wilburpan

A terra blue KK 23" popped up on the Palm Springs Craigslist. http://palmsprings.craigslist.org/app/5088908702.html This could be it. The price is way below what one would normally price a used KK grill at. However. Please call the cops and let them deal with it. It's not worth getting hurt over a grill.

A quick followup: last night we had the leftover ribs for dinner. This time I took the marinated ribs, heated them up in the oven, brushed them with the sauce, and broiled them for a bit to finish them off. The marinated ribs were much better finished this way than what I did the day before. In terms of flavor, it would have been much closer had I done this with the marinated ribs yesterday.

Here’s one thing you should know about Serious Eats: J. Kenji López-Alt, one of the main writers for Serious Eats, was an editor at Cook’s Illustrated and one of the main publicizers of the reverse sear method back when it wasn’t well known. Her may not have invented it (and he’ll be one of the first to say that), but he certainly was one of the main reasons people started talking about it. So there’s your grilling props for Serious Eats.

The Amazing Ribs site says that outside of salt, flavors from a marinade only penetrate 1/8†or so. These ribs were certainly more than 1/4†thick. In addition, I’ve found that if you question their methodology, they are pretty quick to circle the wagons and call you an idiot. I had a discussion with Meathead one time about their method of “proving†that beer can chicken didn’t do anything to the taste. I wasn’t questioning their conclusions, just the fact that they didn’t do the test that would have been necessary from a scientific standpoint, which is to do a head-to-head comparison like I did with these ribs. Instead of discussing this, Meathead told me I didn’t understand the scientific method at all, and that he must know what he’s talking about because he had won awards. Eventually, he deleted my comments. As far as my ability to understanding the scientific method, for my day job I’m a pediatric oncologist, and I know how to design and evaluate clinical trials. Meathead seemed to think this was not of any importance. There is a lot of useful information on the Amazing Ribs website, but they seem to argue from authority fairly often. In terms of geeking out about food and cooking chemistry, I think that Serious Eats, Cook’s Illustrated, and Alton Brown are better. And Serious Eats covers grilling really well.

Here’s where we run into the limitations of photography insofar as it relates how food tastes like. Despite the visual differences, both racks were moist, and both had a nice bark on them. I went back to look at my original photo, and what looks like increased moisture on the dry rub rack of ribs is really differences in lighting conditions and reflections. The dry rub rack definitely looked more appetizing. But as I mentioned above, the marinated rack of ribs was handicapped in that I didn’t finish it off by brushing some sauce on and finishing on the grill at a higher temperature. If I had done that, the marinated rack would look a lot more delicious.

It’s not just this forum. Other forums using this software have similar issues with picture size. I tend to upload my photos to Flickr, and then link to the photos using the picture button. Flickr automatically generates the BBC code needed for the resolution that you want.

That looks great. Without knowing how it tastes, but knowing how much I like lamb, I’ll have to give that a try sometime. How much did your lamb shoulder weigh pre-cook?

Nice pile of ribs! How did you decide on how long to cook them? Bend test?

