wilburpan

Dang. When I saw that picture, I swear I thought that the red balance on my monitor needed adjusting. We really like our china. We’ve used it almost daily since our wedding, and I always chuckle when we use it when eating “mundane†food like pizza or hot dogs. About the only time we don’t use it is when we are making straight Chinese food, when all we need are rice bowls. It would be awesome if Wedgwood made rice bowls in a matching pattern.

I forgot to mention that while the ducks were hanging in the backyard, a cat came by who was very interested in the situation, until I stepped into the backyard and then he took off. Our china is from Wedgwood. It’s the Oberon pattern, and we got it when we got married. My wife is very practical, and at the time she said that we shouldn’t register for fancy china unless we planned on using it a lot. She thought that this pattern could be used for everyday use, and it’s the only set of dishes that we have. I have to say, she was right. These plates seem to fit well with fancy meals and burgers. I love that scene from A Christmas Story. I crack up every time I see it, although probably not for the reason that most people do.

We wound up going to a relative’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, so we had to call an audible on our plans for cooking this weekend. Here’s what we wound up having Smaug make for us over the rest of the weekend. Smoked ham. I made a simple glaze with dijon mustard and brown sugar. The sweet potatoes are destined to become sweet potato casserole. More roast duck. One technique to help get you really crispy skin is to hang the duck up in front of a fan. It was a relatively windy day, with temperatures in the mid-30’s, so I decided to use my backyard. Last time I made roast duck, I was going for a Peking duck flavor. This time our sides were mashed potatoes, spinach, roasted Brussels sprouts and roasted cauliflower, so this time around I went for more of a French preparation. I seasoned the inside and out with salt and pepper, and put a quarter of an onion, a quarter of an orange, some garlic cloves and rosemary on the inside of these ducks. It was dark when I took the ducks off the grill, so I didn’t get an action shot, but here’s how they turned out. We had an impromptu play date for our boys, and they wanted burgers. So I made a half-dozen burgers, and grilled some portobello mushrooms as well. I don’t know if folks are getting tired of me posting pictures of really tall burgers, but here’s the one I assembled and ate.

Nice! Haven’t tried brisket yet, but I’ll be coming back to this post for tips when I do.

Hi Tony, The video needs to be on YouTube first. Once the video is up, or you find a video that you want to share here, go to the YouTube page, and click on the “Share†link. A little window will appear with all kinds of social media links, along with a box with a link to the video. Make sure that the box in front of "Share with playlist starting from†is NOT checked. The link will look like this: Copy the link, and go back to the forum, and paste it into your post. Click the “More options†box to preview the post to check that the video will show up as you expect. The video should show up like this. If it didn’t, reload the page to make sure. (All credit goes to CeramicChef who turned me onto this song.)

I haven’t cooked a turkey on a KK, but I had a very similar situation regarding cooking a duck in that I wasn’t sure as to the best way to start. In the end, I decided to prep the duck the way I would as if I was going to cook it in the oven, and just used the KK as a substitute for the oven in terms of setting temperature, etc. For the crispy skin on the duck, I did what I normally would do with the oven: cook at 375ºF for the majority of the cooking, and increase the temperature to 400-450ºF at the end to crisp up the skin. As it turned out, the duck was on the overcooked side because I let it go too long before going up on the temperature, probably because I’m still getting used to how efficient the KK grill is compared to an oven. Checking the internal temperature sooner would have really helped. The duck was still really yummy. I’m glad the only change I made was to cook the duck in the KK grill instead of the oven, since now I have a much better idea of what to change for future cooks. The changes I plan to make the next time are to cook at a lower temperature and to keep a closer eye on the internal temperature of the duck.

Actually, I didn’t know that you used to run a burger restaurant. Is there anything that you don’t know how to do? My first job ever was working at a Burger King. As a result, almost every burger that I make is assembled like a Whopper. Burger King is pretty bad these days, but I have to say that the Whopper approach to burger assembly still works great.

Dang. The Beast makes the turkeys look like roast chickens. And congrats on the brisket gig.

Ditto. My condolences to you and your family.

