jeffshoaf

As others have mentioned, there's a main grate-level port for the probes, along with little silicon plugs for the port. The plugs have a hole for the probe cables and are probably slitted so you can slide them over the prior cables - if you look at the plug from the end, it looks like a little black donut with one side sliced thru from the edge to the donut hole. If you notice that your fire isn't going out after closing all the dampers, there's a good chance that you've neglected to put the probe port plug back in after removing your probes... Don't ask my why I know this!

No, it won't. But worth it!

For you cast iron fans, Field skillet is having a factory seconds sale: https://fieldcompany.com/products/field-cast-iron-skillet-factory-second?variant=19561775202397&utm_campaign=363_Q12022_Seconds-Open-1 (VcW7rT)&utm_medium=email&utm_source=email&_kx=3xEqNS64GriKi5Mtlf2Q8se8Pi7jNycpNoIEgeCc9Dw%3D.MASUTU I don't have any of their stuff so I can't speak to the quality but I'm on the mailing list.

I started out with a medium BGE around 25 years ago and used it for low and show cooks. I liked it week enough that I sold it and upgraded to a large BGE to get more space. I had all kinds of problems with the large one - couldn't manage temps, couldn't manage a low and slow cook without running out of charcoal, needed a deflector, detached feet cracking, etc. Granted, I didn't spend enough time learning to use it but after my success with the medium one, I was very frustrated and I just stopped using it. I also started having back issues that caused sciatica and since the BGE was downstairs and my kitchen is upstairs, going up and down the steps to manage it was getting more and more difficult. When I decided to have the deck that's convenient to the kitchen rebuilt (including having it roofed and screened in), I wanted to make outdoor cooking more convenient so had a "grill wing" added to the deck that isn't roofed in and got a Weber summit gas grill with a built-in smoker box. I thought the smoker box would serve my smoking desires but was disappointed in the results - that got me looking at kamados again. I hoped to find one that was as large or larger than the large BGE but had a door at the firebox level to add fuel if needed since I really didn't like having to take the food and grates out of the BGE to add charcoal. I didn't find one, but the search lead my to the KK's and the hinged grates. After struggling with the price, I ordered a 23" ultimate (this was before the 32" models existed) to add to the grill wing. When it arrived, I was amazed at the improvement over the BGE in both quality and utility. All the issues I had with the BGE were addressed as I worked my way up the learning curve. My biggest lessons were not overshooting the target temp, making sure I did a good heat soak, and not overshooting the target temp. I listed overshooting twice because it was the hardest lesson for me to learn! Also, I've learned that the hinged grates aren't really needed for adding charcoal since even my longest cooks don't use a full basket, but they are handy for adding smoke wood. Moisture retention is far superior to the BGE and the firebox damper dial and infinitely adjustable top damper provide much smoother and better temp control. And of course, no deflector needed. The KK is also much better looking than the BGE; several folks have called it a "work of art." I look at it like I try to look at expensive tools - could I get similar results with a lower cost option? With the KK, the answer ranges from "maybe" to "yes" depending on what I'm cooking; I had some excellent results on my BGEs (mostly with the medium one), but I get similar and better results with the KK much easier and with less aggravation and stress. And at this stage in my life, I really appreciate less aggravation and stress and I really appreciate high quality, well designed tools. I do not regret getting my KK.

I've had a SteakAger cabinet for a year and it's performed very well. It uses a cloud connection to send alerts to my phone if there are any issues; so far, the notifications have been due to network, internet, or temporary power issues. Here in the USA, the SteakAger is less expensive than other brands; it's basically a Danby wine fridge with an added panel inside that adds circulation fans and monitoring of temperature and humidity. They also offer humidity control for longer aging (> 45 days or so) and charcuterie as an add-on. The associated app tracks the aging and charts temp and humidity. It keep a history of past aging or allow note taking but does let you download the temp and humidity data. If you look at SteakAger reviews online, you'll find a lot of negative reviews; these are mostly (all?) from an earlier collaboration with Kingsford that had Kingsford providing support (and maybe manufacturing). SteakAger is now handling support in-house with much better results.

I didn't think that was possible with the possible exception of someone working on one of the national chains!

