jmagaram

Thanks for all the suggestions. Still learning to control the temp and undershot this time. Cooked at around 310. Skin not crispy. Threw the pieces on later at high temp to crisp them up slightly. Did not get any flare-ups. I'm wondering why I didn't get those flare-ups. Did I get lucky? Is the fire too far below? Or maybe with not much air coming into the grill unlike some gas grills the fire couldn't get raging.

Not sure. I moved the thermoworks probe and now they are nearly identical. I don't have it firmly secured. I didn't buy one with an alligator clip since I didn't think it would fit through the hole in the side of the grill.

Live blow by blow coverage here. I put the chickens on. Grate temp is 345 according to my Thermoworks. The TelTru says only 260. Something must be wrong because there is such a huge difference. When I open it up I'll check to see where the probe is. Maybe it is touching metal or the edge. All my past cooks the temp has gotten higher than I wanted so I'm taking precautions today, like letting it come up to temp for 1 hour and keeping vents pretty closed down.

I'm heating up my KK right now and plan to cook 2 spatchcock chickens. I made a chicken using indirect heat a few days ago and it was tasty but the skin wasn't that crispy. My recipe from Cooks Illustrated calls for direct heat and that is what I want to try. I'm heating it up to around 400 (guessing here what "medium hot" means). I plan to put the chicken on skin side up on the MAIN grate for about 15 minutes and then skin side down to finish it off. I assume I should keep the lid closed the whole time and am worried about flare ups. A few questions... Do flare ups happen on this grill, or is the main grate high enough over the coals that it doesn't happen? Should I put it on the top grate instead? I have a basket splitter. Should I be using that? I can imagine cooking it indirect at the beginning over the indirect side and toward the end, after a bunch of the fat has rendered, move it over to the direct side where presumably there will be less fat to cause flare ups. Not sure I can fit 2 chickens over the indirect side. Sent from my 2081CTO using Tapatalk

Absolutely amazing! Followed recipe from... http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/patrick-and-gina-neely/bbq-beef-ribs-recipe.html Check out photos at... http://1drv.ms/1jhgrUZ The glaze was supposed to have apple juice but I didn't have it. Used orange juice instead.

I'm sure you know how this ended. See the photo. Where are the other food groups?! Where is the balance?! I need a sponsor - someone to call in moments of weakness.

I received my KK a couple days ago. Made chicken the first night and beef chuck yesterday. I have more leftovers in the fridge than I know what to do with. So today when I started getting excited about possible cooks - seared steak, ribs, spatchcock chicken - I realized I don't need any more food and might have to wait a day or two before using the KK again. My heart started beating fast, shortness of breath. Like a panic attack. Withdrawal symptoms. So here I am sitting in my car in the parking lot of Whole Foods debating whether to go in and buy those meats. Or should I resist the urge and wait a couple days? Help!

I would love to do that. But the web site won't let me easily upload photos. I worked at Microsoft for 10 years and am a programmer and pretty technical. First I am limited to only 500kb or something like that which is a very low image quality. For marketing purposes maybe you should pay more to allow us many megabytes of storage. A single high resolution photo is a few megabytes. Second the web site won't automatically scale down my 5mb files to an acceptable size. So when I try to upload it tells me the picture is too big. Do I need to first load my photo into a photo editor to downsize it? Basically I can't figure out how to upload photos without a big hassle. If you could provide step by step instructions from the PC I'd do it.

Here you go... Looks beautiful! And a close up of the tile...

My son helped me cook. He was so excited about the whole thing and very curious. He was the one in the video asking about grill marks. For anyone who can't see the video, here are a few photos: The grill on my deck: Close up of the Dark Autumn Nebula: Final beer can chicken:

The thermometer comes with a metal springy thing on the probe. I'm not sure what this is for. Can I just take it off and stick the thermometer through the hole until the back face of the dial rests on the tile?

Got the grill today. It arrived around noon. Had some stress getting it from my sidewalk to the backyard since a 700lb crate can be quite intimidating and some steps were involved. I arranged for 3 movers to help and they arrived on time. They moved it in the crate using a dolly. We had it uncrated and set up within a couple hours. I wasn't sure exactly what the color would look like in person and I am thrilled. It is gorgeous. Amazing quality. I was so excited to cook and share the experience that I invited a foodie friend of mine over along with his partner. Kind of hectic getting all the boxes unpacked, teak shelf put in place, charcoal out of the mail-order box, batteries in thermometer, recycling all the packing material, cleaning up the kitchen, and preparing the food. My wife is a bit sick today but my son was excited to help and learn about it. We got going on the beer can chicken recipe I selected - making a rub and glaze. I have almost no experience with charcoal grills and wasn't sure exactly what pieces of the grill went where, but eventually figured it out. My neighbor looked over the fence and was intrigued. So I gave him a quick tour of the grill. Got the grill lit and it heated up fast. Too fast actually - had a little trouble bring it back down. In addition to the chicken we decided to cook a couple steaks. I wanted to sear them at the end but forgot that you can't use the KK at high temperatures the first time you use it, so I settled for cooking it at a moderate temperature with the chicken. My son threw some wood chunks on the coals and we put the food on. My friend arrived while the food was cooking and it was fun showing him how the thing works. I made a short video of the entire process and end result. The chicken was amazing. The steaks were pretty good too. Wonderful bonding time with my son. Everyone had a great time. A new adventure! Video of the first cook. http://1drv.ms/1j6EDJz

I didn't understand why many probes have that 90 degree bend but now I do. Good suggestion on the other probe models. I didn't see them. I just stuck with the ones labeled "smokehouse" and the high temperature armor seemed like a smart idea in case I ever wanted the temperatures to go up really high or in case of user error. I haven't done much BBQ before. I assume that if I'm using a probe it will be at low temperatures in which case the probes you suggested will work great. If I'm searing at a very high temp I probably won't be using a probe - just sear till enough crust and browning. I can imagine cranking up the temperature at the end of a long chicken cook to crisp the skin, but don't really know yet.

I'm waiting for my KK to arrive. I've ordered the Thermoworks TM8060 with a couple probes. The probes have a 90 degree angle and I've read they need to be bent straighter to fit through the temperature probe opening in the KK. What angle do they need to be to fit through without a lot of scratching and forcing? I want to get them bent prior to the grill arriving so when it does I'll be 100% reading to get cooking. I (actually my contractor) plan to bend them with a torch and vice and want to bend them the minimum necessary to avoid damaging the probes. If you have any suggestions about how to bend them too that would be helpful.