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@tekobo Tyler Shepherd Contributor Grilling, or cooking food over coals or an open flame, is most likely the very first cooking method invented by humans and is the most universal, with the barbecue – both the food and the social event – being a staple of almost all cultures. While it seems incredibly simple, grilling enthusiasts know that a lot of care and attention is needed to create a well-grilled dish. The equipment also plays a huge role in this, and two pieces of meat smoked or roasted on different types of grills will produce equally different results. Over the past few decades, the kamado, a Japanese-style earthenware cooking vessel, has become popular among grill geeks, thanks to its ability to retain heat within and give cooks a great degree of control over the temperature, which is important to get the best results in food. Unlike a metal grill that radiates heat, effectively wasting it, a kamado, also known as a ceramic grill, keeps the heat inside, making it more fuel-efficient, which is great for ‘low and slow’ cooking that can take around 12-15 hours. Introduced to the West by US servicemen after World War II, Kamado cooking has gained a cult following around the world for its ability to create some of the best grilled, roasted, smoked, and baked food one can find. There are many brands of kamado grills on the market, but they are not created equal. Komodo Kamado is one of those brands that have been hailed as the best kamado grills out there. A Komodo Kamado isn’t a glazed pot Kamado like the others. Founder and designer Dennis Linkletter describes it as an overbuilt and overengineered refractory grill, smoker, and oven. Available in eight sizes, including the most recently launched 38-inch Goldilocks, Komodo Kamados range from tabletop cookers to full-size outdoor grills. The hot face is 1.25 inches thick and made from high alumina refractory cement, which is used by industries to contain molten metals and glass. It is then further insulated by a 1-inch layer of vermiculite and silica, coated with waterproof acrylic insulation with nano-ceramic spheres. According to Linkletter, the Komodo Kamado’s insulation is so efficient that it can be used effectively outdoors in below-zero temperatures. Aside from heat retention, the Komodo Kamado’s design allows cooks to accurately control airflow, which makes controlling temperatures effortless even for a novice, and of course better food. “Charcoal always burns at the maximum volume for the allowed airflow,” Linkletter says. “If you can burn less fuel, you will have less airflow and less evaporation, which creates foods with more retained moisture, which is the Holy Grail of low and slow cooking. Not only are you preventing the meat from drying out, but, when charcoal burns there's a vapor that's released which imparts the food with the smoky flavor everyone loves. The charcoal smoke flavored vapor is transferred to the meat via condensation, more retention time gives the vapor more opportunity to condense on the food.” Komodo Kamado’s name isn’t just a clever alliteration. It is manufactured in Indonesia, where Linkletter has lived for more than 35 years. It is named after the Indonesian volcanic island of Komodo, which is the habitat of the famous Komodo Dragon, the world’s largest lizard. Linkletter, whose father Jack Linkletter, and grandfather Art Linkletter were well-known TV personalities, first visited Bali when he was 18 years old, and he fell in love with the island. In the 1980s, he moved to Indonesia and entered the teak flooring and furniture business. His hand-hewn/distressed teak flooring and doors are featured in luxury hotels, homes, and retail establishments worldwide. Today, he resides in Bali with his wife and their two children. In 2003, Linkletter learned about kamado grills and decided he could build a better mouse trap. At the time, the internet was abuzz about how awesome kamado grills are, so Linkletter began designing a better version, capitalizing on the strengths and correcting the flaws. This resulted in Komodo Kamado, which revolutionized kamado cooking via its top-notch materials, design, engineering, and performance. To this day, Linkletter is actively involved in running the business, overseeing production, designing new models, and talking to clients on the phone, as well as grooming his son Dexter to eventually take over the business. “For more than 20 years, I’ve been continuously fine-tuning the design of the Komodo Kamado,” Linkletter says. “By overbuilding and overengineering our grills, they will last long enough for our customers to pass it on to their children. While a Komodo Kamado costs much more than the average Kamado grill, its unusually high build quality and durability give it unparalleled value, as evidenced by our customers’ word-of-mouth referrals, and numerous excellent reviews.”

My brother got a pic of the finished pig just before we started serving it.

