jeffshoaf

So when we see pics of that roo roasting on the KK?

I'm pretty sure it won't work if you heat soak the kk before loading the meat and probably won't work if you put the meat on as soon as it hits 500° - the kk's just hold heat too well. 500° is also awfully close to the Meater's maximum ambient temperature rating of 527°.

Just realized the link I provided is to the video and not the Kickstarter. https://emails.kickstarter.com/ss/c/jbhlvoU_4ViWFpZVbUjED0OpkQHNg7x7JtaKmK7tAldnE0eWLVUDoHX8yqnPauH9v5OqMsRZ_JnATbax13sfk_pAfnTvUdlC4Zo7Kp1x57mK456THkvbQX9OH1WXcSkdwUIEvhS24HL79z6UYxjLHJ1vTs4sAgF8JphNB0gHs-0_QNozP7-GdhQNBFezYCOmtJxs6_faPJdgq2mT-c16WI4iuQQrOHlSpJRB_1oJa08/3i2/mqf6zF1UTn-o52JgJCMCdg/h3/dWrxI4ydPKVUm7na8S-W4iO3AgBf0RDzHMF-mNFNwbU

Their American-made wok hit Kickstarter today, planned shipment in May (but I wouldn't count on it):

I also have a stainless grill topper that's similar to Poochie's as well - got it at academy sports when I was picking up some charcoal. A happy accident: I bent the handles down a bit and it's almost a perfect fit for the grate frames on my Santa Maria grill. https://www.academy.com/shop/pdp/outdoor-gourmet-stainless-steel-grill-topper?sku=silver

Solidteknics started in Australia with made-in Australia pans using Australian iron and then added stainless steel pans, then started an American branch making pans in America using American iron and steel. The Australia branch recently added woks; I got an email today indicating they're getting ready to introduce American-made woks via Kickstarter. They generally introduce new products on Kickstarter before general availability. Of course, you may have to wait months for the Kickstarter items ship. I'm generally wary of Kickstarter but Solidteknics has followed the same process since they got started and have reliably fulfilled Kickstarter orders but they do often miss their ship dates (my pans were delayed 3 or 4 time). Once the Kickstarter is over and they begin regular production on an item and show it as in-stock on their website, they do seem to be reliable. I used the unperforated pan for french toast on my induction cooktop after doing a round of stovetop seasoning sand it performed well - very non-stick and heated evenly. Much lighter than cast iron and a bit lighter than my Williams-Sonoma clad stainless pan of the same size.

I've never noticed smoke leaking from the gas burner cover plate on my 23", but when I've had it leak from around the vent plate, reseating it by sliding it out a little and pushing it back end has stopped the leak. I'm not sure but I think I've only had this happen after I'd removed the vent plate to clean out ash, so I assume I either didn't get it pushed ask the way back in, had it a little askew, or had a bit of ash keeping the plate from being fully seated.

I was thinking veggies, shrimp, and other small things that tend to fall thru the grates but fish is a thought. I've never had good luck coming fish and generally prefer to have it battered and fried but I have been thinking about smoking some - even watched a few YouTube videos the last few days. I've tried grilling fish on the gas grill and I didn't care for the result but a bit of wood smoke and/or charcoal flavor might make the difference for me.

I've been eyeballing Solidteknics pans for a while but couldn't justify getting any since i have a nice set of stainless clad pans. Back in May, they introduced a new size "flaming" pan with holes to let smoke through as part of their newish quenched line, selling via their normal Kickstarter routine and i bit. You could also get a matching solid pan for a discounted price if you bought at the same timeb do i ordered both. After a lot of delays, mine was delivered yesterday. I haven't used them yet but they're purty! I planned on dedicating then to grill and smoking duties but may give 'em a try on the stove. PXL_20211217_201325547.TS.mp4

Great looking turkeys! Did y'all use drippings to make the gravy? When I tried in the past with the single layer pan, the drippings always burned solid; I got the double bottom pan a while back but haven't used it too attempt gravy yet since my sister insists on doing the Thanksgiving turkey. I bought a turkey breast while on sale a few weeks back but haven't cooked it yet.

I think @Forrest started one but it gets little activity. I understand the exposure aspect but I much prefer the forum format we have here, especially when searching for a something.