Whipped together a quick dinner last night. We had four hamburger buns, but no hamburgers. I made a quick run to the grocery store, found a 1.2 lb chuck steak, brought it home, ground it, and made three burger patties. They were sprinkled with my usual salt/black pepper/cayenne spice mix. I started Smaug at 275ºF, and cooked a couple of pieces of bacon. After that, I cranked him up to 600ºF, and cooked the burgers. With cheese, of course. I have to say, one of the things that keeps impressing me about my KK grill is how quickly it comes up to high heat. Going from 275ºF to burger-searing temperatures took 10 minutes, max. It might have been less if I was sitting by the grill watching the thermometer. After assembly. I know a lot of folks like smashburgers. I like building them tall. Besides, the veggies make it seem like I’m also eating a salad, which is healthy and good for you. For a side, we made cowboy beans. I don’t have the recipe at hand, but all you need to know is that the first step is to cook up six pieces of bacon. I also did portobello mushrooms for my wife, and for a side, but they were eaten before I could get pictures.

If you look around, you may be able to find a moving company that specializes in moving relatively fragile objects, and hire them just for moving your KK grill. (And your speakers. ) I do woodworking as a hobby, and friends of mine have had to move their shops. Your average moving company can’t deal with that sort of thing, but there are companies that specialize in moving machinery, including knowing how to pack and rig equipment to get the machinery out of the old shop to the truck, and out of the truck into the new shop. One other alternative is to look into purchasing separate supplemental insurance that covers the replacement cost in case something happens with the KK grill during the move. Check with whoever provides your homeowner’s insurance policy.

For cooking pizzas, other people with other kamados often set up a pizza stone on the upper rack to take advantage of heat bouncing off the inside of the lid, along with setting up a heat deflector low while cranking the temp up to 600ºF or more. Then they report cracks in the firebox, which is most likely due to the intense heat being trapped by the deflector. Here's an example: this guy's set up: And the result: Is this a concern for the KK? And how would you go about setting up the KK for a pizza? My thought was to use the KK baking stone by itself, placed on the upper cooking grid, since the KK baking stone is thick enough that an additional heat deflector may not be necessary. The KK baking stone looks like it’s close to twice as thick as the pizza stone in the picture above.

So it sounds like as long as I don’t let the jump start go too long, it should be alright? As I said, I’ve only been letting the fire go with the lid open for five minutes before closing the lid and setting the vents. I could easily do that after three minutes as well.

In the month that I’ve had Smaug, I’ve found it pretty amazingly easy to hit the temperatures that I want. For low and slow, I crack the lower vent barely open and open the top vent a minimal amount, and I’ll be in the 200-250ºF range. For high heat direct grilling, I just open up the lower and upper vents a good amount, and I’ll be at 600ºF pretty quickly. For temperatures in the 300-400ºF range, this is what I’ve been doing. I’ll get the charcoal started with the lower vents about halfway open, and wait about five minutes with the grill lid open. Then I’ll close the lid, dial the lower vent to barely open, open the top vent about 3/4 of a turn, wait, and fine tune the temperature with the top vent. The rationale for doing that is that the first step gets the fire going in a relatively short time, and the second step is about where I wind up with the vents for 300-400ºF. I picked up the “leave the lid off to start†technique from the Kamado Joe YouTube channel, as that’s how they seem to get that particular grill up to temperature. I understand and am convinced of the idea that you can set the vents on a KK grill the same way each time and you’ll hit your final temperature. But I find that if I start with the vents in the final position and close the grill immediately after lighting the fire, it takes a lot longer to get to my target temperature than if I give it a running start. My question is, is this best practice? It certainly works for me, but I’d be interested in how others bring their KK grills up to a final temperature in the 300-400ºF range.

I used an attachment that goes on our KitchenAid mixer. If you have a KitchenAid mixer, and I bet you do, the meat grinder attachment is only $30 at Amazon. I don’t have the sausage stuffing attachments. It works great, and it really doesn’t take much time. Cut up the meat into 1†chunks, and feed it through. It was 5 minutes altogether, including clean up. Plus, there’s something strangely satisfying about reducing a solid chunk of beef into ground meat burger material.

Liar.

Last night I cooked something less complicated than a duck (which I don’t think is really that complicated): bacon cheeseburgers and portobello mushrooms. First, I cooked two strips of bacon. I did this by direct grilling, at about 250º. No pictures of this step, unfortunately. I took them off after about 20 minutes. The portobellos went next. I coated them on both sides with olive oil, kosher salt, and fresh ground black pepper. I bumped Smaug up to about 400ºF, and grilled these direct over about 20 minutes. The burgers I seasoned with my go-to spice mix for direct grilling: equal parts kosher salt, fresh ground black pepper, and cayenne. The burgers were made with chuck that I ground fresh at home, and were about 1/3 lb. each. I sprinkled a liberal amount of this spice mix on the burgers (as John would say), opened the vents, and got to 600ºF within 5 minutes. The efficiency of the KK grills continues to amaze me. I cooked the burgers about 4 minutes on each side. This was the result, with cheese and bacon. And with all the toppings. Some burger purists may balk, but I like toppings (mayo, lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mustard, pickles, raw onions, and relish).

