jdbower

I've been pleased with Costco's quality. Kirkland Signature (their home brand) seems to be consistently decent and the stuff they sell is often the best bang-for-the-buck model (one step below the top-of-the-line Kitchenaid, for example). I don't know that I'd get a membership just for mail order, but I do go a few towns over for Costco when there's a BJs and a Sams in my own town.

Here are the beef patties, but I wasn't able to find the prime rib. They do have buffalo prime rib but no word as to whether it comes with blue cheese dressing and celery sticks

So, can one prepare haggis in a ceramic cooker? We've got a few members from Europe, and some from the UK, but I can't remember any Scots off the top of my head. Either way, welcome and I'm sure you'll make some new friends even if most of us are across the pond.

If you love vinegar as much as I do you won't be disappointed! Chris Lilly's book has a lot of great recipes. I do a variant of his Western Carolina Pig Dip (page 224) and his Crisp Spicy Southern Mustard Coleslaw (page 76) is a great hit - but instead of mayo use horseradish mayo (I can find it by the mustard at my local supermarket). Remember, the best part about these recipes is that you can modify them to make them your own!

Re: Aluminum or wood

Normally I do fresh loins, less than a week old from Costco generally. I don't brine, just a dry rub in whatever flavor I'm in the mood for. Frozen I'd probably brine first to try to restore some moisture. I cook at 220F until I get the insides to about 195F - often I'll overshoot over night and have had success up to 205F internal temperature. My argument for pulled loin is that it may be dry but it pairs fantastically with a sauce. If you don't like BBQ sauce or don't like dry pulled pork as much as I do it may not be for you, but it may be worth an experiment. Otherwise I'd look at a tenderloin for pork "steaks" or roasts, but loin is also great sliced and braised with apple cider vinegar, soy sauce and slivered onions if you are unfortunate enough to have to cook inside

I do tenderloin as a roast, I do loin at 220F until I get to about 195. Depending on your tastes it could be construed as a bit dry compared to a butt, but I still find it excellent on a KK and it pairs perfectly with a touch of thin BBQ sauce. If you want a little more moisture when reheating, add some vinegar (white or apple cider) and water before heating.

I'd recommend a low and slow (anything around 220F or so), but my personal preference is a pulled pork loin rather than a butt. It's still a large cut of meat and shows off the KK's temperature control for about 16 hours or so, but I llike the results better since they're not as greasy and they go well with a thin vinegar sauce. That said, my wife prefers the butts/shoulders for the very same reason I dislike them - too bad she's not the one cooking!

Even without using it for temperature control, I love using my Stoker just as a remote thermometer since its accessible everywhere my network is. I even bought a second that's mounted under my oven so I can monitor my inside cooks as well

Might I suggest Moire? In the little picture I first thought it was a Moire effect from the compression before I realized it was two different tile colors - time to visit the old eye doctor! Congrats on the third, are you already planning the next one already?

You know, I don't think we actually have a "how do you use the forum" forum so I moved your post to what's mostly a catch-all so it'll get some attention Rather than changing the dropdown, if you want to hop right to the first unread post you can click on the yellow icon to the left of the topic name. That way you'll hop right to the new content and you can still read top-down.

What if we use Colgate?

Perhaps these will help you get things up and running

I found these on TVWBB:

I have the 23" set up for low-and-slow while the 19.5" is for high heat (for l&s I use extruded coconut fuel, high heat is lump). If I had to do it again I may have gone for two 23" grills in a similar setup; the 19.5" is a fine grill and fantastic if you're space constrained (for example, if it's going on a balcony in an apartment) but since I've got space I haven't found any downsides to the 23" other than being a bit more expensive. I think of it like my double oven. I never thought I'd want a second oven, and then I needed to cook two things at different temperatures. Once that happened I figured out that I could use one to keep things warm or put a light in there to use as a low temperature proofing box - all sorts of things came to mind. But hopefully I won't be in the situation I'm in now with my ovens, one is on the fritz and now I've only got the lower oven until my new one comes in.

I kind of figured that Bay Area was the greater San Francisco area - no want wants to live in Massachusetts... Yes, with a Stoker you close the bottom draft control. I leave mine open a bit during lighting but once I get the fire going I close it off. The top vent is cracked open just a tad. Depending on how hot you want it, maybe a crack and a half - if the temperature plateaus too early you'll probably want it open a little more, if it isn't stable you'll want to close it down a bit. There's a hole just under the lid on the right side for the probe wires.

Welcome aboard! U2PLT still posts here, including links to his latest creations like this one (admittedly from a while ago). Feel free to use our PM/Email to contact him but you may have better luck with his website.

Welcome aboard. I live in the Bay State, you must be nearby Excellent choice of colors, you'll love it so much you'll want another like me! Regarding the Stoker, it's pretty easy to set up and use - a 5CFM blower is probably enough but for my 23" I have a 10CFM (and I like it enough I'm getting another one for my kitchen to control a proofing box and to monitor my oven cooking). You can download StokerLog now and be fully prepared, but if you run into any snags we're here to help. For Lump Charcoal there is no better source than The Naked Whiz. However, most of the time I just end up using what's cheap and close - Cowboy from Lowes. BGE I think has Royal Oak lump which is a decent step up but not too expensive - if I had a BGE store nearby I would use it. Of course Extruded Coconut is great for low and slows but it's a bit hard to find these days. Cooking on a KK is, if anything, easier than the Weber I also previously had. The kettles are OK for high temp grilling, but can't hold a candle to a KK for low and slow - especially in Massachusetts winters. Another great book is Chris Lilly's Big Bob Gibson's BBQ Book - a fantastic read.

