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A fun / learning rotisserie cook.............................. Bought a cheap cut of beef roast at Sam's Club. Dry rubbed it with Montreal Steak Seasoning and let it rest for 24 hours in the refrigerator. Here it is on the spit ready to go with ckreef's drip plate below it: Brought the KK up to 350*F with a little left over cherry wood in the mix. Didn't really time the cook but started checking internal temp about 45 minutes after it reached cooking temp. Pulled it when it reached an IT of 130- 135*F. Here is the roast fresh off the grill (didn't get the color I hoped for...will try a direct cook with no drip tray next time). Decent internal color and very juicy. Wasn't too bad for a cheap cut of meat. Here was Mac's view while spinning away.................looking down the the creek, heading out to the lake, just around the bend.

That is absolutely a Kamado from Richard, perhaps Sacramento. My first Kamado looked like this, till the tiles fell off. The less you know about its provenance (cough! cough!), or its common acronym (POSK) the better. It is cheaply made, but worth rescuing if there are no major cracks. Take apart the top hat, buy matching stainless steel bolts and nuts, and use them to retrain, clean and (food-safe) oil the threads, or you'll lose the top hat when it gets stuck. I could have bought an early KK instead of that Kamado. I mistook the KK for a copy, a Manfred Mann version of Quinn the Eskimo, even though Dylan's original was wretched. As I understood it, some workers at the prosperous teak flooring enterprise that Dennis owns in Bali came to him, some lowlife had abandoned the workers at a tiny ceramic cooker factory down the street, when said lowlife got into some sort of trouble. Relocate, a lifelong pattern. Dennis said hey, that sounds cool, took over the factory so the workers could continue feeding their families, and got very interested in redesigning the cookers. This is at least the KK origin myth that some of us understand. The part I'm sure of is that Dennis is a very good person. I know far more than I wish I did about restoring said Kamado, ask questions as you proceed. People make old cars into barbecue pits, you can certainly contain a fire in this artifact. If you value your time, buy a Komodo Kamado.

These two grills were used at Steven Raichlen's BBQ University earlier this month. The University is two 3-day sessions.. so I'm guessing 6 cooks on each. The 23" Ultimate is Cobalt Blue and has the new SS and teak side tables The 32" Bad Boy is Vibrant blue and has the original teak side tables They are at the Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Give me a call let's make a deal

I plan on using the CoCo Char! After that, do you have any ideas on how to convince my wife that I need a thousand bucks' worth of charcoal that is delivered on a pallet? Jim

I did a Google Image search for "Komodo Kamado basket splitter" and one of the results pointed towards this thread from @wilburpan You can see how he set up the splitter here. http://komodokamadoforum.com/topic/5415-rotisserie-chicken-on-smaug/#comment-51385

Thanks to all of you for the tips! I couldn't get onto the forum site yesterday, so sorry I couldn't respond. I will be doing an overnight smoke Sunday into Monday, the Fourth, and I think that I have a plan. I will use Dennis' extruded coconut stuff, or perhaps Big Green Egg (can't find Royal Oak lumps around here yet). I will throw away my Cowboy charcoal, which seems to have a "bad smoke" problem, at least in my hands. Instead of just dumping the stuff into my charcoal basket, I will sort through the bag and build a pile, starting with the large lumps at the bottom. Then (and this I keep going back and forth on) I will start a small fire in my charcoal chimney, wait for it to be really going, then dump it on the unlit charcoal in the basket. The tips on just opening the top enough to feel hot air coming out, and partially shutting the damper on the fan on my CyberQ will be very helpful! Oh, this will be a nice shoulder, and photos will be forthcoming. I am somewhat of a legend in my family for shoulders smoked overnight in my pellet (Cookshack) smoker, so hope I can live up to the hype! Again, thanks to ALL for their help and encouragement! Jim

I started with Steven Raichlen's recipe and substituted Honey for Molasses and chipotle for hot sauce 1 cup ketchup 1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar 1/4 cup bourbon 3 tablespoons cider vinegar, or more as needed 3 tablespoons honey 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard 1 1/2 teaspoons liquid smoke 1 teaspoon chipotle pepper 1/2 teaspoon onion powder 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper Step 1: Combine the ketchup, brown sugar, bourbon, cider vinegar, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, liquid smoke, hot sauce, onion powder, garlic powder, and pepper in a nonreactive saucepan and whisk to mix. Step 2: Gradually bring the sauce to a simmer over medium heat and let simmer until thick and flavorful, 8 to 10 minutes. Taste for seasoning, adding more cider vinegar if necessary; the sauce should be highly seasoned. Transfer the sauce to a bowl or clean jars and let cool to room temperature. Refrigerate the sauce, covered, until serving time; let it return to room temperature before using. The sauce can be refrigerated for several weeks.

