wilburpan

I did score the fat a little bit, but I could have scored it a lot more than I did. I’ll make sure the score marks are deeper next time.

Really nice!

We made a rack of lamb for Easter dinner. It was a classic preparation.

Start with a rack of lamb.

I made a rub by combining fresh chopped garlic, salt, black pepper, rosemary, thyme, and a little bit of red pepper flakes.

I made it into a paste by mashing it in a mortar and pestle. I also added a little olive oil.

I can’t emphasize how good this technique is. You’ll extract much more flavor from your herbs and aromatics with this technique compared to a food processor. And it’s way easier to clean.

I spread the paste on the fat side of the rack, and found that I didn’t make enough.

So I made more.

I put the rack in Smaug, indirect at 300ºF. I left it there until the internal temperature hit 125ºF.

Then I took out the deflector, put the searing grate in, let the fire get real hot, and direct grilled the rack along with some asparagus. Note that I put the bones over the asparagus. This was to keep them from burning, without having to go through wrapping the bones with foil.

This is the part where I had a near disaster. I tried grilling with the fat side down, and then the rosemary/thyme/garlic crust started peeling off. I managed to salvage most of it.

Here are the money shots. My wife made mashed potatoes and roasted cauliflower.

It was delicious. I actually think I could have let the IT go to 130ºF. I like beef medium rare, but I think lamb is a bit better if cooked to medium.

For next time, I could use any tips for getting the paste to stay on the fat side better.

Welcome! You’re going to love cooking on your new KK grill.

I did a leg of lamb last year for Easter. Here’s my post: 

I didn’t use a rotisserie for this cook. Basically, I did a reverse sear: 275ºF indirect, until I hit an internal temp of 120ºF. Then I cooked direct at 500ºF until the outside was nice and browned. Between the two steps I hit a final internal temp of about 130ºF.

If I was to do the same cook with a rotisserie, I’d use a full basket of charcoal, and cook it direct around 300-350ºF. An IT of 130-140ºF is fine. I think that lamb holds up better to a higher internal temperature than beef, so it’s not as bad if you wind up cooking it a bit more than you had planned.

I do exactly what you're proposing: I keep Smaug (a 23" KK grill) up against my house when not using him, and roll him away from the house for cooking. The casters work really well, but they don't negate the fact that I'm moving close to 600 lbs. of grill. Having said that, I'm 5'6", not particularly strong, and I can move my grill wherever I want. The hardest part is getting the grill moving from a standstill.

My patio is made of pavers, so there's plenty of little bumps the grill has to go over when moving it, but the casters work well for that, too.

I can't reply to any other thread in the KK Announcements forum, either. 

Also, if I go to the main page of the KK Announcements forum, I can start a new topic, but I can't add replies to the topic that I just started. 

Just out of curiosity, what are the advantages of using the Tapatalk app as opposed to using the mobile theme that this forum switches to when I’m checking it on my phone?

From the description of the app, if I was following a lot of forums that support Tapatalk the app might be useful, but I actually don’t.

9 hours ago, BBQKaeding said:

 

This looks really cool. You had mentioned cooking a pork butt this way. Were there any other meats that you've cooked using the meat hanger?

Gorgeous grill! Also, glad to see you’ve put it to good use already.

Here’s an example from a post I made on the KG forum.

I’m in the process of typing a reply. This is in WYSIWYG mode. (That stands for What You See Is What You Get.) This is like most word processors in that if you use boldface, italics, underlining, quoting, links, etc., you see the text being formatted as you type.

See the switch icon marked by the red circle in the upper left? That’s the icon I was talking about. If you click on it, the editor changes to this.

This is the raw BBCode of my reply. BBCode is a system used by forum software to mark formatting, quotes, links, and so on.

The KK forum used to have this functionality before the recent update. I’m hoping that this can be added back. I don’t always need to use it, but occasionally it comes in very handy.

In the previous version of the forum software, there was a little switch icon in the upper left corner of the formatting bar. Clicking on that icon switched your editing mode from WYSIWYG to raw BBCode. Is there any way to activate that function again? Being able to directly see the BBCode was useful to me on occasion.

Thanks!

I haven't tried the recipe, but it should be pretty close to an In-N-Out burger. You can save time on the sauce if you have a bottle of a Thousand Island dressing.

Having said that, you probably can already make a better burger. I think In-N-Out burgers are overrated. They are very good, but there are other places I would rather go for a burger.