I use my cast iron skillet for deep dish pizza at ~500F, I'd imagine that it should work just fine as a stone. Of course, I do plenty of mid-temperature stuff in it between pizzas which help maintain the seasoning and I do rub a coating of olive oil on it before use (and after washing). What I'm uncertain about is whether it would retain heat as well as a stone, it may cause a searing effect (quickly cooking the outer surface of the pizza) and then cool off significantly producing a different texture to the crust, but that may be the texture you're looking for anyway.

I found a recipe for a fairly flavorful hot sauce (original source in the link). It's not just heat like some of the sauces with Death in their name, but it's hotter than most while retaining a fairly complex flavor. And since I grow my own Thai chili peppers it's a great way to use them As with most sauces, a day or two (or longer) will let the flavors permeate evenly. Thai-Talian Hot Sauce 1 cup distilled water 3 level Tbsp crushed roasted Thai chilies 5 tsp Red wine vinegar 1 tsp Balsamic vinegar 1/2 tsp Dark sesame oil 2 tsp Extra virgin olive oil 1 Tbs Soy sauce 2 tsp Fish sauce 3-4 Large cloves garlic 1/2 tsp Onion powder 1/2 tsp Sea salt 1 Add the ingredients to a blender and blend on medium until smooth. Stop the blender occasionally and push down the chili sauce that has been splashed onto the side of the blender carafe with a spatula. This will probably take about 5-10 minutes. When fully blended, remove the carafe and hold it between your hands. Swirl the contents against the side of the container to remove all the bubbles. That's all there is to it! 2 Put this into one of those 10 ounce bottles of store bought pepper sauce such as Tapatio hot sauce. It has a plastic stoppered mouth with a small shaker hole that is a great way to apply this sauce to your food. Just pour the store bought swill down the drain and wash the bottle out. You can reuse the same bottle for years. You should have some room left in the bottle, top it off with more distilled water. If the sauce is too thick once chilled, add more distilled water when there is room. Once mixed, keep the bottle of sauce refrigerated between uses. Shake before using.

For what it's worth, I use Living Cookbook 2008. It works well for me but the main reason I use it is because it was the first I found back with the 2005 version. It has an OK import feature from websites (you need to cut and paste from the website and then highlight the various sections, but it's better than nothing) and I can export to HTML (see example - not great for exporting a full cookbook but I'm working on some CygWin scripts for that). It also has a feature where it will back up the database on exit - I run it off a network drive connected to my server (which is automatically backed up) and I have a tertiary copy that gets backed up to my local PC on exit.

Re: Please keep your charcoal inside the firebox The dome temperature isn't what worries me, it's the temperature of the charcoal itself. When my dome temperature is at 300 I know the pit temperature is much, much higher. Since the firebox is designed to absorb and deal with all that heat I'm not concerned, but the internal walls of the cooker itself aren't. I would be far too nervous about the temperature at the exposed walls than the temperature at the dome.

Well, for one thing you can actually use the Stoker the same way you use a Guru - you can use the menu buttons to set the target temperatures so if you run into this issue again you can always get away with a manual Stoker setup. My first Stoker cook was like this just to see what it was like, after I hooked up the Ethernet port I wondered how the Guru guys managed What probably happened is that your Stoker is likely getting its IP address via DHCP. This is an address that typically your router hands out and your router only remembers it until it reboots - and it may forget after a certain timeframe. If you haven't had your Stoker powered on for a while the router probably just "forgot" which IP address to assign to it and picked the next available one. Since the Stoker should probably have an IP address you can remember you can do one of two things: You can set a static IP address in the Stoker itself, the problem here is that you should make sure it's outside the range of the rest of your computers. Often the router will hand out an address like 192.168.1.10 or 192.168.0.10 and higher. You could probably set the Stoker to 192.168.x.2 or 192.168.x.200 and not have issues - but it's best to check this in your router before setting it up. What I do is reserve a special IP address for my Stoker. If you log into your home router there should be a means to do this, something usually called DHCP Reservation or something similar. Here you can find the MAC and IP address of the Stoker and tell the router to always give the Stoker this IP and never give it to anyone else. I know this can be a bit confusing if you're not network-savvy, but if you let me know which model router you have I can try to dig up a manual online and give you some more exact directions.

Water pan? What's that? I haven't felt the need for one, but I have been tempted to use vinegar to add some flavor. The KK locks in enough moisture I doubt the water pan would be able to increase the humidity enough to make a difference and it burns steady enough the water's temperature flattening effect shouldn't matter. For foil, the only time I use it is if I care about the looks of things like wingtips - otherwise you end up steaming the meat instead of smoking it. Most of the time I go without entirely because I'm lazy that way.

The biggest issue with buying dough is the whole pre-planning part. The cheese lasts forever and I buy flour in 25 lb bags so fresh dough doesn't mean leaving the house