There are lots of videos on stretching and shaping pizzas on YouTube; there are several established techniques for opening the dough balls to get roundish pizzas. The technique that has helped me the most is to use very little bench flour; instead, I have a bowl of semolina flour to drop the dough ball into. Drop the ball in, turn it over and drop in to coat the other side of the ball, then pick up and slap the ball to remove any excess flour. This really helps keep the dough from sticking to the bench and my hands. When I first got serious about making pizzas, I bought a silicon mat that had circles of various sizes printed on it that helped me judge roundness and size. Now I open the dough balls either on my granite counter top (when baking in the Breville in my kitchen) or on a granite slab (when downstairs baking in the big outdoor oven). Of course, even if I make a perfectly round one, I get it out of round when launching it into my ovens! I have Super Peels to help with launches now (yes, that's cheating: https://superpeel.com/). Since most of the time I'm only making one pizza, I don't get a lot of repetitive practice on shaping so I'm no where as fast as the pros but I'm improving - I can generally open a dough ball faster than my guests can put the toppings on. The granite slab I use downstairs is the sink cutout left over when my parents had granite countertops installed years ago. My dad had saved it and I found it in his shop/garage after he passed. I hope to make a frame with handles to make it a bit easier to handle and move around if/when I get my woodworking shop set up. I wasn't home when my granite countertops were installed and didn't think to tell the installers I wanted the sink cutout; I wish I had it. Lots of folks ask me if I hand toss pizzas when opening the dough; I have but with my early attempts the dough wrapped around my hand when I caught it and stuck to itself, defeating the purpose. I usually don't have extra dough balls so the fear of dropping the opened dough when catching the toss had prevented me from attempting a toss in a long time. Besides, tossing the dough is more of a New York style pizza thing and I'm making neapolitan-ish pizzas!

My Thermoworks Signals got an update this morning; the update included open lid detection. The detection worked very well with my gravity feed smoker this morning.

I've been wanting to do a blooming bologna but I'm waiting until I have some help eating it.

https://www.thermoworks.com/billows-mounting-kit/ To fit the guru port on a KK, you need the "universal" mounting kit @$8.99. I have an older kk that doesn't have the cold smoker port, so I use billows without an adapter and attach it to my old single dial damper assembly when the cold smoker is used in the guru port. I removed the dial and used duct tape to seal the other two holes in the damper plate. There's a post here on the forums with pics. I also have the 1-1/2" threaded adapter to use with my new gravity feed smoker. BBQ Guru wants $38 + shipping for a guru to 1-1/2" adapter while the bellows mount was just $13 + shipping ($18 total).

I have both the bbq guru cyber-q and the thermoworks signals with the bellows fan and battery pack. I'm not sure either does Bluetooth since I'm using both with WiFi. While the cyber-q works, it irritates me - the app is cloud based, notifications are via text or email instead of local to my phone, setting it up manually is painful, and it's prone to forget it's settings if not used for a while. The signals has a much better user interface, both in the app and on the unit itself, I can add as many alerts/alarms as I want, and I like the app much better than the cloud-only cyber-q. The control unit can be used without the fan to monitor temps when not using the fan and since it has rechargeable batteries built in, no external power is needed when not using the fan. With the external battery pack, you can use the fan without AC as well. If you're using it with multiple cookers, the various fan adapters are less expensive than the bbq guru adapters. I believe the signals has a higher water resistance setting than the bbq guru units as well. Note that the bellows fan is 46 cfm so it moves way too much air for the KKs so the optional $3 damper is a requirement unless you're using it on a large very high air flow cooker. I've had the bbq guru much longer (years) than the thermoworks (months) but so far I like the thermoworks much better. The only thing I like better on the guru is lid open detection; the signals doesn't have this so the fan will ramp way up when you open the KK lid. I also have the Meater Block but it doesn't have an option to control the temp so it doesn't fit into this discussion. It has its own set of pros and cons but I really like it for grilling (instead of smoking) since the completely wireless design makes flipping stuff much easier.

You can't have his crab - he's being shellfish.

I've been using PizzApp+ on my phone for my pizza dough with a very good success rate, albeit not with my KK - I have a Breville Piazziola electric oven and Fontana Forni gas oven. You enter the size dough ball (in grams) along with warm and/or cold fermentation time and temperature, and it calculates the amount of flour, water, salt, and leavening (yeast or sourdough). It let's you adjust the various percentages for the ingredients and other options such as oil.

