wilburpan

Here’s one way to look at the cost. A Komodo Kamado is more expensive than the KJ/BGE/Primo grills for sure, but it’s still in line with and even less expensive than many high end stainless steel gas grills, and I would argue that it is more durable and more flexible than a high end stainless steel gas grill. The way I look at it, my KK grill will easily last me 20 years at a minimum, which works out to less than 70¢ per day. Even if I just cook four burgers for my family for dinner, the grill will still be the least expensive part of that meal.On top of that, if you love cooking on your grill (and I know you will), you will wind up saving money on going out to eat. Everyone’s situation is different, but for us, our restaurant bill has dropped enough that we’ll break even on Smaug after about 2-3 years. That may seem incredible, given the upfront cost of a KK grill, but it really works out to one less meal at a restaurant for a family of four a week. It’s not fancy restaurants, either. I'm talking Chili's, or something along those lines.

Nice score!

Yes. Get the 6†reducer as well.

We love our local specialty butcher. They carry prime quality steaks, and are super old-school. You go in and say, “I’d like a ribeye,†and then they ask you how thick. I usually ask for a 1-1/2†steak, and then they take this big hunk of meat and bandsaw off the steak. Last week they had a sale on steaks, about 30% off. So we picked up some boneless ribeyes. I only have a money shot, because it’s still too dark at dinner time here to take good pictures of Smaug in action. (Sorry Dennis! Once Daylight Savings Time kicks in, there will be more pictures.) Tomahawk66 had asked if I could post my method for cooking steaks. I start off with a steak rub that’s equal parts coarse ground black pepper, kosher salt, cayenne pepper, and oregano. For variety, I’ll use ancho or chipotle chile powder instead of cayenne. Sprinkle the rub all over the steak, including the sides. Ideally, I’ll do this an hour before cooking to give the salt a chance to penetrate the meat, but I’ve also sprinkled the rub on and tossed the steak on the grill right away. I’ll start a fire in Smaug with all the vents wide open, and wait until the dome thermometer hits 500-600ºF. I’ve taken to cooking steaks on the main grate. What I do is put the steaks on the main grill, and close the lid. I wait a minute, then flip the steaks. I wait another minute, and flip the steaks again. I keep doing this until I get the level of doneness I want. I go for medium rare, but my wife likes medium well. (That’s her only flaw: she likes her steaks overdone. ) Using a quick read probe thermometer is best for testing doneness, but I’ve been doing this long enough to know that 6 minutes of grilling is about right. Take the steaks off, let them sit for a few minutes before eating. That’s pretty much it! If you want to know why I don’t do the “Let the steak sit and only flip once†method, check out this article on Serious Eats. What I can say is that in terms of minimizing brown meat at the outside and having end-to-end medium rare meat on the inside, it’s hard to differentiate my results from when I’ve done a reverse sear, or from one of my friends who cooks his steaks using a sous vide machine. (He does say that I’m better at using a grill than he is, although he’s a fantastic cook. When we go over to his house to eat, he usually asks if I wouldn’t mind taking charge of the grill. Like I need convincing. )

I’ll start a new thread. Edit: Here’s the steak cooking post: http://komodokamadoforum.com/topic/6368-ribeye-steak-cook-for-tomahawk66/

I agree that double clicking can do this. The forum software is set up so that the first click activates the reply box, and brings up the formatting bar. If your first click is at the top of the box, the formatting bar will be right under your cursor. So if you double click at the top of the reply box, it’s pretty easy to activate bold/italic/underline/etc.

As has been mentioned, I think your bottom vent was too far open. Since you’re coming from a KJ grill, one of the things to get used to with a KK grill is that it’s so much more efficient compared to the ceramic grills that you need vent settings that will seem ridiculously small to hit the same target temperature. I’ve found that I typically will set my bottom vent settings smaller than what the KK handbook says. For 350ºF, I’d go for 1/4†open or so, and about 1 turn of the top vent, give or take. I’ll then twiddle the top vent to hit 350ºF. In general, I set the bottom vent pretty small, because if something happens on the top side, like opening the lid, or gusts of wind coming by, the bottom vent will limit the amount of air that goes through. Based on your vent settings, I think that the bottom vent was open enough that it allowed a lot of air to come through after you opened the lid, causing your temperature spike. I mentioned this recently, but it bears repeating. Once you figure out what vent settings work for you, you will get very repeatable results. CC doesn’t seem to be posting much lately, but if he was around, he would say to spend an afternoon with your grill, and start a fire as if you were doing a low and slow, trying to stabilize at the lowest temperature you can (200ºF for example). Then write down your settings. Open the vents a little, and see where the thermometer goes. After 15-30 minutes, write down the new temp and your vent settings. Keep going, trying to hit 25ºF intervals. After you finish doing this, you’ll have a good reference for future cooks.

