wilburpan

That’s terrific news! Keep up updated, and I’m looking forward to hearing the reports.

When we were first looking at getting a KK grill, my wife was partial to the matte black pebble finish shown on the KK main website. If we had gotten this finish, we would have named our grill “Toothlessâ€, after the dragon in How to Train Your Dragon. But this finish wasn’t available, so we went with the Olive Gold pebble. And so we’re named our grill “Smaugâ€, from The Hobbit.

One thing I’ve been very impressed with Smaug is how much moisture is retained when cooking. During a cook I’ll lift the lid to do something or other, and I’ll feel the warm moist air coming out of the grill. I’m talking fog-my-glasses-up levels of moisture. I have a hard time believing a water pan would be of any additional benefit in a KK grill.

Looking back at my emails, I placed my order on Aug. 25. The grill came from Indonesia to the US, and got to the Port of Los Angeles Sept. 24. There was a delay because the Port of Los Angeles caught fire right at that time (just my luck). The grill made it out on a truck Oct. 3, and my grill got to me in New Jersey on Oct. 9. I got updates from Dennis every step of the way. So minus the fire, it was probably 5 weeks for me. Either way, it was completely worth the wait. The way I look at it, I went 11 weeks from June until August after placing an order for another kamado grill without knowing where it was or when I might expect to receive it. And even when I ultimately cancelled that order, I still didn't have a delivery date of any kind. So comparatively speaking, I was way ahead going with a KK grill.

Welcome to the KK forum! So which color is it?

It is a model that a lot of manufacturers use. But they miss out on the fact that people are willing to pay for great products with great design. Maybe they should look at Apple. Apple is the most valuable company in the world right now. Out of the twenty most profitable quarters any company has had, oil/gas companies have fifteen slots. The remaining five are all Apple.

Over on the Kamado Guru forum I once asked why Kamado Joe fireboxes couldn’t be made as two piece units, since they kept cracking, and Andy Scalzo said that it would take too much in the way of resources to develop such a thing: If ever there was a reason for me to want to get a KK grill over the other ceramics, this is it. On the one hand, Dennis has put the effort and resources into designing a firebox that will stand up to high temperatures without cracking. On the other hand, we have a business model that would rather replace a less than optimally designed part instead of redesigning it to work better.

Welcome! There’s a ton of good information here. If it helps, my wife gave me the “you’re nuts for getting this grill†look more than a few times when we discussed buying a KK grill. Once it got to our house, and after I cooked a couple of meals for her, she had no more reservations about whether this was a good purchase or not. She’s seen a BGE and a KJ, and she clearly thinks that the KK grills are in a class above those brands.

I had the same question when looking at getting a KK grill. Since I have had one, in practice the side-to-side orientation is really not an issue when flipping. Scrubbing is easier going side to side, since that’s the long axis, which means less passes with your scrubbing tool. Would it be possible to make a grate where the bars run front to back, and the hatch for the door is on the side, so you don’t have the mismatch in direction? Or maybe offer a grate with front to back bars without a door as an option?

I would love specs and photos! Thanks!

That looks great! I’ve found that bumping the temperature up at the end of the cook gets you crispier skin. Where did you get the rack for your duck? I saw one like yours in this video, but can’t seem to find a place that sells something like that. http://youtu.be/xp-kzew2Ewg?t=1m21s

Nice! Can you tell us more about the deboning process? How do you go about doing that?

Nice! I have a thermometer for measuring the internal temperature of food as well. I don’t use the hole for the temperature probe that Tony mentions, mainly because the probe has a right angle bend and the wire on the other end has a right angle plug which doesn’t allow me to get it through the hole. Some folks have unbent the probe to get it through the hole, but I’m a bit nervous about doing that.

That looks great! However: turkey for gumbo? I lived in Texas for a few years, and had plenty of Cajun food during that time, but never saw turkey gumbo. Do you have a recipe?

That cook looks like it turned out delicious!

That looks awesome. I should say that at one point I was thinking that you were trying to reassemble a whole pig before cooking it.

My wife asked me to make wings. I hadn't tried that yet on Smaug, and it's been a little while since I was able to grill anything. I've been somewhat out of commission since the weekend after New Years because of my shoulder locking up on me. I think it's a frozen joint that can be traced back to a shoulder injury I got in college from baseball. In any case, I was barely able to lift my right arm, which gets in the way of opening and closing the lid. Two weeks of physical therapy later, and I'm in much better shape. I'm still not 100%, but my arm moves enough so that I can do some cooking. I used this recipe for cooking wings from Serious Eats. Basically, I mixed up 1 tablespoon of salt and 1 tablespoon of baking powder, and tossed 3 lbs. of wings with it until it was all absorbed by the wing pieces. I put them in a baking dish and let them sit in the refrigerator for 8 hours. Then they went into Smaug. I cooked them indirect at 400ºF for about 45 minutes, flipping the wings about halfway through. They came out great. The skin was nice and crispy, and not greasy at all. We had a variety of sauces to try with the wings, since we all have different preferences in terms of how spicy we like our wings. I used Buffalo Wild Wings medium sauce. My wife and kids had the Buffalo Wild Wings honey BBQ sauce. There were two things that helped make the skins so crispy. The first was the baking powder/salt mix. This has the effect of raising the pH, which improves the browning process. The second was the time sitting in the refrigerator. This allowed the wing pieces to dry out, which helps with making the skin nice and crispy as it cooks. This is the same reason I hung a duck in my backyard before cooking it. In fact, next time I cook a whole bird, I'm going to try the baking powder trick. In any case, I can say that this was easily the best batch of wings I have ever made. Even better, my wife said the same thing.

That looks amazing! Nice job!

Welcome! And as has been mentioned, we love pics!

Your food looks amazing, as always. I’ve filed away the enchilada recipe for future reference.

Welcome! Have fun with your grill. I know I’ve been having a ton of fun with mine. And post pictures! We all love pictures.

My wife asked me to recreate a dish she used to like to have at one of our favorite restaurants, but they changed the dish around to something she likes less. Here are the main ingredients. Asparagus, risotto, and scallops. The asparagus is drizzled with olive oil, salt, and pepper. The scallops just have salt and pepper on them. I set up Smaug with the searing grate, and the vents wide open. The veggies went on Smaug first. I also cooked some Korean green peppers left over from last weekend. People always talk about wanting a grill with a good amount of cooking area for all the meat that they want to cook. I think the amount of room that veggies can take up on a grill is often underestimated. After the veggies were cooked, I put the scallops on. There was also some leftover prime rib that I cooked for my older son, who doesn’t like scallops for some wacky reason. Here’s how the scallops turned out. Just the right amount of sear, without burning anything. I found the key was to be patient and wait for the sear to develop, and then use a spatula to scrape the scallops off the grill. And the final assembled dish: seared scallops on a bed of risotto, grilled asparagus, and some arugula with a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Boy, was this good. Even better was the fact that we found really big sashimi quality scallops at the local Asian grocery store for $4.00/lb less than what we usually see.

Now that I think about it, I can’t remember the last time I’ve cooked any sort of beef on a grill without adding some sort of heat: cayenne, ancho, or chipotle. And this is going back to my college days.

Yes, I am. The curve in the probe of my thermometer and the plug on the other end both can’t clear the hole. I’ve read about folks unbending the probe, but that makes me a bit nervous, and in any case I didn’t think about it until it was time to do the cook.

At first that’s what I thought, too. But both me and our friends picked out the seeds and web, and still found the increase in heat as you go from the tip to the stem end.