My only complaint about the KK double-bottom pan is that I haven't found a good place to store it when not in use.

Mine works great as a deflector - it deflects the heat from the hot chimney starter so my deck doesn't get burnt.

Chick-sicle!

I used the non-perforated pan too fry some sausage and eggs; the sausage fried up fine but the eggs stuck a bit but I think that was due to not letting the pan get hot enough after washing it post sausage, They recommend bringing the temp up slowly and I needed to either wait a bit longer or bring the heat up faster The egg remnants cleaned right off with water. I used the flaming pan (that's the perforated one) on the KK to wilt some mixed greens last week when I smoked a small dry aged ribeye roast; it did fine with this admittedly easy task. I think I included a pic in the Miscellaneous cooks thread. I'm not sure when I'll do a more demanding cook with it; my mother had a pretty bad case of COVID-19 and, since we were afraid she was going to have to go to the hospital at any time, I didn't want to start something that I might have to abandon mid-cook. I ate on a pretty big smoked ham I bought at the grocery store for over a week! Fortunately, she's mostly fully recovered now without a trip to the ER other than some lingering brain fog.

Before Academy Sports opened semi-locally here, I was buying most of my lump from Home Depot or Lowes. I found a lot of variation in the lump from the home stores even amongst the same brand - one bag would have very little smalls and dust but the next bag wood be all smalls with lots of dust. I attributed that with how the bags were being handled - I think the bad bags were abused during shipping and/or handling in the warehouses and stores. Same with orders from Amazon - I ordered a bag of jealous devil from Amazon since I couldn't find it locally and was disappointed; the bag showed obvious abuse and had several tears that had been taped with lots of smalls and dust. The bag was coated in dust too. I've bought all of my lump from Academy since they opened here and I found out they carried it. They usually have jealous devil and B&B; I've stuck with B&B and have been happy with the quality and price. Inventory has been low for the past few months tho; I got lucky the last time I got some and got a bag right off the pallet so I knew it have been minimally handled. That bag was full of big chunks.

These were quenched. I did do some stove top seasoning before I used them.

Went to the grocery store and someone had pea'ed all over the sidewalk...

The damper attached fan in action. It worked very well and left the guru port open for the cold smoker. I ran the thermoworks stuff with the battery so i didn't have to dig out another extension cord.

Small dry aged ribeye roast cooked to medium using the cold smoker with hickory pellets and the thermoworks temp monitoring and control. I have an older KK without the cold smoker port, so i attached the fan to my old single dial damper. This worked pretty well but my temps did range a bit since I'm still figuring out where to set the Billows fan damper - it's a 20cfm fan so it will overshot in a hurry. Also wilted some mixed greens in my new Solidteknics flaming pan along with kernel corn fixed in the vermicular and left-over brown rice. Overall, I'm happy with all of this but the roast would have been better at medium-rare. While digging out my old damper, i found some fire starters this i forgot i had; they came as a bonus when i got my Solo fire pit several years ago. They're made from sugar cane. I used two of them to light the pellets in the cold smoker and they worked very well!

I thought i had some of the metallic tape but it was just high-grade shiny duct tape. I'll give the a try on the KK later today. Nice sunny day and in the 60's here in NC - good day for an outdoor cook - so i positioned the fan air inlet and power port up for convenience.

Yes, I have some of that and was leaning in that direction. Especially since I already know where that tape is...

I took advantage of thermoworks black Friday sales and got a Signals, Billows, the associated battery pack, and the guru intake port adapter. Although I've used the signals for a couple of KK cooks, i actually got all of this for another cooker that should be delivered in February and i haven't used the fan or battery other than to hook everything up in the house to make sure it so worked. The billows default smoker attachment is just the legs of a spring mounted in the exhaust port that clamps the fan onto a flat plate with a foam gasket to help get a tight seal. Of course, the old one-dial damper is just a flat plate with various holes punched out so... I think this is gonna work, or it will add once i find one of the rolls of duct tape that i have somewhere to cover up the rest of the holes. I'm planning on cooking a small beef ribeye roast Tuesday so I'll give it a try then although i don't think I'll really need a controller for that relatively short cook.