wilburpan

One more vote for the 23â€, for three reasons. As Bosco mentioned, if you’re going to be direct grilling, as large as the 23†is, you can fill up the grate in a hurry with burgers, peppers, portobello mushrooms, etc. At the other end, my KK 23†is so efficient that I have no problems with doing small cooks on it. Here’s the smallest cook I have a photo of — four hotdogs. That is really all that I grilled for this cook. I don’t really think I wasted charcoal for this cook. I can get to direct grilling temperatures (500-600ºF) within 15 minutes, and once I’m done, I shut down the vents and the fire just goes out. Finally, since you’re mentioning the rotisserie, I think having the extra room is good for rotisserie cooking in that the air has more room to circulate around what you’re cooking.

Congratulations! You’re going to love cooking on Boz-lo. And I am partial to olive gold pebble KK grills, having one myself.

FWIW, any smalls that I have to deal with are small enough that they fall out of the bottom of the basket anyway. Adding additional stainless steel rods around the side probably won’t stop that from happening. On the other hand, given the amount of heat that the basket encounters during a high temperature cook, if the additional stainless steel rods would help keep the basket from warping, that would be a good reason to add the additional rods.

I've been making my own rubs, using the approach that Aaron Franklin uses in this video: https://youtu.be/dGwmaq6y6iU Basically, he starts with a 50/50 mix of salt and coarse ground black pepper. That's his brisket rub. To get fancy brisket rub, add a little garlic, onion, and/or chile powder. For pork butt, add paprika for color, and a little dry mustard. For pork ribs, add some more coarse ground black pepper. For chicken, add some brown sugar. I've found that for brisket and pork butt, aiming for 1/2 cup total when done works well. For two slabs of ribs or a whole chicken, 1/4 cup of rub is enough. There are some modifications that I make. Instead of chile powder, I usually use ancho chile or chipotle, and I've used cayenne on occasion. I'll skip the additional black pepper for ribs, and I'll add in some brown sugar when making a rub for pork butt and ribs. Aaron Franklin leaves out the sugar for those rubs because of a concern for burning the sugar. I've not found that burning the sugar is an issue for me, but I do low and slow cooks at a lower temperature (200-225ºF) than he does (275ºF). You'll probably make your own adjustments as well, but I think this is a terrific backbone for DIY rubs. And it is a lot cheaper to buy the individual spices than the premade blends, which tend to be heavy on the salt and sugar because those are the cheap ingredients.

What a nice grill, and set up! I’m also looking forward to seeing more pictures. You’re going to have so much fun cooking on your KK grill. And by the way: Great choice for a name!

Welcome to the KK forum, Roger! As far as the cover and side tables go, you do have to take off the side tables to put the cover on. They come off very easily, and hang on hooks that are on the side of the grill. Or you can just lean them against the house.

Welcome! I’m so happy that there’s someone else who jumped into the deep end by getting a KK grill first. I did the same thing. Now I’m not the only crazy one around here anymore. As far as a temperature controller goes, there’s no need to get one right away. Just use your new grill and learn how to control the temperature manually. After that you can decide whether a temperature control system is something that you want to get or not. For me, I researched temperature controllers a fair bit while I waited for Smaug to arrive. It’s now been 16 months, and I haven’t felt the need to order one. I’m not saying don’t get one — I think that they are in the “nice to have†category of accessories. By the way, I don’t know if you found this post I wrote on the burn-in process, but have a look: http://komodokamadoforum.com/topic/5951-don’t-sweat-the-burn-in-process-it’s-pretty-foolproof/ You really can’t mess this process up. If any one should have a messed up tile situation because of a less-than-optimal burn-in, it should be me.

Welcome, Mario! I understand about being on the fence. It seems like a big commitment to get yourself a KK grill. If you have any questions, feel free to post them here. But for what it's worth, I jumped in with both feet into the kamado world, and picked up a KK grill as my first ever kamado, and that was without any low and slow BBQ experience. I couldn't be happier.

