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The Italians make a mean roast beef. They call it Rosbif and it is cooked rare or medium rare, cooled and sliced thinly on a meat slicer. I ran into problems on my last visit to Italy when I asked a friend for his recommendation for the best rosbif in town. He took me to a horse butcher and could not understand why I thought it was funny that the "bif" in rosbif didn't mean beef but just any meat that Italians think is tasty when roasted rare! We are back home in the UK and I want to roast a couple of veal joints for a party tomorrow. Heston Blumenthal has a recipe for slow roasting beef in a 60C degree oven for about 6 hours until it hits 55C internal temperature. I have made it a few times and it gives you an edge to edge consistent pink meat. Today I had two joints and I decided that it would be easier and more energy efficient to achieve the same effect in my sousvide water bath. Here are the two joints. I seared them on a very very hot griddle and managed to avoid greying too much of the meat. Here is the first one seasoned and ready to be vacuum packed and go into the water bath. I decided to try cooking the second joint in the KK, knowing that it would be tough to keep the temp as low as 60C consistently. I used fresh cocoshell briquettes to reduce the chance of any hotspots and I put my cast iron smoker pot over the coals to shield the meat. I thought I would get a little smoke but it turns out there is just not enough heat to get the woodchips going. Here is the KK joint all wired up to the MEATER block. The problem I now have is with connectivity. The good news is that the MEATER seems to be staying connected to the thermometers and so my job is narrowed down to trying to bump up the wifi signal to that corner of the garden. When I last connected up the KK was at 80C so I dialled the top hat down just a little to avoid snuffing out the fire. I will report back tomorrow when I have both joints sliced for the taste test.

My New Preferred KK Smoking Technique On Long Cooks: Using the Half-Basket Splitter, I now bury one wood split under 12-14 pieces of CocoChar (that's all it ever takes for a 12-16 hour smoke!😲) and once the CocoChar's ignited and burning good I just place one larger wood split right on top of the stack. It may seem unorthodox, but I've done this "numerous" times now on my Ultimate 23" and the result consistently rivals any "Offset" smoked beef or pork I've "ever" had-and I've had A LOT, lol-with none of the "constant fire management" headaches of an Offset... Once temps locked in (rock solid 250 degrees for 12 hours no problem using the "pinhole" intake opening and top exhaust barely open, so there's almost no airflow required) it seems the KK really is burning just the wood splits for it's main fuel source (like an Offset) because the smoking wood is all but gone at the end but a surprising amount of "useable" CocoChar always remains, end result being that "OMG" deep, clean and delicious "Offset Smokey" flavor and bark I love without the smoke being overpowering at all...BTW: I also no longer wait for my smoke to go "completely" clean to put on the proteins (see "Jirby" of Goldee's BBQ on youtube) but just when it's starting to go opaque and smelling great (the smoke goes fully clean and near invisible translucent blue after about 45min to 1 hour like clockwork on the KK every time.)😊 Hope someone else tries this method on their KK, love some feedback-and to make sure I'm not crazy, lol!👍🙏😊

I have a pork butt in my refrigerator that needs to go on in the next day or so. I recently sold my offset, to a "little" bigger one, so all I have now is my KK. I'm going to try a technique like yours on this pork butt to do a comparison. I'll report back.

Thanks, smoke flavor is subjective indeed👍, now obviously I wouldn't suggest anyone try this method on a short cook of a few hours-just bury a nice sized chunk or two under your charcoal and you'll get what you need-but having done quite a bit of experimentation for my long "10+ hour" KK cooks (brisket, beef dino-ribs or pork butts), I simply love the deep, smokey offset flavor I get every time using this smoking technique-and my family and my grilling buddies at work who keep eating it do too, lol.🙏😊

That's a lot wood moebutt, I've seen others use more, well in other cookers and with different meats. I've always sat back on someone else's interpretation of how much wood should be introduced into the fire. Alot of smoke will create additional color and that's good, it creates flavor, but that's subjective. It may be like me saying I'm going to add 10% more alcohol to my gas to get better results in my car, it may or may not work. I like it though, more smoke to me means better BBQ if done right. In a slow KK smoke is either a friend or an enemy, I do subscribe to your thought, I have thrown chunks on here and there and waited until the smoke clears. I have to agree, playing center field you have to cover a lot of space. Great cook

Can’t wait to hear about the results 😁

I follow Kent Rollins, he's a good piece of work and so I followed his lead here. Simple and easy, simple to change out and spot on for end results. I did deviate from his original plan though. Having no charcoal briquettes and only charcoal logs it took some work to chop them down to use. He pictured a trivet he used to support the Lodge DOven but I didn't have one, the only thing available were some broken ends of bricks and they were perfectky fine using them to support the three legs, just make sure your batter lays level in the pot or you'll have too much on one side. The rest from there on in is fun games of moving and placing the coals and switching/turning the lid, I never changed out the base as was recommended, it was too difficult from the elevated brick stand. The whole cook is easy, it's slow, take a peek now and then. Time it out for guests just for dessert with all those dirty coals sitting on the lid or cook it in the KK and make it a clean presentation . Anyhow it sits and stays warm for quite a while, and if you think it's too much sugar and you got a notion to trim her down I'm sure it'll work

Sunday dinner. Pickled schrimp as a starter, main course Sirloin steak, home fries, broccoli, spaghetti squash, garden fresh tomatoes in a light greek, with peach, blackberry cobbler for dessert cooked with coals in the Lodge dutch oven.