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It's here! Although, as always- life is never simple; despite telling them I wouldn't be home between 11am-12pm- they of course came at 11:30am! So I was juggling being at the vet; pouring rain; home-schooling two kids during our current Melbourne lock-down; all while a delivery driver idled outside my driveway with a 600kg crate. Nevertheless- part 1 is a success. A big box in my garage...

@tekobo here is the ceviche recipe that I use. This is real Peruvian de iced however I use aji amarillo as my pepper of choice. I can only get them in jars, but I’m trying to grow fresh aji Marino in the garden. You could use some of that aji amarillo paste I sent you and it would work just fine. Note you can use any fresh fish, they had local trout there I use local halibut at home wgen my wife and I went to Manchu Pichu we stayed at this really nice hotel in the town below Machu Pichu, Agua Calientes. The hotel had a restaurant called Sumac and they offered a complimentary 30 minutes arrival gift/class to show you how to make a proper Pisco Sour and Peruvian ceviche. This little pamphlet/flyer was the leave behind that I still keep to this day 7 years later note later that night we are at their restaurant and I had the best Lomo Saltado (my favorite Peruvian dish) that I’ve ever had in my life. I was asking the waiter so many questions about how the chef made the sauce that the chef invited me and my wife back into the kitchen (had us put hairnets and everything) and he showed me how he made it and I took two videos of his entire process (board isn’t letting me upload) needless to say that stay at that hotel really shaped my culinary life

You can always count on me to bring the level of conversation down a notch around here

When you open the lid there is a big inflow of oxygen in to the KK. If there is a large quantity of charcoal burning, and you feed that large quantity with O2, your temp will go up some. For a low temp cook, be sure to only light a small amount of charcoal to start. Lighting a large amount of charcoal and trying to keep the temps down with small vent settings won't work.

Hopefully find an hour or two in the evenings once kids are in bed to start taking off packaging and dismantling top of crate etc. over the next few nights. Builder going to pop by Friday afternoon/ Saturday morning to sure up/ check deck and help ramp it into place...

Hello, I bought a ThermoWorks Billow to use with my KK. I know, I know, you don’t need that...... For those that enjoy sleep and peace of mind on overnight cooks, check out my video. If you buy one of these, the $3 accessory is a must.

Second. Over the years I owned various top-of-the-line FoodSaver external clamp vacuum sealers. They're a classic business model: Average quality, extraordinary customer service for casual users. If you look at their prices as warranty period rentals, and their machines meet one's casual needs, fine. I also owned several best-of-category external clamp vacuum sealers, an Italian brand no longer made that I deliberately chose over the Weston models. Somehow Weston gear reminds me of survivalists; it certainly looks more like it was built in someone's garage. I believe that they work well. I don't have direct experience to make the comparison, but were I choosing now in this category I'd probably go with the Cabela's Commercial-Grade Vacuum Sealer. One huge advantage of an external clamp vacuum sealer is that the bag size is only restricted by width, not length. For a whole brisket that matters. Another advantage is hot liquids, if one can avoid destroying the machine. Hot liquids will come to a boil and ruin the pump on an air pump chamber machine. With an oil pump chamber machine one can change the oil. Still, better to remember to only use chamber machines on cold food. I can't conceive of going back to an external clamp vacuum sealer, after owning a basic chamber vacuum machine. It's like going from an "egg beater" hand drill to a good cordless power drill. I own a VacMaster VP115 and VP120 (for two kitchens), both replaced by newer models. What held me back from the oil pump models was the weight more than price; I'd go with an oil pump next time, and consider other brands. An external clamp machine might drop air pressure by 10% (that's being generous), enough to get the bag to clutch the contents. A chamber machine drops air pressure by at least 80% (and this is for low end models). Scale matters. One can add steam while baking bread by spritzing in 10g with a plant spritzer, or one can boil off 300g of water, displacing the oven atmosphere several times over, using 30 lbs of metal as thermal mass. Scale matters. The pandemic has converted friends to chamber machines, as they stockpile hard-to-obtain foods in their freezer. We have a large chest freezer. At this point it's scary to see a textured clamp bag, because that dates it as too old to conceive of eating. However, in the transition we observed that chamber vacuum sealed foods kept much longer than external clamp vacuum sealed foods. After a year or two the textured bags look like they'd been put away in Saran wrap, and we'd discard them without checking the date. After four years a chamber vacuum sealed bag looks like it was frozen yesterday, unless it developed a leak by banging around. Sometimes we discard them because we've lost our nerve. When we use meats frozen this long, they're a bit subdued but fine. I'm reminded of a story I heard as a kid of a fancy dinner where 30,000 year old mammoth meat was served, found in a glacier. It tasted like mud. But that's 30,000 years stored in a glacier without proper dressing, not four years in a chest freezer. Chamber bags are much less expensive that the textured external clamp bags, though it doesn't seem so for initial stocks as one tends to buy 500 at a time. One can always cut longer bags, and one does need some slack so the part of the bag that seals isn't under tension. I strongly recommend 4 mil bags over 3 mil bags. One can also buy bone protectors to prevent leaks, or just make them as needed from smaller bags. Once one has chamber bags, spend the $30 on an impulse sealer, for sealing wet mixtures and liquids, a challenge for any vacuum sealer. One doesn't need a vacuum for liquids, the liquids do the work! I routinely burp the bubbles out of a 500ml (6" x 10") bag of chicken stock, by sliding the bag along a counter edge till it gloms tight, then seal. Impulse sealers need a dry run to warm up. I'll put up 16 bags of chicken stock at a time, to freeze for routine use. If I want less stock, for a French sauce or a Chinese stir fry, I'll thaw the bag in a sous vide bath, nick the corner, pour out what I need, and reseal using the impulse sealer.