Great looking chicken! I have to say, I’ve used the rotisserie function way more than I thought I would.

Here’s my tips for direct grilling. 1. You usually are looking to get your grill up as hot as possible as fast as possible. I’ve often said that having a kamado grill is like having a charcoal grill that’s as efficient as a gas grill. This is why. I start with a full basket of charcoal, lit it over a fairly wide area, and had the lid open with the bottom vents fully open, with the grate off. After five minutes, I flipped 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, closed the lid and opened the top vent as high as it would go. I'll hit 500-600ºF after a total time of 15 minutes, sometimes less. 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. 2. The vast majority of my direct grilling has been on the main grate. Things I’ve cooked on the lower grate include steak and scallops, although I’ll often cook steak on the main grate as well. 3. I haven’t used the basket splitter too much for direct grilling. You could use the basket splitter to set up two zone cooking, but I tend to go with the “super hot and go†school of direct grilling, if that makes sense. When doing a reverse sear, I’ll set Smaug at 250ºF or so with the deflector plate, and when I’m ready to do the sear, I’ll take the deflector plate out and let Smaug come up to searing temps.

You have a KK 23†like me, right? Like I mentioned above, I really really like this size, even for routine cooks. I can get Smaug from unlit charcoal to burger grilling temperatures in 15 minutes or less, and when I’m done, shut down happens so fast that I never have thought I was wasting charcoal. Even for ridiculously small cooks like this:

The rib cooks are done indirect with the deflector sitting on the charcoal basket. That does allow for a lot of area when doing low and slow cooks. For direct grilling, however, you’re kind of stuck with how many burgers/steaks/whatever you can fit on one grate. That’s where the larger KK grills come in handy. If you’re looking for input on what size KK grill to get, we’re a family of four, and we often have one or two families over for cookouts. I’ve found the KK 23†to be perfect for this amount of people. A KK 32†would be nicer for cooking lots of burgers at once, but we wouldn’t hit that capacity often enough for the step up to be worthwhile. I would also make sure that whatever size you get has a rotisserie big enough for whatever you plan on cooking. I got the rotisserie, thinking that I wouldn’t use it that much, and instead I’ve found that I use it much more than I thought I would.

FWIW, I don’t think it’s a placebo effect. I do think it’s the difference between a KK grill and ceramic kamado grills. I’ve made this point before, but one often-stated advantage of a kamado grill is that it is more efficient and traps moisture better than a Weber kettle grill. If that’s the case, then it should be the case that the more efficient that a kamado grill is at trapping moisture, the better the results. I know that the very first cooks I was doing with Smaug were better than the food from a BGE demonstration run by one of their reps. (The BGE food was very good, to be sure.) That’s why I think that the difference that you and Ryan are seeing is real.

If ash cleaning is a question, I’m only 5’6â€, and I can reach into Smaug from the top and sweep out the ashes through the front vent opening without any trouble.

Don’t worry about asking questions. It wasn’t that long ago that I was a newbie as well. When I make ribs, I generally let the cook go for about 5 hours at 225-250ºF, then check the ribs with the bend test. If I need to use multiple grates, I don’t rotate the ribs at all. I’ve done a number of rib cooks where I needed two grates, and one where I used all three grates, and I never rotated the ribs. I couldn’t tell any difference in terms of doneness between them.

One of our friends unfortunately had a fire in their house over the holidays. The family is okay, but they are going to be living in an apartment for at least 6 months while their house is renovated. We decided to have a surprise potluck lunch for them, and my wife volunteered me to make ribs. Of course, I was more than happy to do this. That’s when she told me that the potluck was to start at 1 pm. Counting backwards, that meant starting cooking at 7 am, which meant starting prep work at 6 am. On a weekend. And I like to sleep in. So I dutifully set my alarm. I didn’t do anything different from my usual ribs. I made a rib rub à la Aaron Franklin’s approach, and applied it to six racks of ribs. I rubbed the ribs with some olive oil before putting the rub on. I loaded up Smaug with the ribs. He was stabilized at 225ºF. About 5-1/2 hours later, this was the result. I impressed myself by managing to get all six racks into the house all on one plate. I had to try out one of the ribs to make sure they came out okay, of course. The potluck was a great time. Folks there seemed to like the ribs. I know they all were gone by the time we had to leave for my son’s basketball game.