Folks in America, don't forget to set your scales back 10 lbs Wednesday night!

One of the benefits/curses of retirement - time to obsess on stuff like this!

A few thoughts on this - thoughts only, not based on experience: 1. Use a longer burning charcoal, like the KK extruded coconut charcoal. I know it's almost impossible to get the KK charcoal right now, but there are other extruded charcoals that claim longer burn times (B&B has one that's available in a lot of places - https://bbcharcoal.com/product/competition-char-logs/), as well as charcoal made from South American hardwoods (https://jealousdevil.com/products/). You may have seen a test where a reviewer ran one load of KK Coco char for several days at low and slow temps. 2. In your original post, you ask about chimney starters; one use of these is to get the charcoal you're adding past the dirty smoke stage before adding to an existing fire. If you don't want to add a full chimney's worth to avoid raising the kk's temperature, you can start way less than a full chimney -- I usually use just a single layer of lump in the chimney to start my KK now (I've gone from using a Weed burner torch and parafin cubes starting charcoal directly in the KK to using the chimney now) 3. Preheat but don't light your additional charcoal before adding it to the KK - if heated almost to ignition, my understanding is that it ignites with little to no dirty smoke; you touch on this on your original post. This is why snake and minion charcoal techniques used in kettle grills and big competition water smokers don't create dirty smoke issues. But how to preheat? I vaguely recall Dennis posting about this years ago but couldn't find anything with a quick search - maybe a pot full of charcoal on the main KK grate? On a gas grill?

You seem to be having a lot of concern about topping up the charcoal mid-cook. If i may ask, why are you needing to do this? For a low and slow cook staying with a full charcoal basket, you should have no issue getting more than 16 hours without burning all your fuel aiming you're using a good quality lump. For any hot and fast cook (other than pizza), you should be able to get at least 5 or 6 hours from a full basket. For very hot cooks (800° in the dome) for pizza, etc., if you need to go more than a few hours, you may need to add a real pizza oven to your arsenal! I can see adding charcoal to get a very hot temp to do a reverse sear, but I'd think the best method for that is to remove the steaks to rest, then removing the main gate, topping up the charcoal, and then opening the vents to ramp up the heat. You can then put the lower grate in for searing or, to get even closer to the fire, invert the top grate and it'll sit right down over the basket for searing. Since your steaks are out of the KK when adding the charcoal, you shouldn't get dirty smoke once the charcoal is up to searing temps and you avoid the issue entirely. Of course, unless you slow roasted you steaks overnight or you started with less than a full basket, you probably have enough charcoal let to get to searing temps without topping off. Personally, I've given up on reverse searing for steaks -- i just can't seem to judge when to switch to searing to get the final internal temp I'm wanting. I sear first and then use a Meater or other leave-in thermometer to indirect grill to the desired doneness. I've moved to mostly using a Santa Maria grill and wood for bring steaks now, but when I did them on the KK, I'd bring the KK to searing temp and use the inverted upper grid to sear, then close down the vents and finish the steaks off on the main grate.

I'll try to try that some time but I was trying to limit the changes per cook in some semblance of a reasonable test. Since I've had good smoke flavor on other stuff and most of the other stuff gets done in 5 hours or less, I had high hopes that a hot and fast butt was the answer. Maybe it's due to fat content since butts are the fattiest thing I smoke; I've been wanting to do a beef chuck roast so I could compare since chuck is usually pretty fatty. If I spritz, it'll most certainly be a hot and fast cook since I'm not willing to stay up all night! This was one of the drivers for my thread on sous vide-like smoking - if I could put a butt on around 5 pm at 180°, I could spritz it hourly until 11 pm or so and then let it roll all night, then crank it up after breakfast to 225° to finish it up.

Update after having leftovers tonight: After a quick reheat via microwave, the butt has a nice light smoke flavor but still not what I expect or want on my butts, so some improvement over previous attempts but still much lighter than i want.