VacMaster VP215 Chamber Vacuum Sealing Machine Incredible machine. Expensive, but we're buying the best grills, right? We've had ours for nearly a year now and we wish we had purchased one sooner. Lisa Bilotta owns Vacuum Sealers Unlimited, and she has great customer service and fair prices. Highly recommend! https://vacuumsealersunlimited.com/shop/commercial-chamber-vacuum-sealing-machines-accessories-parts/vacmaster-commercial-vacuum-sealing-machines/vacmaster-vp215-chamber-vacuum-sealing-machine/

Check out the BBQ Guru. It was probably the 1st one of its kind. I've owned mine for over 10 years. Works great. Has the damper built right into it - a must have. It a 10 cfm fan, which is more than plenty of air for a heat-soaked KK.

Awesome remi! Delivery drivers have a great habit of coming just as you pop out for a few minutes hey! When will you get time to uncrate it?

@tekoboi use quite a bit more lime juice than the recipe also for serving/hosting purposes I cut up the onions and add all the ingredients except fish an hour or two before guests arrive. Refrigerate it and let everything soak and take on flavor 15-30 minutes before you want to serve freeze fish so it gets harder but not frozen, then cut fish into cube pieces, mix together and serve. I also cooked my corn on the KK during the time I had the mixture in the fridge so I could get some smokiness going and then kept the KK going to cook the octopus one day and the salmon the other. It was a nice treat having smoky corn in the ceviche and I cooked it in the husk

Sounds like a great experience! Definitely a recipe for me to try soon. Looking forward to it!

In my experience all temp controllers with the exception of the SmoBot work on the same fan on off principal. The issue with the Billows is the volume of air: 46CFM, that’s a lot vs other controllers which could be 1/4 of the volume. Add that to the fact the Kk does not require much airflow and it presents a challenge. Add the $3 damper accessory and voila, problem solved. I know some have returned these, when all they needed was a $3 accessory to make it work perfectly.

And I would bet my bottom dollar that you wouldn't say that. 🤪

I knew you'd say that.

@Tekobo, I love the look of that burger.

The brisket burger turned out great. After seven hours cooking I finally gave in and wrapped it. Came out looking mighty fine. No smoke ring but I only used a handful of pellets in the smoke pot. Remind me NOT to try to be fancy by laying my brisket in two different directions. Of course it was difficult to eat. The home made kimchi seemed a fitting accompaniment to the Wagyu. Today we will be eating the left overs with Nigerian jollof rice and fried plantains. Just the right size of brisket for two.

Got to play with my new toy tonight - Easy Kabob. Just ran across it on YouTube and thought WTF, let's see if it actually works as well as in the videos. Cut to the chase - It Does! The tricks are a bit obvious - keep the meat cold and don't make it too wet/sloppy. Mixed up a 50/50 batch of ground beef (90/10) and ground lamb, with some basic seasonings. Stuffed it into the gadget and ran the skewer through it. Works as advertised. Ignore the blobs at the ends of the skewers, that was just me slapping on the leftover meat onto the ends. The nice even part was made by the Easy Kabob. On the main grate at 325F, direct. No smoking woods. Short cook. Plated with rice pilaf and served on Trader Joe's Naan with homemade tzadiki sauce. Side Greek salad. My favorite hot weather (it's in the upper 80s here - insane for this early!) wine - Vinho Verde.

Make sure your draft doors haven’t worked open.. otherwise it’s possible you lit too much coal. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have found it works best to disassemble the unit and soak it in Powdered Brewers Wash overnight. Others may differ on the need for complete disassembly, but it doesn't take long and the wood chips or pellets are resinous so I like to get the residue knocked down before it gets stuck.