I made duck and bread this weekend, forgot to take a single pic of the duck 🫣 It was my lady friends brithday so i made her favorite meal of duck breast served on a board with fruit cheese and olives. And marbled rye, at least i took pics of that before getting distracted lol

Well, I have had a KK since 2007 I think.. bought a bbq guru back then, and yeas back bought the newer digital one.. I always put the product on in a cold freshly lit KK, and then brought it all up to temp and smoked away. Havent used it awhile and thinking of buying the smoke generator, which would take up my bbq guru port.. So thought, why not try a pork butt, after heat sinking it first. So decided to try 230 degrees f for 16 hours. Started it around 2 pm, and got It up to temp,, Had to light more charcoal as I didnt light enough the first time, no big deal. It was soon up to temp. Put the butt on and kept an eye on it, had to make some minor adjustments but was trying not to chase the monkey making too many adjustments. Things went well! Went to bed at 10pm, internal was 170, life good. Woke up at 6. Pit was 140, internal 190 (was shooting for 204 or so). No idea why the fire went out. .Had no time to redo it.. So pulled it, let it rest, shredded it, bagged it.. called it a day.. It was really dry. I have done stacks of these.. First time it was dry like that. Anyway took it to the small event, put it in a crockpot to reheat, ended up dumping a can of chicken broth in with it, and that brought it back to life. People were raving.. I wasn't LOL. No idea after that many hours of stability, what went wrong. So today was going to try with a rack of ribs. opened the KK and pulled the racks and the piece of foil I used as a deflector last cook. guess what? I ran out of charcoal ! LOL.. DUH! There is a reason your fire might die! LOL.. Lesson learned!

Pig looks great !!!! I just cant cook them with the head on, i don't like my food looking back at me lol

The advent of wireless thermometers seems to have led to some new ideas about what is going on around food as it cooks. There is a body of thought that claims there is a cloud of cooler temperatures around the food as a result of internal moisture moving to the surface and evaporating. The effect is also said to be the mechanism that causes the stall in low & slow. It makes sense to me, and is consistent with my experience. The logging features of these new thermometers and controllers make for a lot of fun watching what is going on throughout the KK. @skoell is correct, things vary considerably while it is warming up. That pan of handsome potatoes probably had some effect as well.

If y'all will recall, I did a practice run on an open fire rotisseried pig last April. After watching way too much Weather Channel and other weather-related TV to see what Debby was going to do, we had a beautiful but hot day here in North Carolina Saturday for the real run. We applied all the lessons learned from the practice pig and had a very smooth cook with an 89 pound pig, plus some chickens spinning on strings (shoulda done a practice chicken as well since the pig was done right on time but the chickens were a bit late). I got busy and neglected to get pics of the completed pig and chickens, but here are some in-process pics and videos. I couldn't really taste the meat due to some sinus congestion and smoke inhalation, but others said both were very tasty. PXL_20240810_135637245.TS.mp4 PXL_20240810_151439073.TS.mp4 PXL_20240810_170033718.TS.mp4

How much charcoal are you using at a time? I always start with a full basket and have never run out of fuel during a cook. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Two Tri-tips on the Santa Maria and homemade Porter Road recipe of garlic/parsley sausages on the offset. You'll notice one pic will show a fire basket on the offset, I always had trouble on this pit maintaining a clean and steady fire with the flat piece the manufacturer provided. Knowing other companies were making specially designed baskets for their fire boxes I chose to design my own to scale to fit the configuration of my box. This piece allows me to maintain a steady coal bed by concentrating the coals to the narrow base, this helps for a clean and continuous fire from 150-300 degrees. With this unit, it allows me to smoke sausages at lower temp as you would in a custom smoke house without the risk of your fire coal bed disappearing. Made of 1/4" steel with a 3/8" base plate. You know I could've cooked the Tri-tip on the KK however after finally catching a break in the weather after two weeks of hot and humid it was welcome to play with the other toys. Alls well that went well.

IMG_6449.MOV My brother took a few more pics and videos from our cookout, including some of the chickens. @C6Bill, the meat market offered to cut off the head and feet but we initially left then on for presentation (plus I have some kin who like the tongue and there's a surprising amount of meat on the head), but we ended up cutting the feet off - we had the pig's spine secured to the spit before realizing we hadn't accounted for the hind legs when centering it on the spit. PXL_20240810_170033718.TS.mp4 IMG_6449.MOV IMG_6453.MOV

OK, Email to customer service has been sent.

Two tips on using the Guru probe to monitor grate temps - first, don't clip the probe directly to the grate - you're getting heat condution from the rods and aren't measuring true air temperature. I use an old wine cork with a screw in it to clip the alligator clip to. I trim the cork on the bottom to snuggly fit between the grate rods. The second tip - akin to what @wrandyr noted, you don't want the probe too close to the meat. A couple of grate rods away (several inches) is sufficient to measure the air temperature around the meat without worrying about being "in the shadow." For the MEATER probe, don't insert it beyond the scribed line on the probe. Again, otherwise the air probe at the tip could be "shadowed" by the meat. Another, unrelated tip about MEATER probes - while they're absolutely perfect for doing rotisserie cooks, be careful to insert the probe as close to parallel to the rotation as you can, preferably in the end of the meat. Why, you might ask? Well, I actually had this happen to me on a rotisserie cook where I stuck the probe in perpendicular to the meat surface. When it rotated, juices ran down the probe shaft and were getting cooked onto the tip of the probe. I only noticed it when the MEATER app warned me of a temperature drop. When I went out to check things, I noticed that there was a big blob of crusted material on the end of the probe, which was effectively insulation. When I wiped that off, the temperature reading went back to "normal."

