wilburpan

Although there’s something to the idea of finding equivalents of temperature x time with varying conditions of temperature and time, there are going to be limitations to that. To take an extreme example, you could cook a moderately thick 1/4 burger in a KK grill at 200ºF for as long as it takes to cook it through. That’s not going to be equivalent to cooking the same burger for a short amount of time over a 700ºF fire, no matter what the time period is. Over the hot fire, the outside is going to be cooked to a greater degree than the interior. My feeling is that making those sorts of adjustments happen on the fly, and come with experience. If I want to cook my pork butt at 225ºF, and I see that Smaug settled in at 250ºF that day for whatever reason, I’ll know to check on it sooner than expected, while dialing down the vents a bit. This is one of the things that makes cooking different from baking. If I’m sautéing some garlic on my stove, I can use the same pan, the same amount of oil, and the same setting on my stove, and some days the garlic just cooks faster than I expect. I’ll adjust for that as it happens by pulling the pan off the flame and turning down the burner. Ed also alludes to one other key factor when he mentions the three identical pieces of meat. There aren’t three identical pieces of meat. The difference between one rack of ribs and the next, or one brisket and the next, probably overrides any consistency you’re looking for with time and temperature.

This may be a minority opinion, but if this is your first brisket, I’m going to suggest that you skip the smoking wood to start. Just make a 50/50 salt and pepper rub, and smoke away. Once you’re sure you have a good handle on brisket cooks, then start adding in smoking wood. The reason is that brisket seems to be one of the trickier cooks to do. If things don’t turn out the way that you want, you want to be able to identify what might have gone wrong. By not using a smoking wood this time, you take the choice of smoking wood out of the picture. If you’re worried that you won’t get that smokiness, unless you’re using Dennis’ coconut charcoal, whatever charcoal you’re using will add enough smoke flavor on its own.

One of the things I love about having a KK grill is that it’s like having a charcoal grill that’s as efficient as a gas grill. Here’s what I do to get a hot fire lit quickly in Smaug. 1. Workflow. This is by far the most important. For hot fast cooks, I’ll light my grill first, and then do food prep. However long it takes the fire to heat up, prepping the food will take more time. By the time food prep is done, Smaug will be at 500-600ºF, easy. 2. Full basket of charcoal, and skip the huge pieces. Heat is all about how much charcoal is burning at one time. Having a less than full basket of charcoal works against this, and having smaller pieces increases the surface area of charcoal that can be burning. Huge pieces of charcoal are great for low and slow cooks, but not so good for high heat cooks. 3. Vents. Bottom and top vents wide open. As far as the actual fire making process, here’s what I tend to do, if I’m doing nothing but lighting the grill. I start with a full basket of charcoal, lit it over a fairly wide area, close the lid with the top vent fully open, with the bottom vents fully open, with the grate off. After five minutes, I’ll open the lid, flip over the chunks in the top layer of the charcoal a bit in order to get the top surface to give off heat, put the grate in, and close the lid. I’ll hit 500-600ºF in 10-15 minutes consistently. I think that the moving the charcoal around after five minutes helps a lot, because it gets lit coals right at the top of the basket and distributes the fire more quickly than letting it burn on its own. (That’s also why I leave the grate off at first so I don’t have to maneuver a hot grate later to stir up the charcoal.) I’ve noticed in the past that if I’m going for a high temperature, and there’s large pieces of charcoal on the top that are burning only on the bottom side, the unlit portion of the charcoal is preventing heat from coming through. Flipping over those pieces did a lot to speed up the process. I’ve noticed that when my thermometer hits 500ºF, the top surface of the charcoal will mainly be on fire, but the larger chunks will have a dark spot in the middle that isn’t actually burning. Here’s a picture from the Serious Eats website that shows what I mean. This looks like a good charcoal fire, but it’s really not at full blast yet. You see those large pieces of charcoal in the middle that still look black? That’s charcoal that’s not burning. I think this acts as an insulator, blocking the fire underneath it, and preventing the temperature from rising higher. Turning those pieces over helps the temperature come up faster. But as I said above, I go through all this only if I don’t have anything else to do. What I do much more often these days is light the grill over a wide area, put the grates in, close the lid, and open the top and bottom vents all the way. Then I do food prep. By the time I’m done, Smaug is at steak-searing temperatures.

By the way, the moisture thing was the one of the first things I noticed about having a KK grill. I’ve seen demos of other ceramic grills, and never saw anything like that.

Congratulations on the engagement! Here’s to many happy years together.

