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I've always been surprised by how much moisture the skin carries and the difference that letting it sit out uncovered for 10-12 hours or so makes to the crispiness of the skin. I then pat dry with paper towel to ensure it is as dry as possible before it goes on the rotisserie. Then cook it at about 150°C. I find you get it much crispier if you have it directly over coal but you have to watch for flare ups and it makes a bit of a mess unless you put a container under the coals. I have been known to put foil at the bottom of the KK to make clean up less awful. It's a fabulous dish on the KK, particularly when you can impart some smoke from flavoured wood. This is what it should look like:

Grilled some chorizo and plated it with Mac & Cheese and a spinach side salad. Running out of this summer's tomatoes. Plated. Silk Chili and Zanzibar Black Pepper on the Mac and Cheese. Side salad.

Jman, some folks here are women.

Did a Porchetta on the KK last night with Apple and Pear wood. Came out fine but it was a bit fattier than I like. Served up with Sicilian Caponata as I got a bit carried away and bought a few too many aubergines at the local farm shop when I was there the other day. I just did a drive by on the dish while in the fridge (Caponata is superb cold as well) on the way to getting milk out for my morning coffee. Had to make myself stop at one large spoonful. Breakfast of champions! 😆

Well, boys and girls, lads and lassies, fellow cooks: I have my new BBQ Guru all set up for the first time and am doing some fabulous beef chuck ribs, using most post oak and a little cherry. So, we have some nice fresh, not frozen, beef chuck ribs to start with and the new BBQ Guru DynaQ is all ready to go to work. The Guru got set up in the 32" KK , which was loaded with lump charcoal and post oak chunks with a couple of chunks of cherry thrown in, just because. The ribs got slathered with some original Scott's BBQ sauce (mostly vinegar and red pepper, emulsified. Then medium coarse salt and coarse pepper was applied. I love the way the Guru is working, doing a great job keeping the KK pretty pretty close to it's 285* target. I do wish the Bluetooth was a little more robust, as my Iphone seems to lose contact if I go inside, which is only about maybe 50 feet and a wall between me and the Guru. The Ipad seems to be a little better connected- go figure. At this point (11:30AM) the ribs have been in a little more than 2 hours and I am a bit shocked that they seem to be cooking so fast- already at 170 or so on their way to 203*, and I had budgeted 8 hours or more for cook, as previous experience and recipes indicated. I don't expect a stall with beef ribs, but maybe it will happen. So stay tuned, folks, but I am loving the control that the Guru offers.

Looking forward to your photos of hanging meat and your taste test. Here I tried to smoke my most recent bacon using the @Syzygies smoke pot on my Argentinian bbq. The smoke pot performed well but, given I was trying to smoke bacon that was sitting on a shelf above the grill as opposed to inside a kamado, it didn't take on much smoke. Will just have to go with green (i.e. unsmoked) bacon this time around.

Hey Mac, nice plate. Made me think if you had a large contingent of Portuguese in your area. Not often you would see this ethnic food unless a number of cultural people were by to represent it. As you travel further west, the likelihood of coming across it diminishes. I prefer the Linguica over the chorizo, and as a matter of fact this morning I had Chorizo mixed with my scrambled...fancy that. Nothing like a Linguica sandwich on a toasted bun with yellow mustard. Sorry, talk too much,..

@tekobo yes this is the first time for bacon from the shoulder. I loved that bacon when I was in England but I never knew what cut of meat it was until recently. I’m wondering if I will have enough room to cold smoke 4 belies and 2 shoulders hanging in my 32. I’m hoping to find out by Wednesday. Fingers crossed.

My last bike got stolen which gave me the coin to buy Ora .I miss riding so looking at this tomorrow Sent from my SM-T835 using Tapatalk

And here we have a photo of progress at 3 PM, about six hours into the cook, and we are running around 193-195 range for each of the three racks. So I am estimating finishing around 4 or so. Perfect. I was earlier concerned that it was cooking so fast that I might finish too early, and I reset the Guru to 250*. Of course, it would have taken most of 90 minutes to fall that low from 285. Around 2:30 I popped the goal temp setting back to 285, concerned that I achieve a good bark. I am loving the Guru. Can't wait to do a brisket or a turkey.

Snuck in a cook yesterday before the weather takes a downward turn here for a couple of days. Sunny today, but super windy, with windchills hovering around the freezing mark. Flat iron steak on the lower grate, direct, coffee wood, post oak and mesquite chunks. Rubbed with Oakridge BBQ Carne Crosta and Santa Maria rubs (not mixed, each side got a different rub). Plated with 2x baked spud, shrooms, side salad and chimichurri.

