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I am very happy to finally be a member of Komodo Kamado family not just a jealous admirer. Found an unbelievable deal on a 3 year old KK 23" Ultimate a few weeks ago. After an 850 mile round trip from Albuquerque to Aspen and back , with my brothers help arrived home without a scratch. The KK was essentially new , most of the accessories and 2 of the grates had never been used. Maybe had been used 2 or 3 times total. Besides the KK 23 standard 3 grates , deflector , and charcoal basket it came with the following ; double bottom drip pan , two stainless side tables, baking stone , rib rack , charcoal basket splitter , stainless and teak grate grabbers , Sunbrella brown tweed cover , and finally 5 boxes each of CoCo Char and Coffee Char. Everything impeccable and spotlessly clean. $2500 for the whole package plus $500 for the trip ( hotel ,diesel , and food ) Total all in $3000 My first cook will be this weekend , have had a Kamado Joe for awhile , similar but different . Any advice , tips ,help ect... would be greatly appreciated. Planning on doing reverse sear 2 1/2" Prime Porterhouse steaks , with a board sauce , grilled Mexican street corn on the cob , and Hassleback potatoes. Will be doing something low and slow and pizza next week. I'll post pictures soon. Wish me luck.

I came across an interesting duck giblet sausage recipe the other day and, somehow, went from a small bag of goose giblets in the freezer to half a pig and two days of sausage making. Here we go... First soak your skins. The sheep's skins are thinnest but were actually the easiest to work with. Duck giblet sausage from the Pitt Cue Co book. I am guessing it is an Italian recipe given the fact that your "sausage" ends up being wrapped in the neck skin. My necks came skinless so I opted for chipolata style sausages. Colourful rub ingredients, including orange zest. Goose necks, giblets and chicken wings ready to go. Onto the KK in dairy cow fat. Smoked at 100C for three hours and then added hearts for two more hours and then livers for a further 20 minutes. I am a little squeamish about hearts so this was a good recipe for processing all the interesting bits of poultry. I know the idea of poultry necks will be daunting for some but just look how familiar the picked meat looks - you wouldn't know that that wasn't a (small) pile of pulled port, would you? It was very hard work to get the very stiff mix into chipolata skins but here are the resulting sausages, waiting for their debut. Think very skinny liver sausages with the added benefit of chopped pickled cherries. Here is the head of the lovely pig that gave up his/her life for the rest of the sausages. At the end of day 1 we had all the meat cut up, seasoned and waiting in the fridge for mincing on Day 2. First we made cotechino sausages. I totally loved these winter sausages when we bought them from Italy last year. Imagine my surprise when I find that they are made of half and half skin and meat. I guess that is what gives the sausages their unctuous flavour. I found two different recipes. One had parmesan in and the other red wine. I made both. Here is the batch with red wine, I think. @Braai-Q recommended Luganega sausages in a previous post so when I saw the recipe in my sausage making book I thought I would give them a try. Here they are, looking luscious. We made a couple of batches of bog standard pork sausages. One coarse cut Italian hot sausage and one fine cut old favourite, pork and sage. And finally the Cornish Hogs Pudding or White Pudding. Made with a mix of pork and "lights" (lungs and hearts) and groats. They are a "white" equivalent of black/blood pudding. You have to poach them for about 50 minutes. In the past we have had them break at this stage, filling the pot with your precious sausage meat. This time we paid attention to the definition of "poach", didn't boil and didn't have any breakages. The cotechini need to hang for up to six weeks and the rest of the sausages will go in the freezer. Will taste over the coming weeks. I imagine some of you will be uncomfortable about the "nasty bits" that go into sausages. Don't be. Sausage skins encase and make all meats wonderful. Here are my left over skins, salted and waiting for their chance at greatness.

Thanks for the welcome . Yes , the journey was well worth it . A few hairy moments through the mountains , but followed advice from both bgrant3406 on this forum as well as Dennis and had no problems. The block underneath the legs to take the weight off the casters was critical to safe trip for the KK.

Huge effort Tekobo. Between your bacon and snags you need to open a deli. Yum.

My first cucumber sandwich of the season. I look forward to these.

Nice job, Tekobo! This part just screams "sous vide" to me.

Can I ask what sort of block you used and how you got it on said block? Also, what sort of vehicle you transported it in? My reason for asking is that I have two KK's (23 and 32) that will be moving to my new home 2 hours from here in February. I had pondered selling these, but am now convinced I want both of them moving with me.

Running an experiment with 2kg of grass fed sirloin on sale at $7.99Aus/kg. That's about 4.4lb for US$9. After cutting into 3 lumps( intending to involve the kids in adding their own preferred spices to their own lump and one spicier one for mum and dad) I added 80 grams( 4%) of himalayan rock salt to the beef, vac sealed and will put in the fridge for 4- 5 days. This is after day 1. Plenty of moisture already dragged out of the meat. In 4 more days, this is when I will be wishing I had the cold smoker.... so will improvise with some smouldering saw dust from french oak pinot barrels. Then plan to rub in 3 different herb mixes, wrap in a cloth, tie and hang in the cold room for another month or 2. The sirloin is only an inch thick so there is plenty of surface area to dry out. Chillie, garlic, cumin, black pepper and Tassie Pepper Berries for me. The kids can choose on smell tests. Any tips will be taken on board given I won't be doing much with this until the weekend.

