wilburpan

You’re welcome, although I’m not sure what I did to deserve the compliment.

Just in case you haven’t seen this, this is the prime rib roast I made last year. http://komodokamadoforum.com/topic/5080-post-christmas-prime-rib-roast/

It is really simple. Essentially, you’re doing a big reverse sear. Most of the low temp part was around 200ºF, bumping up to 250ºF at the end.

I think the biggest factor in the success of this cook besides using a KK grill was salting the meat ahead of time, and applying the rub afterwards. 

I mention in that writeup that I’m not sure if I would use the rosemary and thyme again because the herbs got burned off during the sear, but I think I actually would use the rosemary and thyme again anyway. And I would definitely not forget to make a sauce from the drippings the next time.

I really like that light reflection, too!

And that’s coming from someone who ordered a matte pebble tile for my KK grill.

I’ve never had a low and slow go out on me in the middle of the cook because of ash buildup. I have closed down the lower vent so far that the fire went out when I was playing around with vent settings.

When I got up, I walked past my iPad, which had the Pit Pal app running and logging the cook, and remembered I had food on the grill. Then I realized that the iPad was showing a notification that said "error communicating with stoker". I went outside to find the stoker completely turned off! The irrigation had come on at 6 am and the other device I had plugged into the grill outlet got wet and tripped the gfci. I checked the log in the iPad and it had been off for about 4 hours! I popped the grill open to have a look:

image.jpeg

So the device that I used to insure my cook, ended up hindering my cook. Had I set the grill for natural draft it would have held the temp just fine, but I added an extra moving part, and it backfired. With the stoker the grill is closed up too tight to draft naturally, so the grill was down to about 150. 

Well, here’s the glass half-full side: folks into cold-smoking salmon and other foods would kill to have a kamado that could hold temp at 150ºF for four hours.

Here's the conversation I had with many of my friends after Smaug arrived.

Friend: How much did your new grill cost?

Me: I DON'T CARE.

Friend: What do you mean?

Me: [Gives him a rib or some pulled pork to eat.]

Friend: Ohhhhhhh. Got it.

Great job!

Right on!

For future reference, here’s what I do to get Smaug to a given setting.

High heat/steak searing cooks: Light a full basket of charcoal in as many locations as I can, with the bottom vent fully open. Leave the lid up for 5 minutes. Use tongs to spread out the lit charcoal lumps over the top layer as evenly as possible. Place my grates in, close the lid, and open the top vent as much as possible. After 10 minutes, I should be able to hit 500ºF or more, which makes 15 minutes altogether.

Low and slow cooks: Light a full basket of charcoal in just one spot, with the bottom vent open about 1/8â€. Leave the lid up for 5 minutes. Place the deflector and grates in, close the lid, and open the top vent as much as needed for my target temperature. Here’s where spending an afternoon calibrating your vent settings really helps. For Smaug, for 250ºF, it’s 1/4 of a turn or less. For 300ºF, it’s 1/2 turn, and the bottom vent open about 1/4â€. For 350ºF, it’s 1 turn. Your settings will probably be close, but different. Wait 15 minutes, and see where the grill settles out at, and adjust vents as needed. Heat soak for 1 hour.

I can routinely get Smaug from unlit to 600ºF in 15 minutes or less. What you’re seeing is the increased efficiency of a KK grill compared to your KJ grills in action.

If you need to heat soak, you will have to wait longer than you’re used to as well. For low and slow cooks, or indirect cooks like duck at 375ºF, I’ll let Smaug go for an hour.

You will also probably need to get used to smaller vent settings than you’re used to as well. These vent settings might seem ridiculously small — for low and slows, I’ll have the bottom vent open only 1/8†or so for a target temperature of 200-250ºF. But they work. Again, that’s the KK grill’s efficiency in action.

Those short ribs look amazing. Beef ribs are one thing I haven’t tried yet, and I’m hoping my first attempt will be half as good as this dish!

Just for future reference, what temperature did you use, and how long did it take your ribs to cook?

The breakdown is as follows 

 

24" Big Joe

 

452 sq" Main grate included on delivery

271 sq" (60% more grilling) expander rack not included on delivery

723 sq" total grilling space

Bosco, do you have the Big Joe expander rack? I think you might be a little generous in the expander rack size. I remember seeing the Big Joe expander rack, and to my memory, the KK 23†upper grate was bigger.

On the Kamado Joe website, they don’t specify how many square inches the expander rack is. The Big Joe spec sheet says this:

Dimensions ........................... 50 in Wide x 54 in High x 31 in DeepCooking Surface .................. 24 in Diameter/452 sq inw/Grill Expander .................. XXX square inches

The ad copy for the KJ grill expander says this:

Add up to 60% more cooking surface to your grill with the Kamado Joe Grill Expander.

That “up to 60% more†seems a bit deliberately vague to me. Why not just state the area of the grill expander? My guess is that the 60% more grill space may apply to the KJ Classic, since it’s easier to be 60% more of a smaller grate than a bigger grate.

I should also mention that if you have the basket splitter set up with the half circle piece, you effectively have the same sort of set up as the Divide and Conquer system.

I do have the rotisserie bracket mounted all the time. You can put the right shelf on without taking the bracket off.

There's a picture of my basket splitter set up in this post: http://komodokamadoforum.com/topic/5415-rotisserie-chicken-on-smaug/

Splitter for the 23" or the 32"? For Smaug, the vertical piece goes in the middle, and the half circle piece sits on the ring halfway up from the bottom.

That’s terrific news! Looking forward to your report on the delivery.

I’m so happy your KK grills got to you safe and sound. If you haven’t opened them yet to get to the stuff packed inside, you’re still in for a real treat.