I think he was including gentlewomen in there Mackenzie! 😀

So this is one of the last’s cooks that I will do on my Vision grill before my BB32 arrives and it got me to thinking that since this is an international group of people I think it is a good time to talk about very regional BBQ. I live in St. Louis Missouri here in the good ole USA and we have 3 food items that we are known for and started here. The most famous one is “toasted ravioli” which is ravioli dipped in egg wash then in bread crumbs and into 375 degree hot oil. Most people serve it with marinara sauce but I prefer it with drawn butter. Next on the list is something called “gooey butter cake” I don’t know how to describe this other than it was supposed to be a cake like dessert that was undercooked but they sold it anyway and it became this whole thing here. They are really good. Now to what we are all here for, BBQ! St. Louis is also famous for “pork steaks”. I have been eating these my entire life so it doesn’t occur to me that people outside of STL don’t know what these are. Simply put it is a pork butt cut into 3/4 inch steaks. Every store here has them so we don’t have to go to the butcher to get them but you probably will. I cannot recommend these enough. They need to be cut across the bone. So when you get these the bone should be in the middle of the steak. I do these indirect at 250 for about 2.5 hours. Put your favorite rub on them and flip them about half way through the cook. Most people will put sauce on them to finish but I don’t. i would love to see some of your local BBQ specialties.

That sounds pretty amazing. It's a pity about the view but sometimes you can't have everything....

I find it funny that you essentially cold smoked what we call here in Missouri Pork steaks. Most people in the US have never heard of them outside of the Midwest. Your topic was very cool.

@Braai-Q My recollection was a herb filling with rosemary and thyme being the strongest, but not overwhelming, flavours - the thing was the crackling which was divine and it was in a bread bun that was about 10 inches across with an apple sauce - just delicious. I believe although I ate this in Northern Italy this is a Roman dish. The other thing is where I was eating it .....

Like we tell new owners, who've never cooked on a similar grill before - Don't chase the temperatures! Once heat soaked at a specific temperature, it's very hard to lower the temperature again, given the mass of the KK. But, during initial heat ups, you can tweak it back down if you overshoot some (see note below). You'll just end up frustrated if you are constantly messing with the top vent opening to hit some magical target temperature. So, as you're doing, get a feel for the top vent settings (lower vent is not important as long as it's open to supply enough air to keep the fire going - which isn't much). Top vent settings are very repeatable, so make some notes to follow until you've gotten it down pat. You'll find that it doesn't take much movement of the top vent to see a noticeable change in temperature. Give the KK time to stabilize temperature before making any adjustment to watch the change. Also, part of the "Don't chase the temperatures" mantra - don't fret if you miss your target temperature by +/- 50F. All it means is that the cooking time will be a bit different is all. Your food will come out fine. You should be cooking to internal meat temperatures and not by time, anyway. Good luck with the burn-in and happy cooking!!

Hi there @Boom Boom. Is this your first time making bacon from the shoulder? I hope you like it. I love it. Good fat alongside the meaty goodness. I prefer cold smoked bacon. Here is a thread I posted about hot and cold smoking a while ago.

Excellent thinking. Do you remember the predominant flavour in the one you tried? In my experience, wild fennel or rosemary are the key ingredients (depending on region). You've got to use fresh Thyme as well, it makes a huge difference. It's one of those recipes that I tweak every time I do it and I think I have about 10 very good recipes that I've pulled elements from but I'm always interested in tweaks and variations. There are all sorts of nuances to the cook - like leaving the meat out overnight and drying the skin with paper towel to make sure it doesn't have any excess moisture. I bought mine from the butcher yesterday and while the flavour profile is good, I didn't have time to draw moisture from the skin sufficiently. The skin is more chewy plastic than crispy as a result.

Looks like a Ninja. If you like speed and the thrill it brings you got the right bike. Use to call those a pocket rocket. Not much room for the wife. If there's a sale down at the butchers....looks like you'll be first in line.

Tekobo, a friend of mine just turned me onto a facebook group called Makin' bacon and i actually have 2 shoulders curing now along with 43lbs of belly bacon. i have been curing and smoking my own bacon for a bout 5 years now. I got to the point that we were making 150lbs at a time and selling most of it. It became a little side business for me and allowed me to buy equipment and pay for that equipment with the bacon. Who knows, I might start doing it again. I'm looking forward to the cold smoker for this. We have only ever done hot smoking bringing it up to 145 internal temp but this FB group is all about cold smoking so I assume that I will be using the KK for this as well. I will need to see how the grates line up in the KK and I might get hooks to hang the bellies in the grill and use the cold smoker that we ordered. Do you hot or cold smoke your buckboard bacon? do you hang it or just smoke it on the grates?

Fat Bastard would have loved last night's baby back ribs - LOL! Indirect (there's that damn pesky thin sheet of aluminum foil again - ha, ha!), smoker pot of hickory and apple, 250F. Rubbed with Eat This & Sucklebusters Bamm. Plated with tots w/Green Crack, side salad and crusty bread.

Sooo. Update on my new KKs. They left Indonesia week before last as planned. I am told they will be loaded on the boat to the UK in Singapore on the 31st of this month and that they should be in the UK by the end of November. Looks like an early December arrival. No vessel name yet but excitement is mounting.

It's been awhile since I cooked something I thought was worth posting so I figured I'd share this one. Tuscan Tomato And Shrimp Soup with beans and spinach. A really easy soup which I've made many times in the past except this time I added grilled shrimp to give it a little something more. My best version to date. The base ingredients in the Dutch oven about to go on my 19" Komodo Kamado. After it simmered for awhile I grilled some Italian marinated shrimp on the 16" Komodo Kamado using a wok basket. When the soup was finishing up I added the spinach, shrimp and a dash or two of extra virgin olive oil. Dinner was served. A little fresh grated parmesan cheese and a slice of sour dough bread.