the Yorkshires to be a little dry and the texture wasn't quite right - bubble size/density wasn't great and it wasn't particularly elastic and aerated. They should be light and fluffy. The additional water vapour created sufficient steam to resolve this. Be interested if anyone else has had the same experience or has a different method. Given we were cooking the potatoes in duck fat and the Yorkshires were being cooked with a duck fat base, I thought I'd cut out the cream for the Cauliflower cheese to reduce the richness. I didn't want to overpower the dish with smoke but wanted to get some coffee wood smoke into the cauliflower so I cooked the cauliflower separately in a foil tray as an indirect cook and threw coffee wood on to the coal for smoke. Gave it 15-20 mins at 175°C and it tasted fabulous - it was a little underdone deliberately but I was pouring a bechamel over and finishing in the oven. I made a roux, added whole milk, Cheddar Cheese and nutmeg. Topped with a little grated cheese and cooked in the oven. I could have done it in the KK stacking shelves but didn't want to end up see sawing temperatures and messing timings up. The cook graph for ambient temperatures on the Meater app showed a rock solid horizontal line once I'd reached target temperature. Would have been easy running with the 32KK as well but the oven was just as easy and the cauliflower already had the right level of smoke I wanted. Few pictures below taken on iPhone. We had it with a lovely bottle of Peyrouzelles 2017.

As noted earlier, inspired to try the Peruvian chicken with green sauce. Marinated the chicken overnight. Rotisserie basket, direct, coffee and peach wood chunks, started out at 275F for the first 30 minutes, then slowly raised temps up to 350F for the last 30 minutes for crispier skin. Out of the rack. Plated with side salad, crusty bread and airfried spuds, with green sauce on the side. This green sauce is da bomb, folks!

A friend set me on this journey of roasted tomatoes, lucky me.

Two views of last night's "Cowboy Steak", a super thick, 4" ribeye, bone in. The previous attempt, with a 3" cut, was cooked with mesquite wood, and was quite good. Last night I used post oak, and it was also very good, albeit quite different. I did find that cooking the 4" steak was a good deal more difficult, or maybe tricky, than the 3" version. I set up the fire on one side of the KK and roasted it about 18" high over the fire, offset to the "cool" side, at 400-450 degrees, for about 25 minutes, flipping it frequently, then did the sear on the lower grill directly over the remaining fire. It was kind of interesting that in my recollection, the 3" steak cooked at a relatively even rate, and this one was wild: one minute it was testing about 89* in places, and 5 minutes later, up to 135* in spots, a LOT hotter than I wanted. Thankfully, it was big and thick enough that I managed to salvage some very rare slices for my wife, and there were some medium rare pieces perfect for me. I used the usual salt and medium-ground pepper for rub. Both steaks were prime and the flavor was excellent. Next time....I just got 4 3" cowboy steaks delivered from Snake River Farms and I expect the meat quality to be the best.

@tony b I’m glad you liked it! Try it with some of your air fryed potatoes sometime. i made pizza Saturday but thought it was too boring to post my usual pepperoni, cheese and veggie pizza did boneless leg of lamb on the spit. Mediterranean salad, cous cous and Tadziki sauce. Unlike the UK it’s been hotter than sh*t here. Was too busy hosting, cooking. Drinking and swimming to take pics but managed one finished plate pic

Don't forget the torque wrench if you really want to make sure! 🤘 👍 It sounds like you have your first cook lined up in the KK. The Yorkshires I think are a bit easier in the oven though. If you're buying one, get a Meater+ (with repeater). I think the standard Meater doesn't have the signal range much beyond the KK. Even then, I find that I sometimes lose signal on the Meater+. You may have to plan your table booking based on Meater signal optimisation!

RD, you won't regret getting the KK pizza stone.