What I’d really like is a rack like the one in this video: http://youtu.be/xp-kzew2Ewg?t=1m24s I’m sure it would work well for chicken as well. It might be too small for a turkey.

Thanks, Tony! For this duck, I didn’t blow air under the skin, and the fat rendered out without any problem. The skin in the close up shot of the breast fell off as I was slicing the meat, so it was well separated. I also didn’t prick the skin, either. The easiest way I’ve seen to blow air under the skin is to use an air compressor. The second easiest I’ve seen is to use your fingers to get underneath the skin to separate the skin from the meat.

Thanks, Ken! I have to admit, this is not my first time cooking a whole duck. I’ve done that many times in an oven. This was the first time in a grill, though. I never worried much about the pin feathers. If the skin gets done well, the pin feathers pretty much become part of the crispy skin. It’s sort of like eating soft-shell crabs. (It occurs to me that my soft-shell crab comparison is going to be either awesome or really gross, depending on how you feel about soft-shell crabs. )

One of the things I really wanted to try with Smaug was to cook duck. This summer my family and I were lucky enough to visit China, and we spent several days in Beijing eating Peking Duck every night. My kids love duck, and that was the main reason why I bought the rotisserie basket with my KK 23â€. But for the first time I was going to try it, I decided to take a very basic approach. Here’s what I started with. Prepping the duck was pretty straightforward. After taking out the liver, gizzards, heart, and neck from the inside of the duck, I took a big pot of water, sliced up an orange and put it in, and then added about 3 tbsp of honey. I brought the water to boiling, took the pot off the stove and into the sink, and dunked the duck in the hot water for 30 seconds. This step tightens up the skin. Next I took 2 tbsp of five spice powder and 1 tbsp of kosher salt, mixed them up, and dumped it inside the cavity of the duck and rubbed it around. I got Smaug stabilized at 375ºF. I had the heat deflector, drip pan, and main grate in place. During this time, I suspended the duck on a rack, patted it dry, and tried to get the skin as dry as possible. Once the grill was stabilized, the duck went on breast side up. The duck sat for about 1 hour and 15 minutes. At that point I checked the temperature, and found that I was above my target of 170º in the thigh. Rats. The skin wasn’t quite crispy enough, so I opened up the vents to bump the temperature up to 400ºF, and let the duck go for another 10 minutes. Here’s the result. The skin on the breast side of the duck came out really nice. The meat was a bit overcooked, as you might expect from the temperatures I got. I was surprised as to how well the fat rendered out of the duck without pricking the skin. The skin on the back of the duck, which was placed down during cooking, was not crispy enough. Next time, I’m going to keep a closer eye on the temperature of the duck. I plan for cooking at 350ºF, cranking up the temperature to 400ºF+ when I get to 160ºF until the thigh meat hits 170ºF. I think that the extreme efficiency of the KK 23†led to the duck cooking in less time than I anticipated. Still, this turned out pretty well given that I didn’t pierce the skin, or do the long air drying step or blowing air under the skin that’s part of the traditional methods of cooking Peking Duck. I think the rotisserie will help with getting the skin on both sides of the duck nice and crispy.

Wow, that looks terrific! What temperature did you cook at, and about how long did it take?

If it makes you feel any better, I used my own crowbar.

By the way, we did name our grill. As I mentioned above, 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 nicknaming our grill “Smaugâ€, from The Hobbit.

The last accessory I got with my grill was a baking stone. This baking stone is sized to fit the upper grill grate. It’s really thick, probably close to twice as thick as the typical pizza/baking stone that other kamado brands have. And finally, here’s the first fire I started in my KK 23†grill. I set the lower vent half open, and the upper vent so I could see the upper vent gasket. I hit 500ºF internal temperature in 10 minutes. Impressive. Thanks for looking! As of today’s post, I’ve done a fair amount of low and slow and direct grilling in the three weeks since I first got the grill, and I’m just ecstatic about how well this grill performs.