wilburpan

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.

After getting all the sides done, it was time for the final sear. Smaug was up to over 600ºF at this point. I seared each side as long as I dared to. Here’s the end result. I cut the strings and got the bones off. And quickly seared the inside face of the bones. Finally, the money shot. Even my wife was impressed. And plated, with the asparagus and my wife’s famous mashed potatoes. It was delicious. My wife said it was the best prime rib she had ever had, even though she likes her meat much more well done than this. If I was to make any changes, it might be to simplify the rub to just salt and pepper. The sear wound up burning the rosemary and thyme (although not in a bad way). It didn’t hurt the crust, it just didn’t seem to add much in the end. Or I might just leave it as is. By the way, I completely forgot about deglazing the roasting pan to make a sauce. Then again, we really didn’t need it.

In the meantime, I took out the heat deflector, and opened up the vents. When Smaug got to 500ºF+, we cooked up an appetizer and sides that our friends brought from the local Korean grocery store. Here’s some marinated pork belly in a spicy Korean marinade. They also brought two types of Korean peppers. The long ones are much spicier than the short ones. We prepped them with olive oil and salt. And then we cooked them on Smaug until the skins blistered. The smaller ones had a level of heat just about equal to deep fried jalapeños, and the long ones were much hotter. Interestingly, the long ones have less heat at the tip, and gain more heat as you work your way towards the stem. Here’s the asparagus that I had prepped earlier.

Here’s the high-tech monitoring system in action. Smaug is locked in at 200ºF, give or take. I’m really impressed with how quickly the temperature came back up after taking the top photo. I had the lid open long enough that when I closed the lid, the thermometer was at the outside temperature. Smug was back to 200ºF in less than 5 minutes. I’ve had this thermometer for over 15 years. It’s not a Thermoworks, but it’s great. Oh, wait. In the meantime, I’ve prepped some asparagus for grilling later. Olive oil, salt, and pepper. That’s it. Now we wait. When our friends got here, I showed them the prime rib roast inside Smaug. When I opened the lid, I was surprised to see how moist the air was that came out. It actually fogged up my glasses. I also noticed this. As far as I can tell, that’s condensation that has dripped down to the bottom of the inside and is leaking out from around the vent plate. I have to believe that the ability of Smaug to trap moisture like this during a low and slow cook is part of why I seem to be having so much success with my KK 23â€, despite my complete lack of low and slow cooking experience prior to Smaug landing at my house. Even though Smaug had no issues keeping the temperature at 200ºF, I wound up bumping the temperature up to 250ºF to speed things along to get the prime rib roast done at a reasonable time for dinner. Eventually, we hit an IT of 120ºF. We brought the prime rib roast inside. It was too dark to take pictures outside, so this is why it’s on my stove. We haven’t done the sear yet.

Because of my work schedule, and Christmas Eve/Day Mass activities, we didn’t do anything super special for Christmas dinner. But that’s okay, since this weekend we had planned to do something special for dinner Sunday night. Here’s the start. It’s four bones, and my butcher cut the bones off and tied them back on for me. I salted it, and let it sit in the fridge overnight. The next day, I fired up Smaug, and stabilized at 200ºF. I made a rub to go on the roast. Thyme, cayenne, rosemary, black pepper, and garlic. I added olive oil and some Worcestershire sauce, and mixed it up. Why no salt? I added the salt last night, and at this point, it’s worked its way into the meat, so I don’t think any more today is really needed. Here’s the roast all dressed up and ready to go. Next step in progress. I threw some celery, carrots, onion, and shallots in the roasting pan. We’ll see how successful I am with collecting pan drippings for a sauce.

Nice!

I’d avoid a handle-mounted light, mainly because if the lid is up, the light will be directly exposed to the heat from the grill, which can be problematic if you’re searing something. The fact that last night I found out the hard way how hot the handle can get when putting a sear on a prime rib roast with the lid up has nothing to do with this suggestion.

For me, I’m most often cooking for dinner, and at this time of year, it’s completely dark on my back patio when the food is ready. The good news is that we’ve passed the winter solstice, so the days will be getting longer, and at some point I’ll be able to take some money shots of food on the grill.

Same to you, Dennis, and everyone else!

Just so you all know, over on the Kamado Guru forum, CC sometimes makes the mistake of pointing out that KK grills are built to a higher standard than Akorns. At which point, many Akorn owners jump on him for suggesting such a thing. This has happened so often and so consistently that I thought CC would feel neglected if someone didn’t make a comment.