@ckreef - it's a Brit thing, dude! Just like we Southerners live for the first tomato sandwich of the season from the homegrown tomatoes! But, I'm just guessing that's not Dukes on that sandwich!

Agreed on wide straps , we used three 2" wide ratchet straps . One to the front pulling straight forward and two straps to the back one to each side . All 3 were crossed over prevents slipping . Finally an inch and half strap over the lid pulling straight down kept the KK from rocking ( put some light foam under this one ,the rest were bare on the tile ) . Was solid as rock , only needed to tighten slightly one time.

Be sure to use the wide straps like bgrant3406 did on the surface of the cooker. When I picked up the repair KK in Baltimore, my straps were narrow (1"wide) and they compressed the tiles under them about a 1/4" deeper than the surrounding tiles. Extra material under the straps is probably a good idea also. Also be sure to secure down the lid of the cooker. I did a poor job and it broke the latch on the cooker.

Thanks. Lots of good suggestions there. Will consider sous vide when we come to cook the cotechino and will definitely smoke a few sausages in the KK. No, won't be opening a deli. Keeping all the goodies to myself! Taking "dang" as a compliment - not in my Afro-British lexicon. Yes it was hard work but The Husband is always very clear that such things should be fun and not a chore. We did it in three separate three hour stints and managed to stay jolly throughout. Dotty amused us by wanting to know how we could spend so long in the kitchen without producing anything that she likes to eat.

Wonderful, wonderful as Lawrence Welk used to say. Seems like, "The Whole Beast" went into that cook. A wonderful job. I remember you smoking a large piece of meat on a hook, will you employ your cold smoker to inject some added goodness and hang a few in the KK?

Here is the file with the support box dimensions (in inches) posted by Dennis a while back

The "box" is a plywood box that goes under the cooker to alleviate the pressure on the legs when transporting. See below, directly below the draft door location under to cooker. I have made one of these before by measuring under the cooker. Dennis has the measurements on this forum (cannot recall where tho). My recommendation would be to not ship any of these cookers without that block under it. I'd recommend to have a 3/4" plywood base made, put chocks into it for the rear wheels, place the platform into the moving vehicle, trailer, roll the cooker onto it, place the block under it and chock the front wheels, then secure the cooker to a wall w/ appropriate padding.

We will be moving as well and the thought of moving the 42 keeps me awake at night... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Wow, huge amount of work but a nice store of sausages. The photos are great!

... and that's how you make sausages. What an awesome job, sausages look wonderful and sound pretty darn tasty.

Dang!

It's no secret, I don't really like my Meater +. My opinion is definitely tainted after being jerked around for 3 years with their kickstarter campaign. I originally ordered it for rotisserie cooks and for that application it's the only device on the market and that's where it excels. But I have a few better options for my kamados and wood fired oven so it doesn't get much use. Well last night I got a brilliant idea to use it in my NuKe Delta grill. I fired up the Nuke Delta grill with my grill grates and got it screaming hot. I did a quick 4 sided sear on a chunk of pork loin. I then inserted the Meater + and moved the pork loin off to the side to finish cooking with the lid down. It calculated 36 minutes to finish. Here is the Meater app monitoring the cook from my porch. When it got down to 15 minutes remaining I put a small CI skillet on the hot side and started cooking some sizzle corn. When it was time to dredge in the homemade rosemary Peach glaze I switched positions to get the pork loin back over the hot side, careful to keep the Meater out towards the edge so I didn't break it. This application worked really well for the Meater + unit especially with rolling the pork loin around in the glaze. It now gets a little redemption. Dinner was fantastic. I'm really falling in love with the Nuke Delta grill. The cover makes indirect cooking a breeze by trapping the heat above the cook while you still get heat coming up from the fire bricks below.

Well I woke up at 6:45am and everything was running smoothly! Shoulder temp was in the about 172F. Finished at 9:00am at 203F. Wrapped in pink Butcher paper and double wrapped in foil and did the FTC method. Now it’s time to let rest and look forward to lunch!!! Below is a picture of the shoulder before pulling off the grill and couldn’t resist sending a pick of our two pups chilling by the lake! Once I pull the shoulder and plate I’ll forward some last pictures. Also, one question for you folks out there with the CyberQ. Towards the end of my cook my temperature jumped higher....about 273F and set point was 240F. I had the ramp feature set up....just not sure this feature works well with the KK? Any information is appreciated! Cheers! Paul

Found some boneless beef short ribs in the freezer this morning. Here we go- Equal amounts of chili, garlic powder and fresh ground black pepper. Meat is done. Snack time.

Here we go, rain stopped and it turned out to be a super nice evening so why not light up the Konro and tend some food.

Looks fantastic Mac yum yum