I’ve wondered whether marinating ribs vs. putting a dry rub onto them had an advantage in how the ribs turned out in terms of moistness, bark, or texture. For Father’s Day I was planning on cooking some ribs, so I thought I’d answer my own question by testing this out for myself. I’m mainly interested to see how the bark and consistency of the ribs might be affected. I assume that the flavor profiles will be different. On the marinade side, I followed this recipe from Saveur magazine. I’ve cooked this once before, using an oven. (Please forgive me. We lived in an apartment at the time and I had no grill.) It turned out quite well, despite the lack of real smoking action. I put together the marinade yesterday afternoon and they sat in the refrigerator overnight. Here are the ribs in the Ziplock bag, marinating. On the dry rub side, I put together a rub based on Aaron Franklin’s approach, with some modifications. This rub is mainly 2 parts fresh ground black pepper, 1 part kosher salt, with a little bit of each of the following: garlic powder, onion powder, chile powder (see below), paprika, dry mustard, and brown sugar. Here are the modifications. Instead of the chile powder, I used the spice mixture from the marinade recipe because it was on hand from yesterday, it has a good amount of ancho chile and cayenne in it, and I didn’t want to waste it. The brown sugar is an addition to his rib rub approach. Aaron Franklin says he doesn’t like to use sugar for low and slow cooks because of the chance of burning. He says to add the sugar for cooking chicken because those cooks are faster, and so there’s less chance of the sugar burning. He also cooks on an offset smoker. I think that with a kamado, burning the sugar in the rub isn’t as much of an issue because the temperature control in a kamado is so good. In any case, everyone should watch his video on making rubs. It’s really terrific. Here’s the dry rub ribs, ready to go. And here are the two racks, side by side in Smaug. When I bought the two racks, they were pretty much identical in size and weight. It looks like the overnight marinade caused that rack to swell and change shape a bit. Smaug decided he wanted to be at 260ºF today, so that’s what I’m cooking at. Updates to come, but I plan on just letting them sit for the next five hours or so until they are done. Here are the ribs at about the three hour mark. Interestingly, both racks are starting to look the same as far as consistency and texture of the surface (beyond the presence of the spices in the dry rub rib, or course). I have about two hours left. One other thing I’d like to mention. I know that I had said that I was cooking at 250ºF because that’s where Smaug settled himself. After I posted that, I dialed down the vents a bit, and Smaug dropped down to 225ºF, which is where I originally intended to be. Good boy, Smaug. Here’s the final product. The ribs pretty much sat in Smaug for about five hours. I only disturbed them to take the in progress picture above, and tested their doneness by the bend test. The dry rub rack is on the top, and the marinated rack is on the bottom. Here are some close up photos to give you all an idea of what the ribs looked like. Dry rub rack: And the marinated rack: The interesting thing to me is that aside from the fact that the dry rub rack has spices sitting on the surface, the surface of both racks of ribs are pretty much the same. They both developed a bark, and both developed that nice mahogany color. In other words, if I had sprinkled the marinated rack with some spices at some point during the cooking, I doubt I could tell which rack was which based on appearance alone. I should also mention that there was no problem with the sugar in the dry rub burning, despite Aaron Frankin’s concerns about burning sugar in a long cook. I do think that’s because of the excellent temperature control that Smaug provided. Sugar can’t burn if it doesn’t get above its scorch point. Kamado cooking FTW! Here’s a comparison of the cross sections of the two racks. The dry rub ribs are on top, the marinated one is on the bottom. Both racks developed a nice smoke ring. It may look like that the dry rub rib has more of a smoke ring than the marinated rib, but that’s really just these two particular ribs. At other points in the rack, the dry rub ribs had less of a smoke ring, and the marinated ribs had more. In terms of texture and bite, it was a wash. The only tip off (outside of flavor) that you were eating the dry rub rack was that you could feel the presence of the spices with your tongue, but the meat was otherwise identical in texture and moisture. Here’s the glamour shot, with the ribs brushed with a little bit of BBQ sauce (here’s the recipe, and it’s the best recipe for BBQ sauce I have ever encountered). Marinated ribs on top, dry rub on the bottom. In terms of flavor distribution in the meat, both methods were pretty equivalent. Despite what the Amazing Ribs website says, the flavor of the marinade seemed to have no problem penetrating the meat, and even though the rack was marinated overnight, there seemed to be no ill effects of the acid components of the marinade precooking the surface of the meat. Having said that, this wouldn’t be the first time that the Amazing Ribs folks have misapplied science. In terms of overall flavor, we liked the dry rub better, but not by much. Both racks were delicious. It wasn’t really like one rack was “better†than the other. It was more like preferring one BBQ restaurant’s ribs to another. I have to mention that the marinated ribs were handicapped in the flavor comparison, as the original recipe calls for the marinated ribs to be brushed with BBQ sauce and then finished off at a high temperature. I didn’t do this step because I wanted to see if there was a texture difference between dry rub and marinating ribs, and the finishing step would have confused that. I’ve made the marinated ribs before, as I mentioned, and they did turn out better with the last step, and the taste of the marinated ribs with and without the sauce clearly showed that it was meant to be cooked and served with the sauce. Not all ribs are meant to be served without sauce. My conclusion is that outside of the flavor profile, there isn’t much difference between cooking ribs with a dry rub and cooking ribs with a marinade. Overall, a dry rub is a simpler to assemble and apply, so there’s an advantage to using a dry rub from that standpoint. On the other hand, there may be some recipes where a marinade is the only reasonable option. I’m specifically thinking about Asian-style recipes where you’ll want soy sauce as a flavor base, and there isn’t a dry rub version of soy sauce that I know of. So if you’re worried that a recipe for ribs calls for a marinade, and that might not be “real BBQ†because you’re not sprinkling on a rub, don’t be. Good food is good food, regardless of the method you took to get there. I realize that this contradicts a lot of what Amazing Ribs has to say about dry rubs vs. marinades. Like I said, this wouldn’t be the first time that Amazing Ribs got their science wrong. Finally, my wife made a batch of her cowboy beans as a side. All you need to know about this dish is that the first step in her recipe says, “Cook six pieces of bacon.â€