Yum!

I’ve seen that iridescent pattern on beef before, usually in Chinese food. What seems to be key is slicing a cut of beef with well-defined fibers across the grain, like in skirt steak. That doesn’t guarantee the iridescence, but I’ve never seen that look with beef sliced with the grain.

Ditto! You’re going to love the food your KK will be turning out for you.

Great pork and chicken combo!

Looks great!

That fish looks incredible, Rak! I may be biased, since both Rak and Bosco’s observations line up with my own , but I also think that the KK is bringing something to the table that standard ceramic kamado grills don’t, despite the common wisdom that the food doesn’t know what grill it’s in. That thing is the moisture issue. KK grills are so efficient that they can retain and maintain temperature with very little airflow compared to other grills. It’s the same principle that makes food coming from a ceramic kamado moister than food cooked the same way on a Weber. Dennis has said that the increase in efficiency and moisture retention between a KK grill and a ceramic is even greater than the difference between a Weber and a ceramic kamado. Based on Rak and Bosco’s observations of their cooks, I would say that’s pretty good supporting evidence for that idea.

I think Dennis’s point here is important, especially if you’re coming from another brand of kamado: For a low and slow cook, the vent settings I wind up using on Smaug are much much smaller compared to vent settings I’ve seen in videos featuring other brands of kamados. Almost shockingly so.

That’s true for cameras and guitars as well.

I’m trying to come up with a way to better explain this that won’t get people upset. So with the caveat that the comparison I’m about to make is not intended to make fun of anyone’s interests or hobbies, here goes: I think we can all agree that KK grills are a high end item. There’s no denying the obvious quality and thought that went into the design of our grills. One of the things that makes this clear is the difference between seeing pictures and online information about a KK grill and seeing it in person. There are aspects of quality with the KK grill that just doesn’t telegraph well through photos or the internet. There are other brands in other types of products where there’s a similar experience: Apple for phones and computers, Mercedes-Benz for cars, Rolex for watches, and so on. If you take a look at the image those brands project, they skew towards the minimalist side. Most high end brands take that approach. In the grilling world, a good example would be Kalamazoo grills. If you take a look at how those grills are branded, there’s a relatively small Kalamazoo badge with a logo on the lid, and “Kalamazoo†printed down in the control area along with the model number in relatively small type. That’s it. Kalamazoo grills also come with a number of custom cooking surfaces, which is something that brand is known for. Those grates don’t have Kalamazoo branded on their surfaces anywhere, either. On the other hand, there are a number of other kamado brands whose marketing strategy seems to run along the lines of “If it has a space available, put the logo on itâ€. And although I’m not saying that such an approach can’t be successful, it’s not the sort of approach that high end products tend to take. An Audi only has two spots on the exterior that identify the brand: the grill and the trunk. A NASCAR race car is certainly a performance car, and arguably beats an Audi on performance, but all the badges and logos take away from the image of a NASCAR race car as being a high end model. (Not a perfect analogy, I know, but I think it gets the point across. And this was the point of comparison that I was worried about. I’m not denigrating NASCAR or its fans by this comparison. I like NASCAR racing myself.) So that’s why I’m not in favor of a KK branded thermometer. There are plenty of design cues that KK is known for. The current location of the logo is nicely placed. The silhouette of the grills, the feet, and the top vent are clearly associated with KK and no other grill. The use of tile also further differentiates the company and its products. That’s why I would say that although you could put “Komodo Kamado†on the thermometer, you don’t NEED to do so. I would vote for shipping Fahrenheit/Celsius thermometers with all KK grills. Helps simplify the inventory.