jdbower

There are two big issues with low and slow direct cooks. First you've got less even heat, this may mean you need to turn the cook in the middle or you could have the bottom of the meat charred while the top is still under done. This could be a good thing if you've got people who like "burned to a crisp" meat and others who like "bloody as hell" meat. Second, the drippings can make the fire difficult to control. Flareups at high temps don't matter much (well, unless they endanger one's eyebrows), but low and slow is a constant battle with keeping the fire under control. Dripping flammable fats and non-flammable juices don't help, but it can be done if you need it to. The only direct I've done is a pork tenderloin. It came out well, but it was at moderate temps and not true low and slow. The bottom was singed nicely (which I liked) while the top was untouched (the wife liked that).

There's a report of a Gen II running 85 hours on a single fueling, the really scary part is that Dennis STILL isn't happy with the quality. If this is the bad stuff, I can't wait to see how the good stuff performs!

One more I forgot, when you open the lid the Guru probe sees the outside air and turns the fan on high thinking there's a massive temperature drop. Whenever you open the dome you should disconnect the Guru fan or otherwise pause it - I think the DigiQ II has a lid open detector of some sort but I don't know how it works.

Which damper did you adjust, the top or the bottom? With a Guru/Stoker you should have the lower closed and the upper only needs to be cracked - let the fan do all the work. Some reasons why your temps climbed after you added the meat: 1. If the lower damper was open there may just have been more airflow through it for whatever reason. It's also possible that a very open top damper can allow air to leak in. 2. Opening the lid lets an inrush of O2 in, this can cause more coals to ignite and increase the temps shortly. 3. The KK may have become fully heatsoaked about that time, after a few hours a minor temp spike isn't uncommon because the walls of the cooker no longer absorb much heat at all. 4. If you've checked the dome thermometer it may be different than the pit probe, either through calibration issues or just because the pit probe is closer to the flames. 5. Drippings from the pork may ignite on the coals, or cause other coals to ignite. Whatever the reason (except for #1 and maybe #5) the Guru should compensate and back off the airflow to smother the fire a little more. I'll let others chime in on their direct vs. indirect experiences, I'd imagine the results would be different but the Guru should be able to maintain temps as long as the fat doesn't drip too much.

Customs is fun, back in the early days my company sold some stuff to a telco in Central America. Since the contract mentioned dates and lead times we decided to test things out by sending a pallet of stuff down. We figured bricks the same weight as the equipment would be a good choice, roughly the same size and weight so if it takes a week to get through customs it should be about the same for our stuff. It ended up taking well over a month and just about all the bricks were smashed as customs looked for the drugs or whatever we were smuggling (who ships bricks internationally?). To make matters worse we got on a list and when we shipped the real equipment they drilled holes into the boxes to inspect it. And by into I mean through. And by boxes I mean the boxes and the enclosed equipment. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gear that now had a "Guru Port" built into it... Luckily we've wised up since then and use local importers so things go much more smoothly.

Knowing a little something about the habitat of the animal ribeyes are SUPPOSED to come from I wonder what exactly you bought at that seafood store...

Congrats! I kept getting weird reactions from people when I told them I got a grill in the beginning of winter, if only they knew how well it cooks even in sub-freezing temperatures!

It depends. In the US most of the time Dennis will order liftgate service where they'll be responsible for unloading. It depends on the driver and the carrier's insurance whether you'd be able to get on the truck or touch it since it's still their responsibility, my guess is that most would rather have you watch in case you get hurt. I was able to save a bundle on shipping because I have the forklift, in that case it was my responsibility to get the crate off and the driver didn't do a thing (granted, I didn't ask him to). I'm guessing each country has its own hurdles, island nations are probably the worst.

A discourse on thighs and monkey pimps A minor diversion spawned by this post:

I can buy the iodine theory, but I think I'll group it in with wine tasters. I'm sure some people have palates well-trained enough to distinguish some of the subtleties of these flavors but the vast majority are likely faking it to seem more cultured So instead of using Kosher salt people are really just using non-iodized salt. And because Kosher salt has unique properties outside of a fully dissolved brine it's useful to have on hand anyway so there's not much reason to stock fine crystal non-iodized salt. Sea salt would also suffice for the iodine-sensitive, but it's usually more expensive and the subtleties of the sea salt flavor would likely be lost (although if you're able to discern the iodine in regular salt maybe not...). For those interested in trivia, Kosher salt is not salt that's been slaughtered under the supervision of a Rabbi - it's no more Kosher than table salt. The UK term "Koshering Salt" is much more appropriate since one of the uses is to rub on meat to draw out the blood. The large crystals don't dissolve like finer table salt crystals would and it helps the meat to become Kosher.