I'm glad it worked for you! Im guessing you didn't find it too salty. I'm impressed that it worked even with the skin wet. I've been drying off the skin as much as possible before sprinkling the baking powder/salt mixture, so you taught me something. By the way, it's Wilbur.

Right on! Let us know how it works out for you. I would just sprinkle enough of the mixture to cover the skin of the leg quarters, like you were applying a rub. Patting the skin down with a paper towel before sprinkling helps, as does letting the leg quarters sit for a while before putting them on the grill.

I used an open bowl. I put some wings in the bowl and a proportionate amount of the salt/baking powder mixture, and tossed them around. Then I transferred them to a tray to rest before cooking, and did some more wings. Repeat until done.

I have, and it works great. I did that on the rotisserie chicken cook that I did recently. I made a mix of salt, baking powder, pepper and poultry seasoning, and sprinkled it on like a rub to cover the skin. It was great.

If it makes you feel any better, you’re not the only one to make that mistake. There were some people on the Kamado Guru website who did the same thing in using way too much of the salt/baking powder mixture. I did use 1 tablespoon of salt and 1 tablespoon of baking powder for 5-1/2 lbs. of wings. Your conversion of 0.5 teaspoon salt and 0.5 teaspoon of baking powder per pound of wings seems right. I actually think I could cut back even more on the salt/baking powder mix. I’ve done this trick on a whole chicken, and it works when I sprinkle on just enough to coat the skin, like what you would do with a BBQ rub when prepping ribs. The problem with wings is that if you were to do it this way, you’d have to lay out all the wings, sprinkle the salt/baking powder mixture over them, flip all the pieces, and sprinkle again. Tossing the wings with the salt/baking powder mixture is much faster, but more prone to using more than you need.

Yesterday I cooked some wings. I set up Smaug with the deflector, cooking indirect at 400ºF. I usually set up the deflector so that it is centered, and sits on the charcoal basket. Most of the cooks I’ve done with indirect cooking have the meat sitting in the middle of the grate. I loaded up the grill with wings, and needed every square inch of the main and upper grates for the amount of wings that I had. The wings that were at the back of the main and upper grates were more well done than the others. Some of them I had to toss because they were way overcooked. I know that the back of the grill tends to be hotter than the front part due to the vent being set towards the back. I was wondering if I should have pushed the heat deflector more towards the back to compensate for this. Do you set up the heat deflector on your grills more towards the back to compensate for the hot spot, or do you center it and keep the back of the grate clear of food that you don’t want overcooked?

It looks like this: I used the trick of tossing the wings with a 50/50 mixture of salt and baking powder to get really crispy skin. The wings sat for about 2 hours, and then I cooked them indirect at 400ºF for about 45 minutes, turning them over about halfway through. All done and ready to serve. You would swear that these wings were deep fried. We wanted to eat healthy, so we made a wing salad, for the fiber, you know. Just kidding! This is how we plated the wings. Everyone in my family likes different sauces, so we put the sauce on the wings individually right before eating them. And I grilled up some portobello mushrooms as a side. The best thing about this cook was at lunch yesterday, I was thinking about what I could cook on Smaug for dinner. Right then, my wife asked me, “What do you want to grill today?†It’s like she can read my mind.

That is going to be one very cool setup. Can’t wait for pictures when it’s all together.