Per the title, everything is on sale, 18% off everything that's not already on sale of clearance. I've ordered a billows to go with the Signals I ordered a few weeks ago when it was on sale for 25% off. Also got the damper for the bellows as previously recommended here and the guru port adapter. I'm hoping the bellows can mount to my old style spare single dial damper control so I can use it with the cold smoker mounted in the guru port; I did get the guru port adapter since I plan on using it with the gravity feed smoker I have on order and that smoker has a guru port. I was going to also get the battery pack for the bellows but I couldn't find it on the site - hopefully, it's missing due to supply chain issues and will be available later; I'd like to be able to use the bellows without having to run an extension cord.

Hot and fast pork butt - 5.5 hours at 350° with hickory pellets in both the small MSR smoke pot and the KK cold smoker. Like the last butt i cooked, this one didn't stall - that's two turbo butts in a row. Both were bought at the same time.

I did my hot and fast pork butt yesterday; the uncooked butt was 9.5 lbs. I used B&B hickory pellets in both the cold smoker and the small MSR smoke pot. The smoke pot was buried in a mixture of B&B oak and hickory lump. After preheating for about an hour, I had lots of good smoke even before starting up the cold smoker. I took the butt out of the fridge, removed the cryovac, rinsed it off, and applied rub on the top and bottom; left the sides bare so I could compare smoke penetration on the rubbed vs. Non-rubbed surfaces. I took the butt directly out and put it in the KK, then stuck the smoking cold smoker in the guru port. The KK grate level temp was in the 350° range for the whole cook with some variation due to wind changes. Butt internal temp hit 205° in about 5.5 hours; I had lots of smoke for the entire cook. There was no stall (my previous butt was bought at the same time and it didn't stall either). I put the butt in a Pyrex dish, loosely foiled, and let it rest in the oven for an hour with the oven set on "warm" for about an hour, then pulled and dig in. Results: The bone slid right out and the meat pulled easily. It was moist and tender but not as quite as tender as my usual low and slow cook - can't say if that was the result of the hot and fast or this particular butt or some combination. The was a decent smoke ring but not quite as deep and pronounced as I usually get with low and slow cooks. I didn't see any difference in the smoke ring between the rubbed and un-rubbed surfaces but the rubbed sections did have a better bark. Once again, very little smoke flavor. I'll post picks in the misc. cooks thread. I did not spritz butt the meat was very close to fridge temp. As I've mentioned before, I'm only having this issue with pork butts; I'm getting good smoke flavor on beef, pork ribs, and pork loins, just not butts. I appreciate everyone's input on this here and in other threads but it all seems to be around generating smoke and general suggestions and I don't remember seeing any of those posts specifically talking about pork butts... So, is anyone getting a good, strong clean smoke flavor in pork butts out shoulders? Thanks!

I did my hot and fast cook yesterday; I'll post the result in the original "lack of smoke flavor" thread since it's a bit of-topic in this thread.

I have a cheap extruder but I rarely use it - it just doesn't seem to be worth the effort to me and it's a pain to clean after use. The resulting pasta has a really different texture than bought dry pasta and cooks very quickly - tasty too.

I was thinking the plug end of the probe cables are straight but they're not and they don't fit thru the port. The bent probe don't fit either but I just now straightened mine enough to go thru. It's been a long time since I did the same with my bbq guru probes but I think the Thermoworks probes bent a bit easier. I just stick them between the boards on my KK side tables up to the bend in the probe and carefully pulled the probes to straighten them.

What were you cooking and how long was the cook? I've only had this issue with low and slow pork butts; I've been happy with the smoke flavor on pretty much everything else I've smoked on the KK, but since butts are the only thing I do low and slow for 8 hours or more, I don't know if it's the lengthy cook in the 225* range or the meat or some combination. I'm planning on doing a 9.5 lb butt tomorrow at 350* or so and see how it goes. I already have the charcoal loaded in the KK with a small smoke pot filled with B&B hickory pellets buried and will also use the same pellets in the cold smoker. As a side note, the only seasoned oak I could find this spring when my Santa Maria grill was delivered was kiln dried. I grilled two 1-1/2" pork chops on the Santa Maria with that wood (no charcoal) last week and had more smoke flavor in those chops than I've been getting on my butts that are bathed in smoke for hours on the KK. That oak had been outside partially covered since I got it so it's probably picked up at least some moisture though.

That's the best color for the MK - it cooks way better than the other colors!