Leaderboard

Out of the blue one of my shipping companies wrote and told us they were starting a pilot program for shipping charcoal and asked if we wanted to be a guinea pig.. I've had a container volume of charcoal sitting in my factory for almost two years so I jumped at the opportunity but when I did the math with the shipping cost, I realized that the only reason it worked was that I already had paid for the charcoal and it was dead stock in Indonesia.. That being said, we now have 22 tons on the way.. It's the best charcoal we've ever shipped.. it's 2 1/4- 2 1/2 % ash which is unheard of.. It's so dense that the same size logs in the same size box is 10% heavier than my previous charcoal which was 4% ash. Industry standard is 6-15% Hopefully I can send charcoal on a regular basis once the exorbitant current shipping rates come down. Fire Proof liner: A company showed up with an amazing mylar metallic bag that was inflated inside the container and stuck to the walls before we put the charcoal in.. and then after the charcoal was loaded, the air was sucked out of it and it was tied off. This supposedly prevents the charcoal from catching on fire because there's no oxygen for it to burn if there is a fire outside the container. Interesting idea to prevent fires.. Bag installed.. Charcoal being loaded. Filling it up.. Air vacuumed out and sealed.. I will be sending out an email with pre-sale information on the charcoal as well as a link to a page with spare parts and accessories for early KK grills and the smaller table tops on sale as I will no longer be stocking them in the US. Also some cabinets and flooring.. Dennis

While no pics of any "homegrown" (with a shoutout to Neil Young!), I did take advantage of the nice weather (mid-50s and sunny) to do a pork tenderloin. Direct, main grate, 350F, with a mash-up rub of Sucklebusters Texas Pecan and SPG. That little flapper was from me trimming the silver skin off. It was a tasty nibble! Plated with some nice pasta carbonara and side salad. I love carbonara but hadn't made it in some time - no clue why?

Movin' on up as George Jefferson would say. This pizza actually tasted very good. Pepperoni and sausage. Still ugly but I'm working on that. Cooked a few burgers too.

It's been so long, some might not recall the tribal tradition: We bring down in-country trucking costs by forming pallet shares, and driving to meet each other to pick up our orders. Charcoal Order Sharing It's been fun meeting people this way, over the years.

As long as the KKs that happen in vegas don't stay in vegas...

This setup worked well for the rotisserie last night in the 42. Underneath the aluminum pan is a loaf pan. It was too small and had angled edges so I got out an aluminum pan and bent it where one side was a right angle and would hold up the basket splitter plate. When McJudsten shared his setup I didn’t realize how he did it until I tried to set it up. I took the slider rods out of the basket splitter. The side plates are bumped up all the way onto the ceramic ring and are resting on top of the dividers. Dividers are just resting right behind the deflector mounts tube thingies. Anyway the dividers are spread a few inches wider than normal. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So...my wife came home with two packages of pork loins (two each) and requested that I smoke them. I didn't want to fire up the smoker just for the loins so went looking for some other decent pork on sale to throw in with them. No ribs (I refuse to pay $4.99 /lb for babyback or spare ribs) but I did score a nice pork shoulder on sale, so there was that. Then I started thinking about adding in some thick-cut bologna, as I remembered some members here, or perhaps on the shows I watch, talking about smoking bologna. It sounded good to me.... But finding a whole role of bologna, uncut, is part of the challenge. I remember when I was growing up we could get them in the grocery store- no more. I had to go to the deli section and ask the counter person for a foot of bologna, unsliced, so which I got a curious look and explained that I was going to take it home, cut it in thick, 3/4" slices, and smoke them. More curious looks. And oh, that 1' of bologna was almost $15. So- as you see from the attached photos- the pork shoulder and loin went in together at 275*, and I wrapped the loins after two hours and proceeded with them. I added the bologna and smoked it for about an hour. The bologna turned out EXCELLENT- kind of like the very best hot dog you ever had- and we had the loin for dinner. My wife commented that it had good smoke, but was a little dry and overcooked- even though it had spent the last couple of hours in foil. "It shouldn't be", I said, "pork gets cooked to 203* and that is just what it was." She fiddles on her cell phone, summoning information from Google. "Nope, she says, "pork loin is 145 to 160." Oh-my-holy-hell....she's right. What kind of brain fart was I having? SHOULDER is 203*....not LOIN. OOPSIE...... Anyway, as you can see, the shoulder turned out good, as usual- I think it is a pretty forgiving cut- and the bologna was excellent. I've Google'd some local sources now where I can procure a whole roll of bologna and not pay the price of good fiilet mignon for it, so it's all good. Live and learn. Or live and remember to check your temperature target before you start cooking, if you haven't cooked that particular cut for a while.