Updated post #2 to complete the tutorial. I hope you have a decent high speed connection - LOL Reef's Bistro

If restorations are something you enjoy, then maybe, just maybe consider it. It is definitely an RJ posk, and not a Komodo Kamado. That said, I agree, buy a KK. Rob

I have three baking steels from http://www.bakingsteel.com/, several baking stones from https://bakingstone.com/, a baking bong from http://www.bakingbong.com, and a KK baking stone. These are spread over two coasts and friend's kitchens. For bread, I tried a rectangular kiln shelf, but it had the wrong thermal properties. I had a baking stone cut to match, and I now stack them in my KK for bread. For pizza, I prefer a baking steel. It's hard to make apples-to-apples comparisons here, as one adapts to each stone. From a reclusive childhood playing chess with myself, I've learned to be fair, giving each option a chance. The technique nevertheless needs to adapt to the stone.

CC, I can tell you I prefer the KK baking stone on the KK but for the kitchen oven I do like the Baking Steel it does an awesome job there. I think it would do a fantastic job on the KK for smashed burgers but in my experience not so much for a pizza and I definitely would do bread on the KK baking stone hands down.

I bet so. We can't wait for those pictures!

Your not alone. If my wife finds out how much my 2 KK'S cost, I'M DEAD!!! Good thing I bought them during the 2 for 1 sale...lol.

One of the nice things about a Komodo Kamado is that it comes ready for a rotisserie. All you need is the motor and the rotisserie basket. I’ve cooked a whole chicken on Smaug before, and it was great, but I thought it was time to try out the rotisserie function. Here’s the rotisserie basket. The two forks hold the food on by grabbing the outside of the food, as opposed to the rotisserie forks that pierce the food. There’s a lot of flexibility in how I can place the forks, as they can be attached to either one of the outside rods on the rotisserie basket. Here I have one fork on each outside rod, but I can put both fork on the same rod, and the forks can be individually rotated to fit the food exactly. This is how the rotisserie looks mounted on the grill. There’s a drive bearing built into the right side of the grill, which is how the motor couples to the rotisserie basket, and another bearing built into the left side of the grill that holds the other end of the rotisserie rod. I set up the charcoal basket with the divider, so that the chicken would receive direct heat on one side and indirect heat on the other as it rotated. This is how the charcoal basket looks with the divider in place. The charcoal will go on the left side of the basket. This is how the basket looks loaded with charcoal. I’m aligning the splitter in line with the main shaft of the rotisserie. You can also see the steel plate that blocks air from flowing past the burning charcoal, forcing all the air coming up from the bottom through the fire. This is more efficient than other systems that split the basket to create two zones within a kamado. So here’s our chicken. I picked it up from the Chinese grocery store. I love getting poultry there because it’s fresh, never frozen, and great quality. Plus, there’s the entertainment value of getting a chicken with the head and feet still on. I made a rub with 1 part salt, 1 part baking powder, 1 part ground black pepper, and 1 part poultry seasoning. The reason for the baking powder is that it helps crisp up the skin. I’ve used that trick for making wings, so I figured it would work for the whole chicken. I would have used 2 parts poultry seasoning, but I forgot that I had it and had already ground the black pepper. Oops. I dried off the chicken as much as possible with a paper towel, and then massaged the rub into the skin. Then I put it onto the rotisserie, and turned on the motor. Smaug was set at 350º. I cooked the chicken until the thigh meat hit 160ºF, which took about 45 minutes. Then I opened up all the vents to crisp up the skin. Ten minutes later, this was how it turned out. Those of you who are really observant will note that the chicken is positioned differently. That’s because after I started up the motor, I saw that the chicken was off balance, and I repositioned it. The wings and one leg also popped out during cooking, but (spoiler alert) this didn’t spoil the cooking at all. And the final result. Here’s a piece of thigh meat, along with some corn. The chicken turned out great. Both the white and dark meat were nicely done, and really moist. The skin was nicely flavored and crispy, even though I didn’t rub butter or oil onto the skin, which I’ve done before. We devoured the whole thing. No leftovers tonight, which is how I know the meal turned out good. I keep hearing how great spatchcocked chicken is. Based on my experience so far, I can’t really imagine how spatchcocked chicken can be that much better than cooking one whole. All in all, the KK rotisserie was flawless. Because the rotisserie unit is entirely contained within the grill, I don’t have to worry about how airtight Smaug was, which might be a concern with the design of aftermarket rotisserie units for other kamado grills which rely on the seal being tight between the upper lid and the rotisserie frame, and the bottom of the rotisserie frame and the lower shell of the grill. In addition, the KK rotisserie isn’t vaporware.