GSWHoops

I've had my KK for a few months now and have been wanting to get some good cooking in before I wrote about my experience. 1. Purchase: I purchased one of the clearance cookers back in January. Dennis was great to work with. I have a mexi-K cooker that is in bad shape and I was very nervous about spending a lot of money on another ceramic cooker. I had a ton of questions for Dennis and he answered all of them promptly. After receiving his feedback, I was pretty confident that I would be receiving a quality cooker. I purchased a black textured OTB supreme. 2. Shipping: The cooker was ready to ship when I ordered it and I recieved it quite promptly. If I remember right, I think I emailed Dennis for some tracking information and that day I got the call saying that it was on a truck headed for my house. 3. First impressions: The cooker had been banged around a bit during shipping. The gasket in the top damper was coming off and there were spots where the textured exterior had been scraped off (when I told Dennis about this, he called me on the phone and walked me through how to fix everything). But that was the only real negative thing about the cooker that I could see. I really liked the metalwork. The wheels seemed nice and beefy. Taking off the lid was very easy. Once the lid was removed, I was able to move it to my patio by myself (would've been much easier if I had a helper at the time, but I didn't). 4. Temp control: Wow, I was very impressed with the temp control. With the cracks and alignment problems that I had with my old K, I usually used a guru to maintain temperature to make sure nothing bad happened. From my first cook with the KK, I have had no problem at all dialing in the right temp and keeping it there. I keep telling myself that I should order the adapter so that I can use my guru with my KK, but haven't felt the need for it yet. The air controller at the bottom is a great feature. And it's nice not having to have to spin the top damper a whole lot to open it up. 5. Features: The self-opening mechanism is my favorite feature. What a great idea! So nice to be able to move a latch and have the whole lid open up. Having no bands to adjust is also great. I love knowing that no matter what, when I close my KK, it's going to have a nice tight seal. I don't know if the OTB shape actually cooks the food any differently, but I've found that when I put a lot of food on the grill, it's easier to find places for everything than on a round grill. I'm not sure why, but that's my experience. The top damper seems really nicely made. I don't have to worry about it getting stuck. And all of the metalwork is just very nicely done. I don't have an EZ-Que, but I like the idea that I can put one on one day when I can afford it. Cleaning out the ashes from the bottom is really easy. Another great feature. 6. Service: I've had a few minor issues that needed to be resolved. Dennis got to each one promptly. I'm very satisfied with the customer service that he provides. 7. Problems: The inside of my cooker had an excess amount of white coating in it. This prevented the grills from sitting correctly. Dennis suggested that I scrape off the excess (turns out I didn't need to. I cooked paella in it and I think the high temp made most of it flake off by itself). I sometimes have problems putting out the coals. But I think part of this is because I've never gotten around to fixing the gasket on the top damper. Once I fix that I can report on if I'm still having problems putting out the coals or not. When I cook at a high temp, I can see some fairly long cracks in the texture. Dennis said that I could fill these in when the cooker is hot if I wanted to and I wouldn't have this problem any more. It's not that big of a deal to me, so I haven't gotten to it. My airflow controller dial is stuck right now so I have to control the airflow by pulling out the bottom door. Should be easy to fix though. Keep in mind that I have an older version, and I think Dennis has addressed the problems that I've experienced in his current cookers. When I made the purchase, he even told me of some of the problems to expect (like the cracks in the texture) due to it being an older model. So I knew that these things were going to occur. It was just such a great price that I didn't care about it. 8. What I've cooked so far: Pulled pork, ribs, paella, pizza, tri-tip, burgers, chicken. All have come out great! 9. Overall impression: I love my KK. I don't even touch the old K anymore. It's amazing how much more nicely made the KK is. I had a few issues that needed taking care of and Dennis handled everything. I am very glad that I made the decision to get the KK. I have 3 young kids so it's hard for me to find the time to cook as much as I'd like to. But I love cooking in general and I really enjoy cooking on the KK. It's just fun to be able to create great food on such a nice, well built cooker.

These look great! Can I get one too?