And there’s only one thing better than the anticipation and delivery of a new KK grill, and that’s putting them to use for cooking a fantastic meal.

Quoting, because I can’t think of a better way to say this.

Great looking dinner! I love seafood of any type.

Any reason you didn’t cook the shrimp right on the grates? It looks to me like they were large enough so that you wouldn’t have to worry about them falling through the bars of the grate.

Those ribs look terrific!

I'm following this with interest!  The lack of ash so far is really impressive.  I'm not sure what the upper and lower ash catchment is all about, but I'll find out once I help Bosco set up his new grills!

I’ve found that ash and other debris tends to collect in two areas in a KK grill. The obvious area is falling through the charcoal basket to the bottom of the grill. The other is around the little ledge around the perimeter of the charcoal basket. You can see this in the very first picture that Charles posted in this thread.

The other important thing is that this shows a clear advantage to the KK grill design as opposed to other ceramic grills. Because of the way the shield is designed, as long as ash isn’t piled up around the front area of the bottom of the grill, air will continue to flow through unobstructed. And because of the height of the shield, it’s going to take a lot of ash to make that sort of impact.

In a KJ/BGE type of kamado, air enters through the bottom vent, through a rectangular passage, and then up through the fire basket. The height of that rectangular passage isn’t very tall compared to the gap that the KK heat shield makes, and so would be more prone to clogging during a long cook, or if you’re not keeping up with clearing ash out the bottom of a KJ/BGE grill.

For me, I use an old 2†paint brush for sweeping the ash down and out the grill. Because the bristles of the brush are densely packed, not much ash escapes the brush, and I think it’s gentler on the inside surfaces of the grill. Not that a KK grill needs babying in that way, but it makes me feel better.

A little while ago I asked about whether cooking ribs on the lowest grate position was feasible or not. Yesterday was my younger boys birthday, and we did a big rib cook. Here’s what happened. 
 
Mission: cook eight racks of baby back ribs without a rib rack. This was the biggest rib cook I’ve done so far. When I got back from the store, I realized how much area eight racks of baby backs covers. Luckily, it was a nice day out. Here’s my prep station.
 

 
The recipe was pretty much what I’ve done before. Aaron Franklin-style DIY rib rub, rub some olive oil on the ribs, and then put rub all over.
 
Now it was time to load up Smaug. I lit the charcoal, put the diffuser plate on the charcoal basket, and let Smaug settle out. He wanted to be at 210ºF yesterday. I put two racks on the searing grate. I should note that there’s enough room under the searing grate for the diffuser plate, but putting a drip pan under the searing grate would have been pretty tight. I didn’t use a drip pan for this cook.


 
Then three racks on the main grate.


 
And the last three racks on the upper grate.


 
I let the ribs go for about 6 hours, turning up the heat for the last hour to 250ºF. It was suggested before that I rotate the racks between the grates, but I didn’t do that. I used the bend test to check for doneness.
 
Dennis keeps complaining that I stopped posting money shots. That’s only  because sunset comes quickly at this time of the year. So here’s a money shot with the flash on my phone. Now you know why I don’t like posting money shots taken after the sun goes down.


 
And here are the ribs. These are the ribs from the main grate and the searing grate. The kids ate the ribs from the upper grate before I could get a picture under better light.





The ribs were great, as always. You could tell that the ribs on the searing grate were cooked a bit more than the ribs on the main and upper grates, which is what you might expect since they were closer to the fire, but they really weren’t cooked more by much. Basically, the ribs from the top two grates were just about perfect, and the ribs from the searing grate were at the fall-off-the-bone state. In the picture above, you can see that the rack on top of the platter broke in half as I tried to get it off the grate. That rack came from the searing grate.

One thing I considered doing is placing the heavier racks on the searing grate to account for the searing grate being closer to the fire, but I forgot to do that when loading up Smaug. Based on this cook, I would think about doing that in the future, but that’s getting towards BBQ OCD territory.

In any case, I would consider this a success. Doing low and slow cooks on the searing grate still would be my last choice for a low and slow, but it’s good to know that it’s doable.

FWIW, I’ve never roasted a whole bird of any sort directly in a pan, even in a conventional oven. I’ve always found some way to raise the bird off the bottom of the pan, whether it was with a roasting rack, on a bed of vegetables, or some improvised method (you can build some impressive structures with aluminum foil and chopsticks ).

Likewise, the times I’ve cooked whole birds on Smaug, I’ve placed them on the main grate, with a drip pan underneath to catch drippings if needed.

Either way, I think getting the bottom of the bird exposed to the heated air gives you a better result, especially with how the skin on that part of the bird turns out. That’s one reason why rotisserie cooks with whole birds are so good.

Okay, back to the whisky talk.

Thanks for the input! We did another headcount of our guests, and I think I’ll try doing three on top, three on the main grate, and two on the bottom. If the two on the bottom don’t come out good, my family will eat them. The other six racks should be more than enough to serve our guests.

I am mainly doing this instead of the skewering thing because I am curious to see what is going to happen. I also am going to place a thermometer on the low rack to see how much difference there is between the low rack and the dome thermometer at 250ºF. 

We’re having a bunch of people over this weekend. I’ve been asked to make ribs. I’m anticipating that I’ll need eight racks altogether. 

I’ve piled six racks of ribs on the main and upper grate of Smaug, but there’s not enough room for an additional two racks. I won’t have time to go out to get a rib rack before this weekend.

Has anyone cooked ribs on the lower grate of a KK grill? I’ll be using the heat deflector, of course, and plan to set Smaug at around 225-250ºF.