Interesting, and coincidental. I used my MEATER+ on a rotisserie cook yesterday and got some very squirrely ambient temperature reading - very sawtooth - and not from opening the lid. I've seen a similar behavior before. I suspect it's caused by juices running down the probe and coating the end of the MEATER, where the ambient temperature probe is. Given that the meat juices are a couple hundred degrees (F) lower than dome temps, you can imagine the swings that I was seeing. It played hell with the "estimated cooking time" algorithm - LOL! But, back to your point more directly. It's not just the MEATER probe, there's always a delta in temperature readings between the dome and the grate. Typically in the 25F - 50F range. I see it with my Maverick and Guru probes, too. Proximity to the meat has a small influence. One thing that I learned a long time ago and practice consistently, is to not clamp the probe directly to the grate - you get a false reading of the air temperature. I use a wine cork with a small nail in the end that I attach the alligator clip on the probe too. I cut notches out on the opposite end of the cork for it to fit in between the grate rods.

Hey Everyone I've been seeing some difference in ambient temperature readings and I just wanted to get a 'forum view' on my experience. I've had a look for information online and in the forum but couldn't find anything that answered my question. I did do some wider research and the most illuminating (and entirely irrelevant search result) was an interesting scientific paper on thermoregulation in Komodo Dragons although I did come across an interesting article on heat cycling and oven accuracy from Thermoworks that I remember using some while ago. So I did a cook yesterday - simple setup, 1.6KG topside in a foil tray in the 19KK. Centre of the grill and I used the middle grill so it was dead centre of the KK. Foil tray was a little bigger than the meat but not much and I positioned it centrally to get even convectional airflow. Popped the meat in at 200°C and gave it 30-45 mins to heat soak. I put a Meater+ into the joint and the probe tip was at the very centre - it was inserted horizontally i.e. parallel to the grill. I was aiming for rare with a target internal temperature of 50-52°C and the internal temperature at the start of the cook was 9 degrees. After I added the meat and the temperatures stabilised, the TelTru dome temperature stayed at 200°C for the entire duration of the cook. When I looked at the graphed temperatures, the ambient range on the Meater+ correlated in being constant but was much lower at 145-147°C for the same period. I know the refractory surface has a high thermal mass and should have uniform convective heat (reflected in the stability of the temperatures read from both gauges) but I would not have expected such variation on ambient when you consider that the measurement points are not that far apart. I could accept that they wouldn't be on parity because the probe is conductive and inserted into a much colder object but 55-57 degrees different? I had a look at Meater's website and they talk about their ambient sensor (FAQ quoted below) being extremely sensitive to microclimates but I don't see the air circulation patterns being that significant on a heat soaked and unopened KK. But I'm not an expert on thermal dynamics. I also can't see the meat exerting that degree of influence on the ambient sensor but I may be entirely underestimating the sensitivity. I've done an ice point check on the probes and they're all calibrated fine. I could do an ambient check in our range cooker as a control but I'm not sure the answer lies there. Can anyone offer a qualified explanation? Thanks

@AJR so this happened yesterday....I got a boneless leg of lamb marinating in my fridge outside for two days that I’m planning on cooking on the spit in my KK on Sunday when my wife’s good friend from LA is driving down with her aunt and husband I wake up at 3:30am and see the power is out...COOL! Let’s see how the battery performs. I took a few screenshots through the night, but the power was out 11 hours. I was able to be completely unaffected the whole time. AC ran, cars got charged, cooked breakfast on my electric stove, kids watched cartoons and all the food I bought and prepped in my fridge was unaffected.

Thanks Tony. If that picture is of your rotisserie chicken, they must grow them differently where you are! 😁 I expect a delta. Absolutely. But I didn't expect that much of a difference. Maybe 10-15 degrees. I don't know why I haven't dug into it before. Good shout on the cork to isolate the heat effect of the grate. I ordered myself a Fireboard 2 on Saturday. I haven't had any new toys in a while so I thought it was high time. I emailed Meater to ask directly - I expect they'll give me a link to the FAQ and a pat on the head. Who knows.

Ta! It was. I opened the fridge this morning to find that there were a lot more leftovers than I thought! Good start to the week.

That cheese! Looks delicious.

Looks and sounds delicious.

Sort of aioli meets chimichurri.

That looks great, thanks for posting.

ORDER CONFIRMED !!!! 😀👌🎉🍺

Works for me @tekobo I didn't really understand what I was doing when I signed up - so now I am "Sir Bill"