Leaderboard

I have been given grief , and rightly so , for not posting pictures of cooks done on a custom soapstone made for my KK 23" Ultimate . To my personal shame I was reminded " No pictures , it didn't happen " . Finally here is evidence of the existence of the said stone and my some what limited cooking ability. I humbly request everyone's forgiveness . The Maillard reaction was fantastic.

It’s a rainy day in the 757. I decided to toss 8 porterhouses on YOLO the Dragon. Porterhouse Pork Chops today.

1. No...rock it off of that block. That's just a center support so that your legs aren't taking the impact in transport. 2. Don't remove the lid unless you need to for some reason. I had an incline at my house and so it was advantageous to reduce the weight. Otherwise, NO. 3. Possibly. Take a picture if you can. 4. Just do it. Right of passage. Not a real man until you do it anyway. 5. Back up the truck. Get all you can.

I like it a lot . I don't know if it makes my life easier , but certainly a lot of fun. Dome temp was 500* and the stone was close to 600* . Was still very warm next morning.

Shawarma pork steaks last night, with grilled red onion and zucchini. Roasted red potatoes in the indoor convection oven. Everything direct @ 325F, with apple wood chunks.

Soap stone or not that cook is making me very hungry! My mouth is watering at that plated photo can almost taste it yum yum yum

Basher , I also have a one that is a pizza stone ( 16" diameter ) . They do take a very long time to heat up . That is why I've been using a Baking Steel for pizza . With excellent results .

Syzgies, glad to see you have taken the plunge and bought one of these! Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience with us here. I hope to join the Vermicular club sometime this year. We just had a pretty big remodel project at home so need to watch my spending for awhile. All the best, Paul

Hey guys. My KK was delivered and the crate has been removed for the most part. I couldn't simply lift it off as I dont have the ceiling height in my garage and I'd have to dismantle the crate to get rid of it anyways. I needed to get to the cooker as I ave scheduled movers to transport it to the back of my house today and I wanted to remove all of the weight from the interior. I have a couple of questions: 1. There is a block of wood directly underneath the center of the cooker on the pallet. Does this remain in place as I try to move it? 2. The Lid. I don't really want to remove the lid if I don't absolutely have to. I know the instructions indicate that I should, and this will remove ~200 pounds while moving it. It seems to me that I wouldn't want the movers pushing, pulling, or otherwise manipulating it by the lid on its way to the backyard.. Does this sound accurate, or am I being too cautious. It seems to me the lid is not designed for lateral forces of that degree and nature. 3. The fire box. It seems to rest on the SS heat shield for the gas burner on the left, and the front vent when installed. This causes it to be very slightly angled when installed (slightly bowed toward the middle). This was how it was looking when I first opened the KK and vacuumed dust and debris out of it. I haven't installed it myself yet as I'm waiting for it to be in place. Perhaps shipping vibration caused it to be slightly off? 4. Ive read a lot of posts about burn-in but, for some reason, remember reading something that indicated it wasn't necessary with the new grills... it is done at the factory. I've read a thread written as recently as March that indicated the burn in still needs to be done. I think it'll be fun, but don't want to waste the coal if I don't have to. 5. Coffee Char - I bought 10 bags and am thinking about upping it to 15 as I know it's rarely available. That may seem to be changing as Dennis has secured another shipping route. Having read this forum quite a bit lately, I have a feeling I'm going to be told to order as much as I can while its available. I'll write a more extensive post with more pictures, initial impressions, first cook, etc. once its in place

I have a Donabe rick cooker. Love it. The only issue is it take a bit more attention than a regular rice cooker. You turn off the heat right after you see steam exiting the hole in the lid.

I made a chile roaster using the KK rotisserie basket lined with wire mesh fabric. Works great.

Back it up! I just sent Dennis a message about adding 5 bags. I'm more worried about coal storage space than cost, lol. I'll send a picture of the firebox when I install it tonight after the move.

I would call Dennis direct, he's sure to know what to do.

I’ve been living under a rock.... for centuries it appears after reading this. https://www.soapstonepizzastones.com/?page_id=100 If that rock was soapstone,( I’m shaking my head in disbelief), then I’m living in “Acres of Diamonds” anyone read this book? It’s a great short story. If you haven’t. https://www.lyricsvibrations.com/2019/10/14/acres-of-diamonds-a-short-motivational-or-inspirational-story/ Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Couldn't agree more!

What's your impression of it? Does it make your life easier?

Niiiiiice, and what a fine job you did on the steak and veggies.

I think Mrs skreef would kill me at this point in time.

[See also SoloStove Bonfire - Mrs skreef's new fire pit. As referenced in Vermicular Cast Iron Induction Cooker] I've been playing with the best way to roast chiles on the smaller of my two Solo Stoves, the Solo Stove Campfire. The same principles apply to my Solo Stove Ranger. With shortages of 99% isopropyl alcohol I can no longer rely on my "stunt" conflagration approach to lighting charcoal. And these stoves were originally designed for wood, not charcoal, though they'll burn anything they can get. Meanwhile, they burn hot, and it is way too easy to scorch chiles rather than gently roasting them. But they're so efficient that wood burns down to practically no embers. These twin problems tend to cancel each other out. To roast serrano peppers last night for pasta sauce I tried just using apple wood, no charcoal. Home Depot had large bags. I thought I timed this well, though I wanted to get the dough to rest, and by the time I got back to the fire there was little left. Even so, five minutes on a side, the chiles roasted just fine. This could be ideal, if one can find the patience. I left my wine inside so I'd keep going back to the other prep; this fire was low enough to just leave the chiles unattended, yet there was an effect. Ideally, one mounds the desired charcoal on top of some wood for initial fuel.