Just remember to empty it out and take off the lid for all you boys whose equipment isn't big enough to handle a KK Removing the top not only lightens the load but also lowers the center of gravity to make it more stable. It comes with ropes around the feet so you can slip in some 2x4's to lift it as well.

I've noticed that a lot of people specify Kosher salt in their recipes and I was wondering about the reasoning. Kosher salt seems to be non-iodized large crystal sodium chloride, essentially the same as table salt (with the possible exception of iodine). I can understand Kosher salt in rubs, the large crystals will prevent it from dissolving completely. But do people who use it in a brine use it for a reason or just because it tends to be sold in larger boxes (in which case, is it really cheaper if you consider that 1Tbs of salt is about 2Tbs of Kosher salt)? Just curious, I grabbed some a while ago and tend to use it for things where the subtle flavors of sea salt would be lost.

Sanny is alive! It is a little hard to have pity on someone who lives here, but I can certainly approve of the Tabasco sauce reference

My boys at the IEEE had reported on this over a year ago, maybe it'll be closer to reality today. For those interested in the original paper, you can check this out. It's interesting stuff, but it may be a while before a) it becomes powerful enough to power a laptop, laptops become efficient enough to use it or, most likely, c) a combination of the two.

In my experience there are two types of laptop batteries, those that don't last nearly long enough and those that almost last long enough

It may not be THAT much colder (usually only a few degrees different), but there's a lot more snow and I'm pretty sure it gets darker a lot earlier than it did in NJ. Today official sunset was 4:29 here, but 4:47 in Howell - it may only be 18 minutes but it sure seems to get darker faster after sunset. That's OK, it means that in the summertime I'll have plenty of daylight. I've been lucky enough to have only needed to visit Stockholm in the summer months, there the sun kind of gets low around 11pm but it never fully sets. It's really odd eating at an outdoor cafe in broad daylight at 10pm. Of course it's gorgeous there (about 70F all the time) but all the Swedes decide to take that month off to head to Spain - don't they know they should do that in the winter when it's 40 below and you get a peep of daylight for lunch?

It's about the size of a large power brick. It's two-prong with a fixed connector (having a passthrough outlet or three built into it would be nice...) but I have plenty of 6" "extension" cables (liberators) I can use. It measures 3"x4"x1.75" but I'd imagine there's a lot of dead space inside if you want to crack the case to save space. JB, I'm sure I won't need the Stoker by the time I'm done getting things set up because I'll probably be dead before I stop buying gadgets and changing things around Of course, one of the downsides of this solution over the WiFi solution which is not evident now is that not bathing the KK area with WiFi can impede the use of laptops. I've got an EVDO wireless broadband card so I'm not too concerned for myself, but it's something for some people to consider.

How is this BBQ relevant? Stoker users will understand I was contemplating several methods for getting Ethernet out to my Stoker. One was just running a hardline Ethernet cable, I've got a temporary solution run now, but the problem is that my KKs currently wander between my driveway and my garage (where they hide from the snowplow). Not only would a permanent outside run be tough (I'd probably need to wait until spring to dig a trench) but finding a good location is difficult without a dedicated patio. Not to mention that finding a good weatherproof Ethernet jack is difficult in and of itself so I'd need to build a protected pedestal. And let's not get into the security issues with an outside-accessible RJ45... Wireless is an option. There are wireless game adapters out there that can turn a hardline Ethernet port into a WiFi adapter. I got one, but not only does it not accept the level of security on my network but even when I dumb down the security the range isn't long enough. I could try putting a wifi repeater for the other end of the house, but then it hit me. I need power for the Stoker, and I'd need another plug for this WiFi adapter. If I need power out there anyway, why not an Ethernet Powerline Adapter? I got an XE103G kit of two adapters and they work great. My router is between 75' and 100' from the power jack I use for outside, then I run through a 50' extension cable and there are two surge suppressors in between - but the Stoker comes up just fine through it. Granted, 85Mbps is a bit much for Stoker access but I'd rather have too much than too little. I think I can just add another wherever I need an Ethernet port, so that could help when I put set top boxes around the house. About the only thing I wonder about that I can't test is how it would affect some home automation technologies. Of particular interest are X10 signals (strictly powerline modulation) and Insteon signals (a hybrid of powerline and RF signaling). Either way this is a much more elegant solution to my 250' spool of CAT5.