生日快樂

Back in the spring I went to New Orleans for a meeting, and had the wonderful experience of meeting up with 5698k. Tonight’s dinner was in his honor. I picked up some salmon steaks. Not wanting to make the same buying mistake that I did last time I cooked salmon steaks, I asked how much each steak weighed. One pound each. That’s half a pound of fish per person if two people split a single salmon steak. Two salmon steaks were going to be more than enough for my family. When I met up with 5698k, he hooked me up with Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning. I tried it out on the salmon. As John Setzler would say, I used a liberal amount of Tony Chachere’s on the fish. Thanks, Robert! I should mention that 5698k also hooked me up with some Slap Yo’ Momma Cajun Seasoning, which I liked when I tasted it, but knew that it would be too spicy for my wife. Here’s the start of cooking. I loaded up the charcoal basket, lit it, and had all the vents wide open. I was up to steak searing temps in 15 minutes. A while ago, I saw a discussion on the Kamado Guru forum about how efficient kamado grills may or may not be compared to gas grills. I’ve always been of the opinion that Smaug is as efficient as a gas grill in terms of cooking steaks, in that I could go from lighting the charcoal to steak searing temps in about 15 minutes, which was about as long as I would need for my old gas grill to heat up the grates before cooking steaks. The suggestion was made that those who felt this way really didn’t know what they were talking about. All I can say is that if your kamado doesn’t hit steak searing temps this fast, it’s not my fault your grill isn’t as good as a KK. (For the humor-impaired: I’m kidding! I’m kidding! But it really only took 15 minutes for Smaug to hit full blast for this cook.) I think direct grilling fish is pretty easy. Get the grill as hot as you can, make sure the grates are as clean as you can make them, put the fish on, and wait until they release easily from the grill. Then flip. The hardest part is waiting long enough. It was about 4 minutes for the first side, and however long it took me to go inside to sauté a bunch of spinach with garlic for the second side. This is how the salmon ended up. My wife came up with a cool side dish. Asian pear slices wrapped in prosciutto. It was delicious. And here’s the final product. Salmon steak, spinach sautéed with garlic, and the prosciutto-wrapped Asian pear slices. It was great. The salmon was cooked perfectly, and the Tony Chachere’s was a great match. One of the nice things about salmon steaks is that you always get some of the belly part of the salmon, which is the thinner lower part. If you’re a sushi fan, you might know the difference between regular tuna sushi and toro (fatty tuna). The belly part of a salmon steak is salmon toro. So good. You don’t always get that part of the salmon if you buy a salmon fillet. Thanks again to Robert (5698k) for hooking me up with the Tony Chachere’s. It’s great stuff.

I thought the KK grill that could be used with the Steak Champ already existed.

I’m so happy you have your grill in hand and can start cooking. I remember the wait for my grill. Not an experience I would want to repeat, but in the end it was all completely worthwhile.

Oh, my goodness. That is a beautiful set up you have there. I had the pleasure of being able to go to Singapore for a meeting last year. The food was outstanding, and I really enjoyed my time there,which was much too short. Couple that with the ability to cook on a KK, and I don’t think there are many places that would be better to live in.

Here’s a video of Smaug's rotisserie in action, if you’re curious. https://flic.kr/p/tioVWQ On the subject of spatchcock vs. rotisserie, I’d vote for rotisserie any day. In fact, I’d vote for roasting a chicken the conventional way over spatchcock if for no other reason than I like my roasted whole birds to look like roasted whole birds. Without having tried spatchcocking a chicken myself, my results with conventional roasting in a KK grill and using a rotisserie are such that I can’t imagine how much better spatchcocking might be. I understand the reason for spatchcocking, in that it helps with the different cook situation and times required for white meat, dark meat, and to get crispy skin. I’m just saying that in my hands, that hasn’t been an issue.

Besides reverse searing and two zone cooking as described above, my main reason for setting up the basket splitter for this cook was to control and reduce flare ups. On gas grills that have a rotisserie attachment, the heater is often placed to the side of the rotisserie, usually mounted to the back of the grill. Since the cooking and spinning pretty much guarantees a steady steam of juice and fat dripping off of the chicken, if the entire charcoal basket was used, the flare ups might get out of control.

Too many weekends recently where I either was working or out of town. It's amazing how much cooking you miss when you're not really free for the weekend.