Tritip has always been one of my favorites. We used to live near a place that served these really huge tritip sandwiches (me and my buddies ate there while we watched the NCAA tournament right before I had to go get married). Here's the tritip I did this weekend http://www.komodokamado.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1606

One of my favorite things to make is a steak with a pepper cream sauce. But I always make it in a pan on the stovetop. I wanted to be able to use my KK to make it, so I decided to try it with a larger piece of meat. That way I could sear it on the stovetop and still be able to save all of the good bits in the pan and then finish cooking it in the KK. Here's what I did. I got a 2 pack of tritips from Costco. I got the cooker heated up to 350 degrees with a heat deflector and a drip pan in it. I usually marinade tritip, but wasn't sure what to use, so I went with this: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes ... 88,00.html I don't know if it made a difference or not. I ground up a whole bunch of peppercorns. Probably 5 or 6 tablespoons I guess. Then I covered the tritip with them. I put some olive oil (4 tablespoons maybe?) and a couple of tablespoons of butter in a big hot pan. Then I put the tritip in and seared it for a couple of minutes on each side. Then I put the tritip into the cooker. I added 1 1/4 cup of beef broth to the pan and used a whisk to deglaze. Then I let it reduce for about 5 or 6 minutes. I added 1 1/4 cups of heavy cream to this. (If I had some cognac, I probably would've added a few tablespoons, but I didn't have any). I kept whisking for another 5 or 6 minutes until the sauce coats the back of a spoon. I had one problem when I made the sauce. Usually, I make the sauce right when I take the steak out of the pan. I did this with the tritip out of habit. Well, the problem was that my sauce was done and I realized that I still had another 30 minutes of cooking time left with the steak. But then I remember seeing Alton Brown stick his sauces in a thermos. Fortunately, we had a small one in the house that just barely held all of the sauce. So the sauce was still perfect when the tritip was done. The group I had over to eat was not a medium-rare group. So I took the tritip out when the thick part was 135 degrees (about 40 minutes in the cooker). I let it rest for a while and then sliced it up. Each person got several nice big slices with the pepper sauce on the top of it. It turned out really nice! Definitely one that I'll do again. Sorry no pictures though.

I have a guru. I used it on my old K all the time. I've been meaning to order the extra tube so that I can use it with my new KK, but haven't gotten around to it. But so far, all of my cooks have gone extremely well without it, so I haven't had a lot of motivation to order the part. If I ever have to do a really big cook with a fully loaded cooker, I'll probably get it, just to make sure that nothing goes wrong.

That's it - turn in your KK. We will re-allocate it to someone who will put it to use. I'll bet DJ has burned 60 pounds in the last week or so.... but he does need to catch his butt up to what his mouth has been promising for the last 9 months!! I buy 4 to 6 bags at a time and I'm probably on my 4th or 5th load. I know I don't Q as often as some, but I dooo like to do the pizza (high fuel use) I only use the regular lump for things like steaks and burgers and chicken. For slow cooks, I use the extruded coconut stuff (really glad the Dennis is going to sell it now!) So that bumps my charcoal usage up a little bit.

I figure that it's a little more charcoal than I'll use in a year. So if it's seasonal, I'll have enough to last until it comes around again next year. Plus I have a truck now and I like to load stuff in the back just because I can. Couldn't do that in my old convertible.

I just tried the charcoal last night for pizzas. Worked great! I used one chimney starter's worth and was able to heat up the cooker for an hour and cook 3 pizzas. It was easy to light. The chunks seemed to be good sized too. I'm still at the top of the bag so I don't know how much dust is down there, but when I move the bag around, it doesn't sound like much. One nice thing is that almost all of the bags at Costco were in great shape. No busted up, mangled bags. I was able to easily find 6 bags that didn't have any holes or dings on them.

But is the juice easy to light? And does it give a flavor to your Q? Well, when I put it in the chimney starter, I just end up with a wad of purple newspaper.

Oh by the way, the first part of the UPC is the same one that's on my cranberry juice. And no, it's not Royal Oak cranberry juice

Here's the UPC 96619 18592

Ok, I had to open up a bag to see what was inside. It's the Kirkland brand, but from the bag, I couldn't tell where exactly it comes from. But inside, it looks a lot like Royal Oak. I really hope this is something that they decide to stock every summer. A couple of years ago, I sent in a request on their website that they sell lump charcoal. I'm glad someone finally listened to me!

I just got back from Costco and they had lump charcoal there. I'd never seen lump there before, only Kingsford. I'm on my last bag of Royal Oak, so I grabbed 6 bags (120 lbs). Haven't had a chance to open it up yet so I don't know what it looks like. I was just happy to have a place that had a big huge stack of lump charcoal close to my house. It was a little under $10 for a 20 lb sack. Anyone else seen this before? Is this something new or just new to my area? I use the extruded coconut stuff for overnight cooks, but I like using the regular stuff for steaks, burgers, things like that.

Dulce de leche I saw this on the Food Network. The guy found a hot dog vendor on the street and stuck the can in the hot water with the hot dogs. Then he made this dessert with it http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes ... src=search