How much water wood can soak up is dependent on the size of the piece of wood, and the amount of time exposed to water. Small wood chips like the ones in SR’s video will take on a decent amount of water after 30-60 minutes. A chunk of wood the size of your fist or so wouldn’t take on an appreciable amount of water if soaked. It’s easy to test this. Grab some wood chips, soak half of them for 30-60 minutes, and then throw all of them on a low burning fire, like what you would use for a low and slow cook. The wet ones will take longer to burn. The difference would be smaller on a hot fire for cooking steaks or burgers, but that’s not the type of fire you would add smoking wood to. I do woodworking as a hobby, and for initial milling of lumber for projects, I have the opposite issue: I’m trying to make sure the wood is dry. The thicker the piece of wood, the longer it will take for it to reach equilibrium. It’s like soaking wood chips, but in reverse. Now whether you want to use wood chips as opposed to larger pieces of wood for smoking, that’s another issue entirely.

True, but anything that jazzes up the presentation makes for a better eating experience. I took his statement about the smoke ring more in the context of the overall experience, not just taste. And the smoke ring makes for great video, as I mentioned above. Given how small those chips were, I can see the benefit of soaking them. Larger chunks of wood won’t need that treatment, however.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Although I’m a little embarrassed to be included since as far as I can tell, I have the least amount of BBQ experience out of everyone here by far. I never did a low and slow BBQ cook until I got Smaug less than two years ago. And although a lot of people disagree with me on this, I have to give a lot of credit to Dennis and his KK grills for allowing me to get results as good as I have gotten right out of the gate. Just a word in defense of Steven Raichlen: what works well or is best practice in a live cooking or restaurant kitchen setting may not, and often does not work well on video. For example, if you’re chopping an onion in a restaurant kitchen, the priorities are speed and making sure you chop the onions to the proper and consistent size for the next step in making the dish. For video, the priorities are a good looking video segment, and transmitting information to the viewer as to what the steps in making the cuts for chopping an onion are. If you blow through chopping an onion at restaurant kitchen speeds, and filmed that, the average viewer may have no idea what just happened. I’m not a SR fanboy, either. The Project Smoke episode just released was the first time I’ve seen any of his videos. I watched the first episode of this season, and plan to continue, more for getting ideas on recipes and flavor combinations as opposed to grilling techniques.

Nice! With the ramp, you should be able to get it off the pallet with the help of a friend. I was able to get my KK 23” off the pallet by myself when it was delivered, and I’m not particularly strong. I wouldn’t recommend doing that either with a KK 23” or your KK 32", but I mention it just to show that it’s easier than you might think. The hardest part is wiggling the grill off the block it’s semi-resting on.

When my grill was delivered, I was given a window of 9am-1pm. The truck pulled up to my house at 12:55pm.

Some folks will say I’m crazy, but I use a weed torch hooked up to a standard 20 lb. propane tank that gas grills use. The long handle lets me stand back so sparks don’t get to me, it lights the charcoal super fast (I’ll hit the charcoal for only 15-30 seconds when lighting for a hot direct cook), and the big tank pretty much ensures I only have to worry about replacing it once a year at most.

That is a gorgeous home and yard you have, Bosco! Truly something to be proud of.

This weekend I made a seafood dinner for us: shrimp, sockeye salmon, and asparagus. I’ve cooked these before, but this time I decided to push my technique a bit. The first thing I did was to really lighten up on the seasoning compared to what I usually do. For the salmon and shrimp, I used Tony Chachere's Original Creole Seasoning (thanks Robert!), but I applied a very light coating. It looks like there’s a lot on the shrimp, but I only seasoned one side. For the asparagus, I drizzled some olive oil on it and a light amount of black pepper. They all went into Smaug at the same time. Final result. There were a few lessons I took away from this cook. First, dialing back on the seasonings/rub is a great way to test your technique. In this case, I couldn’t hide any over/under doneness of the seafood and asparagus with a heavy application of seasonings. In addition, normally I apply a light coat of olive oil to the salmon to aid in it not sticking to the grill grates, and as a way of helping the seasonings bind to the salmon. Again, not having the oil made me pay closer attention to the cook. Second, often times there’s a comment here about how charcoal is less convenient than propane for hot fast cooks. I’ve found over and over that using charcoal doesn’t have to slow you down for this sort of cook, if you’re smart about your workflow. For this cook, the very first thing I did was to light up Smaug. Then I started on the food prep, which included shelling the shrimp, washing the asparagus and trimming the ends, cutting the salmon fillet into individual portions, and seasoning. By the time I was done, the dome thermometer was at 600ºF, and the grill was ready to go. From eyeballing the grill and from previous experience, I know I was at 500ºF at the 10 minute mark. Could a gas grill have hit 500-600ºF faster? Maybe, but with this sort of workflow, it doesn’t matter. I would guess that the food prep is the rate limiting factor in the majority of cooks.

That’s great! Here’s to many more decades. I don’t know how many other grill companies can count on stories like this one. Quick question: what’s an “MK death”?