A little 'electric lettuce' eh?

Gorgeous @Myklnz! Congrats and happy KK'ing. I have used my green egg only once since my KK showed up and I can't remember why. I guess if I do some things for a crowd I might use it again, but it sure has been lonely.

You can’t go wrong with that Peruvian chicken recipe of yours @Troble. Let the fun begin!

Couple of recent grill cooks. Love the versatility and grilling room in the 42. In this case fire on the right side only. On the cook with the chicken thighs and breasts I let the bird parts come up to 120 or 130 then moved them down onto the lower grate on the right side to sear before taking them off. Sausages stayed up high but way over to the right over the fire. Veggies in the basket down low are great. Except in this case I didn’t realize the kids wouldn’t like the char on the sprouts as much as I did. Anyway- loving the 42 more and more. Burgers tonight. Can’t wait. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ordered BBQ from “Blacks” down in south Austin for a sales meeting lunch. Not the best looking picture but the brisket was outstanding https://www.blacksbbq.com/austin also ordered Hurtado BBQ for lunch after a sales meeting in Dallas. No pictures taken, has kind of a Spanish twist to bbq but was also great https://hurtadobbq.com

Non Americans like me find the concept of chicken fried steak just plain weird. That said, I had the chance to get my own back with this recipe. We have these really lovely chickens from Italy that drip a really lovely yellow fat when when they are being cooked. I collect it up and there it is in the bowl to the right in the picture below. My very own chicken fried schnitzel is actually fried in chicken schmaltz. Yay! The fixings in the big white bowl to the front are what you find in a Caesar salad, including anchovies. Schnitzel frying. I was going to grill the lettuce on the 16KK but it took too long to heat up and I ended up cooking it on a griddle in the IDK. Yummy salad. Super tasty chicken fried schnitzel and grilled Caesar salad. Making me hungry.

All of your food really looks good tekobo. You're a master chef!

Feast to famine! Took advantage of the weather yesterday (cooler than the 62F we had on Saturday, but I could have done without the tornadoes - 7 dead, including 2 kids! 😢) to do a nice Prime Sirloin. Direct, lower grate, mesquite wood chunks. Plated with a nice 2x baked spud, sauteed mushrooms and chimichurri sauce. Nice side salad of cherry tomatoes - the yellow ones are off my hydroponic plant! So now to the famine part. This is what I woke up to this morning! Welcome to Springtime in Iowa! Folks, THIS is why you buy a cover for your KK!

tonight was a series of high temperature bakes starting with: 1. levain chocolate chip cookies. baked on two levels. https://www.joshuaweissman.com/post/levian-chocolate-chip-cookies this was underbaked but i finished them in the oven. tastes good, but tastes better from the original levain bakery in nyc. 2. originally we planned on making pizza using vito's double poolish dough, but we changed it up to turkish pide. this was the wrong dough to use. i need a thinner, less leavened dough. although i took the kk to 550, i pushed it to 650 because it was just taking so long. at the end, i think i will leave these types of bakes for the wood fired pizza oven. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7Hd6ZzKgBM 3. sourdough loaf. didn't want to deal with ice cubes so i used my trusty ceramic cloche. not enough clearance on the upper level so i used the main level grate with the baking stone underneath. came out ok. bottom got charred a bit. probably would have been avoided using upper grate..