Thanks @C6Bill Great article and I learned something new. I didn't know about the link with the Komodo mountain. And what great publicity for the new Goldilocks!

Great job with that pig @jeffshoaf! You are much braver than I would ever be - live fire rotisserie takes some skill. Bravo.

The non-uniform cobalt blue pebbles, how Dennis calls them, are beautiful, yes. Ever since @Tyrus mentioned the similarity to waves of water, I can't stop looking at that grill and seeing the ocean 😁 We, my wife and I, actually decided for these pebbles because Dennis mentioned he probably will not have these again. The non-uniformity, the light blue pieces, seem to have been a manufacturing error... Next year the 42" will be in bronze tiles. I think. 😁😁😁

So apart from roasting beetroot in the coals (recipe said give them two hours but they were more charred than my charcoal after one hour) I had an immensely satisfying first foray. The cold smoker was used with apple chips. I did discover a huge difference between the lid thermometer and the ambient temp at the height of the rotisserie spit. The KK was reading 200C but the Meater 2 plus was detecting 143C. I think a little higher temp next time might help the skin crisp a little more but my wife described it as the most chickeny tasting chicken she had ever eaten. The bracket the rotisserie motor attaches to needs a little tweak so it is perpendicular to the spit, plus I’ll have to find a way to stop the engine slipping so far down on the bracket. So this will involve bending the bracket a little more and attaching something to control the height of the motor. Otherwise it was just perfect, easy temperature control and adjustment and the sourdough loaf came out brilliantly too. As a child my parents had a simple rotisserie grill and a childhood favourite meal was “round and round chicken”. Today felt like this memory got elevated to a ridiculous level. At what temperature post cook is it safe to place the cover on the KK?

I remembered that a Prime rib was lurking in the freezer and it's presence was brought to my attention inadvertently by Syzygies suggestion of sous viding large pieces for long time. Seriously I had forgotten I owned a sous vide, it's been a while...so I dug it out of hiding. The roast was aprox. 5lbs, 4 1/2 after trim, double bagged, injected, salted and rubbed then placed inside the water for 15 hours at 132 degrees. Always double bag, if one has a weak defective seam you'll be glad you did. Now I would have done my searing on the KK, but 6 months ago the Weber Summit grill I own seared my eyebrows during this process in a backdraft incident...this was payback/revenge, getting even and clearing the slate. The process went well without incident and the rest is picture history. If you notice in pics there's a green labeled container of Japanese BBQ sauce, if you can find it in your area or on Amazon I would recommend it with red meat as a marinate or as a side...it's pretty good. All I can add to Sous Vide cooking is that it's such a cheat.

My lady friend wanted toast for the weekend, and didn't specify flavor so Cranberry, Cinnamon and Honey it is

catalan dinner

Fired up one side of the big grill for a big ribeye that was dry aged for 50 days, shrimp, and a foil packet of diced taters for today's supper, plus a couple of pork chops for later in the week, all grilled over hickory and a bit of oak. Steak was nice and tender and supper was very tasty!

last few meals in japan and korea… fugu (poison tiger puffer fish) and fugu shirako (the white reproductive organs or basically the sperm of the male fugu) both tasteless and expensive.. shabu shabu with some of the best beef from Kobe. again, tasteless and expensive… a little river fish from a tempura lunch. i love how they present these.. and back to seoul… soy sauce marinated raw crab packed with roe. delicious and rarely served in US koreatowns. i don’t think they can get this species of crab. closest would be maryland blue, but not really… a rather famous myeongdong beef brisket and tripe stew. a bowl costs around $20 US. i guess you can say its priced to match current economic conditions in seoul. wonderful taste like a clear consommé and a midday snack. i don’t know what this is. but it was delicious..🤤 and some comic relief..

i'm in seoul. again. eating sashimi, but it's different here. i think they cut with the grain because korean sashimi is always chewier than japanese. anyway.. if you order live fish from the tank. not only will you get the sashimi, but you get the head and bones served to you as a broth at the end of the meal. same with the flower shrimp sashimi. you will get the shrimp on ice, but the heads are deep fried. nothing gets wasted. you get exactly what you pay for. i also ate 감자탕, Gamjatang.(no picture) which is just pork back bone soup. it's basically bones stewe which has a little meat and cartilage you nibble on. this is the only dish they serve at this restaurant. we walked in and they just asked us "small or medium?" there was a 20 minute queue for this joint... i don't think this place would work in the US...