I've got a report that it's getting closer, here's a picture I received from the Seychelles Navy. OK, a Photoshop expert I'm not

Does it really count as cooking when you've got a fully cooked ham you're heating? Fresh ham is hard to find in my normal grocery stores so I used a spiral cut hickory smoked pre-cooked ham. First of all, I was at Lowes looking for a spool of CAT5 cable, they were out but I found a 250' spool of pre-made cable which can probably be useful for a lot of things. Most notably running it down the bulkhead to my basement where my router is. It gets dark, and cold, pretty early up here so I'm always looking for ways to stay inside. I used StokerLog to remotely manage the cook; I can probably get away with about 15-30 minutes outside if I need to. Yes, I really need to do something about my "BBQ cart" I smoked it at 275 (indirect) for a bit, but I was using StokerLog's neat ETA (Eating Time, Approximately) feature so I adjusted the temps to finish around 8pm for dinner. I ended up around 325 which gave the first few slices a nice crisp, it tasted like really lean bacon and was delicious with the double hickory flavor. Even better, my wife doesn't like that texture so they were all mine. Inside was still juicy so she was also happy, especially when I heated the included glaze packet as a dipping sauce.

Corned Beef/Pastrami I was in the store the other day and saw corned beef (Boston has a lot of the Irish-Americans who spawned the dish so it's a year-round item). I had spaced a bit and forgot that smoked corned beef is pastrami so the experiment wasn't quite as novel as I had hoped. It came out OK, but it would have been much better if I had a meat slicer or the patience to cut it a bit thinner. Sorry, it was cold and I was too lazy to get my tripod so most of the pictures didn't come out. Cooked at about 300 for several hours (sorry, didn't take notes) until I reached 160 internal temp and, as an Irish dish, I figured some whiskey smoke was in order so I used some Jack Daniels smoke pellets.

Maybe it's an East Coast thing, in NJ they sell a "London Broil" cut which I believe to be a top round roast, I haven't checked here in MA if there's a similar cut.

The BBQ Guru is a nice product, it's very clean, feature rich, and professional. The Stoker, on the other hand, reminds me of a college roommate's computer that was running in a Styrofoam cooler filled with mineral oil to keep it cool. The Stoker has two features that make it unique: 1. An Ethernet port 2. An open architecture With these two you can do a lot of interesting stuff. Using the buttons to program the Stoker works, but the web interface is much easier. Even better than the web interface is Amir's very popular StokerLog which gives you the ability to graph your cook and even send yourself emails periodically. For people interesting in rolling their own code, I found this site which gives a wealth of information including that it runs on the TINI platform, the root password is "tini", and this post listing how to get into logging mode from the telnet prompt (although the astute StokerLog observer can probably see these commands be executed). There's also the Stoker Timers program which also allows for email alerts and has other functionality that I have yet to fully explore. Anyone know of any other interesting tools? Anyone have any of their own home-grown utilities that they've written?

I was at Lowes the other day and found some Grate Chef Fire Starters. They're sealed so they're not really suspect to being wet and inside is a hot-burning liquid paraffin of some sort. Just one in my charcoal basket and the extruded coconut lit up. Usually it takes a few attempts in my no-name chimney starter to get a fire going so I'm impressed. I don't know how much my Stoker helped as well, the constant airflow certainly doesn't hurt on startup.

Glad it fits, but you are of course required to post pictures once you get one. Some measurements are easier to make than others so I may be off by an inch or two, if something looks tight or just wrong I can doublecheck to make sure (I should probably roll it against a wall to make this measurement more precisely). Since I took off 20" from the measurement in question I think it would make just a minor difference in your plans Now the only measurement that should be larger on the 19.5" is the height of the bottom of the damper which is observable in the pictures.