How far open were your top and bottom vents?

Welcome to the KK family! You’re going to have a great summer of cooking ahead of you.

Congratulations! You’re going to love cooking on your new grill. The two good things about your tile choice is that SWMBO picked them, and also because pebble tiles lead to better cooks.

Great looking ribs! Dennis, here's my go-to BBQ sauce recipe. 1 1â„2 cups ketchup 4 tbsp. butter 1â„4 cup cider vinegar 1â„4 cup brown sugar 1â„4 cup worcestershire sauce Juice of 1â„2 lemon 1 1â„2 tsp. dry mustard 1â„2 tsp. cayenne pepper Combine all of the above in a saucepan, and cook over medium heat until thickened slightly. Sometimes I'll substitute ancho or chipotle powder for the cayenne.

So glad you have your grill home where it belongs! Have fun with cooking on it. I’ll be interested to see how you think it compares to your KJ.

That looks great! We’ve made Thai curry dishes before using a very similar method, but in a wok, and stir frying the meat. I never thought to grill the meat portion before. I’ll have to try that sometime.

Terrific burgers!

Welcome! You won’t be going wrong with a KK grill. I know that Bosco and Rak have noticed that their cooks are coming out moister than when they were using ceramic kamados. As for me, a KK was the first kamado grill I ever had, and I was able to get outstanding results on my low and slows even though I had never done low and slow cooking before. And as far as grilling/searing goes, KK’s are so efficient that going from lighting the charcoal to steak searing temps takes less time than with other charcoal grills or kamados. It’s not as fast as a gas grill for searing, but compared to my old gas grill, I’m only 5 minutes slower at most. And again, the results are outstanding. Here’s a boneless ribeye steak I made last night.

Thanks for the info! I would have thought that it would have taken longer for your pig to cook at 300ºF. Shows what I know.

I see what you did there!

Oh, NICE. (Crappy pictures or not.)

I should also mention that olive gold pebble KK grills cook better than the other tile choices, which will help you with your results.

Since you say you’re doing a low and slow, I’m assuming you were cooking indirect. Here are some possibilities that could explain what you’re seeing. 1. The thermometer is up in the dome, and will be seeing more of the hot air coming up and around your heat deflector compared to the area where your food was cooking. 2. One or the other thermometer is out of calibration (less likely). For me, I don’t worry about the exact temperature at the grate. The cooking conditions are going to be so repeatable that as long as you’re happy with the results, that’s the important thing. To put it another way, if I replaced your thermometer with one that had a line marked “low and slow†that represented 250ºF, and you didn't know that it was 250ºF, you could still pull off great low and slow cooks just by adjusting your vents so that the thermometer lands on that “low and slow†line. All you really have to do is decide how good your salmon and sausages were. If they were to your liking, next time you do this cook, go for 250ºF on the dome thermometer, and don’t worry about the exact grill temperature. If you want a more moist result, go for a lower temperature on the dome thermometer the next time, and see how you like it. If you want the outside of the food to be more well done, go for a higher temperature. Either way, knowing the exact temperature at the grill is unnecessary.

That looks amazing! The only thing that’s kept me from trying to make my own pastrami is the long brine time, so hats off to you for seeing it through. FWIW, the real old school delis (Katz’s in New York, Langer’s in L.A., Kaufman’s in Chicago (actually, Skokie)) slice their pastrami by hand, so don’t feel bad. Their goal is to make a pastrami so tender so that machine slicing would shred it to bits, which means that hand slicing is their only option.

So glad that the pictures are finally up. That cook looks delicious, and it looks like you had a great Chinese New Year. æ–°å¹´å¿«æ¨‚ï¼ P.S. I would love more details on how you prepped and cooked the whole pig.

I should have been more clear in that the situation I was thinking of was more of a hypothetical.

Welcome to the KK family! I think you're going to be both pleased and surprised cooking on your new KK grill.

I like the current thermometers as well. If that guy really wants a 5†thermometer, he should be able to do the swap.