6 hours ago, ckreef said:

Good post Wilburpan. I'm sort of the opposite of you. I use to make everything from scratch. I would look up my idea on the Internet and go from there. I still usually do that on the weekends but more and more I find myself using pre-made marinades and rubs especially on weeknights.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I do have my fall back make-your-own rub for when I’m really really really in a hurry. Since I have that committed to memory, I can make that in no time.

But in real life, I’ve found that using a premade rub only saves me a few minutes, tops. I’ll lose that much time wandering around the kitchen trying to remember what I did with my knife.

And on top of that, making my own rub allows me to control how much salt is in the final product. From an overall health standpoint, that’s something to think about.

That’s going to be a lovely addition to your yard. One day we would like to put in a vegetable/herb garden, once the kids stop sucking up all of our free time.

I’ve come to like making my own rubs and spice mixtures. In the long run, it’s cheaper than the prepackaged mixes, and it really doesn’t take that long.

If I'm looking to duplicate a premade mix, this is what I do. As an example, I’m going to use the McCormick Steakhouse Mushroom mix that ckreef has in his photo, just because it’s the first one.  

First thing is to look up the ingredient list. Google is your friend here. There’s a page with lots of information on what goes into this mix here. Here’s the ingredient list, from the page I linked to:

Onion, Garlic, Salt, Mushroom, Spices (Including Black Pepper, Yeast Extract, Hydrolyzed Corn Gluten, Soy Protein, And Wheat Gluten, Vinegar, Molasses, Sugar, And Natural Flavor.

Although we don’t have exact measurements, the ingredients will be listed in order of how much is in the mix. We can ignore a lot of the ingredients, like soy protein and wheat gluten. Ingredients towards the end of the list are in smaller amounts, and probably can be dropped without altering the flavor much. Once I get rid of the nonessential ingredients, here’s my list.

Onion, Garlic, Salt, Mushroom, Black Pepper, Molasses, Sugar.

I would make a mix with equal parts onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and black pepper, probably 1/2 tsp. each. In place of the molasses and sugar, I might add a pinch of brown sugar. For the mushroom, either add minced real mushrooms or dried mushroom (porcini, shiitake, etc.) shavings. I might even add back a drop of vinegar or so. And since vinegar is just to add some acidity, you can substitute that with other acidic ingredients, like a little red wine, since that goes well with mushrooms. Total time to mix these ingredients together would be 2-3 minutes, tops.

Then I would follow the directions on the website. It says that one package is 2 tsp., and that’s enough to add to 1 lb. of burger meat. So take 2 tsp or so of the mix you just made, and 1 lb. of burger meat, mix, and grill.

You can take this approach with just about any premade spice mix. The benefits of this are that in the vast majority of cases, salt and/or sugar are at the top of the ingredient list, which means that you’re paying a lot for relatively cheap ingredients. And if you look through the ingredient list of a number of spice mixes, you’ll see the same ingredients coming up over and over again, so it won’t be hard to stock your spice rack with the spices you’ll need. 

Congratulations! If you’re impressed by how fast and easy it was to park your grill at 350ºF, just wait until you open all the vents to get to steak searing temps.

6 minutes ago, PRippley said:

It didn't for me MacK. churchi I switched back to Tapatalk and seems to be working, except Wilbur's profile photo isn't showing up...weird.

Most people would look at that as a feature, not a bug.

So glad the move went well!

Congrats on getting your grill in place!

Wow! Great looking loaf!

Still not enough light for money shots on the grill, but we’re getting there! Spring is coming!

In the meantime, I made this miso glazed grilled salmon. I marinated salmon fillets in a mix of miso, soy sauce, sugar, and sake for 30 minutes, and then grilled them skin side down first, then flipped them.

This was delicious, but my younger son didn’t like the taste, which is weird, because he’s the more adventurous of my two boys when it comes to trying new food. My older son, who is much more picky, chowed it down.

All of these food photos look awesome.

I did think for a second that MacKenzie managed to convert her cooked rotisserie chicken into an egg for breakfast. KK grills are great, but even I don’t think they can work that sort of miracle.

I haven’t had to move my KK grill up or down steps. Luckily when it was delivered, the driver just moved my grill, crated and on the skid, around my house and onto the back patio.

However, I do woodworking as a hobby, and I’ve had to move large equipment into my basement via a Bilco door and stairs. The biggest thing I’ve had to maneuver down there was my bandsaw, which is about 550 lbs. What I did for that was to get a very heavy duty hand truck (something like this). I strapped the bandsaw to the hand truck, and bumped it down the stairs with the help of three friends. Having the wheels made going down the stairs quite a bit easier than trying to deadlift the bandsaw directly.

Great, thanks! The preference page is working as expected.