I did a similar thing when I ordered. Instead of using the online store, it was a (short) series of emails with Dennis to make sure I had the accessories I wanted/needed. It worked out great.

I’ve gone through several bags of Royal Oak, and haven’t found many issues with it. I’ve found maybe three rocks over the course of one year’s worth of cooking, and the presence of those rocks didn’t negatively impact my cooks. I’m working my way through my second bag of Fogo charcoal. This stuff is entirely different. The pieces are huge (the website states 80% of the bag are pieces over 4 inches, and I believe it), and I get considerably less ash production compared to Royal Oak. The one downside is that the pieces are so big that lighting a fire for a hot and fast cook is more difficult. I think that the smaller pieces in Royal Oak do provide an advantage for hot and fast cooks, as there’s more surface area to burn, which helps the fire build faster and provide more heat. The Fogo website lists both a Super Premium Hardwood Lump Charcoal in brown bags, which is what I’ve been trying out, and a Premium Hardwood Lump Charcoal in red and green bags, which I haven’t tried yet. The Premium Hardwood Lump Charcoal is described as having a mix of smaller pieces of charcoal (70% of medium sized pieces of 2 to 3 inches, 30% 1 1/3 to 2 inches). Here’s a picture from their website that shows the difference. I’m going to get a couple of bags of smaller-sized Fogo and try it out for fast cooks to see how that behaves. By the way, if you look at the Fogo charcoal website, you’ll see that the Premium Hardwood Lump Charcoal comes in a red bag and a green bag. I emailed them, and they said there’s no difference between the two besides the color of the bags. Having said all that, it’s hard to beat Royal Oak for $7.88 a bag. I wish I had had time yesterday to stop by my local Home Depot to grab some.

That’s terrific! I’m glad the word is getting out there.

Congratulations! You're going to be super happy with your new grill. If anyone could have messed up the burn in process, it would be me. I let Smaug get way too hot, and there was a bubble I didn't notice until months later. I poked a hole in the grout with a pin, some liquid vented out, and over time that area settled down. The process is really foolproof.

I have used the basket splitter with the splitter running left to right with the rotisserie in Smaug. It works well. I haven’t figured out all the ins and outs of using the splitter with the rotisserie as opposed to a regular charcoal basket set up, but I think there’s a slight advantage in being able to have a smaller, more intense fire by using the splitter. This way you can still cook at a lower temperature, which is achieved by the smaller fire, but the direct exposure to the more intense fire results in more browning of the skin of a bird or the outside of whatever piece of meat you’re spinning.

I can move my KK 23” by myself. I’m 5’ 6”, and not particularly strong, and the hardest part is getting the grill moving. Once I’ve got it moving, it moves reasonably easily, and that’s on a patio made with pavers, so it’s not the smoothest surface. The casters used for KK grills are really top notch, as is everything else. As far as leaving the grill out of the rain, I’ve left Smaug out in the elements here in NJ, and there’s been no issue so far. That includes rain, ice storms, and snow. It hasn’t hailed here in a long time. I can’t speak to a KK grill’s durability for rocks and stuff. I would say that if a tile or two are damaged, the repair will be pretty easy. As far as the hobby aspect goes, I didn’t know how much I would like using a KK grill, or kamado cooking. But for what it’s worth, I bought a KK grill as my very first kamado grill without having had any experience with low and slow BBQ. It’s been 1-1/2 years, and I haven’t regretted that decision one bit.

Awesome cook! I love lamb. My wife, on the other hand, doesn’t, which means there’s not much opportunity to cook lamb at our house.

I use the grates that I need for each cook. If I’m not using them, they’re not in the grill. Ideally, I’ll heat soak for low and slow cooks. In my hands, that means letting the grill sit at my target temperature for about an hour. This isn’t time wasted, as what I usually do for cooks is light the grill, set the vents for the temperature I want, then do food prep. By the time I’m done with food prep, I’m at least pretty close to being done with the heat soaking time. Having said that, I did a rib cook recently where I didn’t have time to heat soak, and the ribs still turned out fantastic. I did light the grill first, and then prepped the ribs, but it was only 30 minutes or so of heat soaking. You can hang the unused grates off the hooks on the side of a KK grill. I built a storage unit out of 2x construction lumber and 1x pine boards from Home Depot.

Clever! And they look delicious! Did you you bake the potatoes before scooping them out, or were they still raw when they were filled?

Great job on the ribs, and a great looking grill!

You used that word “meager”. I’m not sure it means what you think it means. All those cooks look terrific! You said you’re not one for verbiage (ha! ), but could you share the details about your stuffed pork chops? The main thing I’m interested is what you did for the stuffing, and whether you cooked the stuffing and pork chop separately, or stuffed the pork chops and cooked the whole thing at once.