I've been using mine one way or another every day since it arrived. Even last night's pasta sauce, that I do versions of for decades in other pots, just to calibrate my understanding of what it can do. The computer programmer in me loves how I can offload work to it, less attended, with none of the limitations of sealing food in a plastic pouch. While ingredients sautéed, I was outside roasting chiles on my Solo Stove Campfire, another tool I love because it's not an attention hog. A Moroccan tagine of lamb, fava beans, artichokes (all fresh from our farmers market) was an interesting exercise in adaptation. First steam roast the vegetables, a classic mode of operation for what Laurie has dubbed our "indoor K". Set aside, sear then cook the lamb and spice mixture, with ample mounds of parsley and cilantro on top. Arranging ingredients in a thoughtful stack as the Moroccans do for clay, works here because the induction delivers more uniform heat. Then add back the vegetables with the preserved lemon to finish. This sequence would allow cooking the vegetables above 185 F (a known sous vide threshold) and the meat below 185 F. We didn't this time, because I ran out of time. I'll experiment with the plainer lamb Tangia to dial this in. We're eyeing the space occupied by our high end Zojirushi rice cooker (though I keep this K close by the cutting board, under our range exhaust fan, for uses like tagine). I'd heard the praise for rice made in a purpose-built clay Kamado-san Double-Lid Donabe Rice Cooker. And I love mine, though rice in it is more work, and simply different, not a compelling reason to give away one's Zojirushi. Following Vermicular's brown rice instructions to the letter using Massa Organics brown rice, we made the best rice I've ever tasted. I've been in correspondence with Vermicular.us. They're thinking about starting a forum like ours. There's so much to figure out, adapting this K to international cooking.

Royal Oak also offers briquettes made from their American 100% hardwood lump charcoal, different from their "regular" briquettes. Those are nationally available.

Those Walden starters burn a LONG time, I have used them myself. But I cut them in half for the KK because they actually burn too long. What they shine at is starting a fire pit, fireplace or bonfire.

I could not resist, even though it was a struggle to get one of these things to Canada, started working on it yesterday and just now managed to get my order to go through. There are so many things I want to try in this pot. You know you can even let your bread proof and then cook it in the Kamado part in your oven or in your REAL KK Kamado. This is going to be exciting. Thanks for pushing me over the edge, Sygyzies.

Glad you figured it out it becomes easier and easier every time you cook on it

Glad you're here Christine so we can get the real story.

Now that's funny! Poochie is Gene's doppelganger!

My wife, Christine, everybody!

hmmm... Interesting. That's not exactly how I remember that conversation going! 🤷‍♀️ Weird...

I believe that I understand its purpose better than any English language review I've read. In the 1980's I'd read somewhere (Patricia Wells?) that some French chefs with access to restaurant vacuum packers were "steaming" fish by instead vacuum packing the fish with marinade to cook in a water bath. And Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen was published in 1984, discussing how the boiling point of water is an arbitrary crutch in cooking. Putting two and two together, I looked in various science supply catalogs hoping to set up a sous vide cooking system (without having heard anyone was actually doing this, e.g. for foie gras in France). It was beyond my budget. I was a bit aghast that I hadn't pushed harder, when many years later I saw sous vide cooking emerge. One misses most advances in math or science by simply not pushing hard enough. Plenty of people are smart enough, or much smarter than the people who make breakthroughs. The people who make breakthroughs are pathologically stubborn and don't give up. I'd given up. Agitated, I started playing with the same kind of temperature controller used in the BBQGuru, and modifying soup warmers to bypass their thermostat. Then over time actual equipment designed for this became affordable. Now we own various Joule circulators, with clumsy earlier circulators in the garage or discarded. And as you say, we don't make skyscraper food. Sous vide becomes a standard technique. A step, never the complete process. Sous vide cooking a finished dish is throwing a ball blindfolded, hoping it lands somewhere near your intended target. Fine for a restaurant that gets a thousand tries. Takes all the fun out of cooking at home. One often wants to sear first, often in the same pot, then fiddle, taste, and season as one cooks. Add or remove ingredients on a timetable. For this reason it completely baffled me that slow cookers remained so primitive, weren't stepping up their game. I've met "titans" of weaker industries; they only triumph because anyone with two brain cells to rub together gets out of that industry. They have self-serving explanations for why they're dragging their feet on progress, which ususually comes down to customers already not wanting to pay the $60 they're asking for $4 of Chinese electronics. So I've been watching this market. The Breville | PolyScience the Control Freak costs $1500 and is nowhere near as effective as the Vermicular which encloses its enamel cast iron Dutch oven. I wish that the Vermicular didn't cost $670, but it doesn't cost $1500, and it's not going to cost $60. I bought my most recent Staub Dutch oven on sale, but the Vermicular Dutch oven is fairly priced for what is a top-of-the-market pot. I've also gone fairly deep down the Japanese cooking rabbit hole. My last international trip before quarantine was to Japan. I imported a Katsuobushi bonito shaver. I own many Donabe pots from Toiro Kitchen. There's something austere yet deeply comforting about the Japanese approach to vegetables. Various of the Vermicular cooking modes make most sense in the Japanese tradition from which it springs, though they translate well to other cuisines. My braised cabbage, my first use, is a good illustration. If one had been thinking of something like the Vermicular, wishing one could build one, then it's wonderful they'll build it for you. Simply being told one wants this isn't going to sell many units, and will lead to disappointment. Though it may be advanced, it's also freedom. We were drinking rose in the shade during a hot California evening, when we'd normally be inside cooking. If you found this thread by googling Vermicular, look around. There are many serious cooks here, and they're here because the Komodo Kamado is the best ceramic charcoal cooker made. It's worth every penny.

LOL...............