wilburpan

LOL!

I certainly don't want to depress sales of the KK Dual Fuel grills, but one thing to consider is how much time you really are saving by cooking with gas. Assuming that what you are going for is a direct cook over a high temperature, for ideal cooking there’s a warm up time involved with using gas. You don’t have to heat soak the grill, but you do want the grates to be hot. With my old gas grill, I let it burn on high for 10 minutes or so when grilling direct for burgers, steaks, fish, chicken, etc. Comparing that to direct cooking with a KK grill using charcoal, in my hands I find that I can consistently get my KK 23†from lighting the charcoal to 500-600ºF in about 15 minutes. (If you want to see how I do this, check out this post.) This isn’t faster than gas, but the actual amount of time saved winds up being a whopping five minutes, if you take into account the 10 minute warmup time I normally did with a gas grill. That’s not a huge amount of time saved. Heck, I’ll lose five minutes wandering around my kitchen trying to remember what ingredient it was that I’m looking for. I’ve also learned to alter my work flow when cooking direct. What I do is set up and light my grill first, then do food prep. By the time the food prep is done, the grill is ready to go. So if that amount of time is important to you, go for the Dual Fuel. I do keep a propane tank around since getting my KK 23â€, but that’s for lighting the charcoal.

I vote dual scale, but no logo on the thermometer. The brand is for the grill, and I’m in favor of not putting the Komodo Kamado brand on everything. It seems a bit tacky to me for a high quality item.

Nice take on deep dish pizza!

I’ve gotten to the point where I use the internal temp (I like 195ºF) as step one in determining whether a pork butt is done. Once the butt hits 195ºF, I’ll see how easily the probe goes in and out of the butt in various places. Sometimes it’s like butter, in which case it’s done. Sometimes I get more resistance, at which point I’ll let it go longer. From the description of your butt with the globs of fat, I’d bet that probing it would have given you some resistance. I generally plan for 1-1.5 hours/lb. for a bone-in pork butt, cooking indirect at 200-225ºF according to the dome thermometer, with the meat on the main grate. so your 9 hour cook time seems reasonable.

No worries: it’s still going to be a great weekend! And welcome!

I did eight racks of ribs in a KK 23†recently, without the aid of a rib rack. They came out great, even without rotating them. In the picture, it looks like that’s just as the cook is getting started. I would expect that all the pork butts (at least I think they are pork butts) will shrink as the cook goes on, giving more room for air to get around them.

Welcome! That’s a really nice space you have for your KK, and your cooks look terrific!

Just a thought: you could see if Dennis has any pink/purple Sunbrella fabric options for a cover.

Well if Charles promised that to her, I guess we all know who needs to make good on that deal. Sounds just like my list, except for the extra basket (I do have the splitter) and the double bottom drip pan, which wasn’t available when I ordered Smaug. The nice thing with the KK basket splitter system is that there’s a half-circle plate that sits horizontally in the basket on the non-charcoal side, which means you effectively have an equivalent to the KJ D&C system. With the KK 23â€, the basket is round, so that means you can orient the indirect half any way that you want: left/right, front/back, 45º, and so on.

P.P.S. Did you pick up any accessories? The rotisserie attachment is sweet.

Right on! You won’t regret this one bit. Guaranteed. And olive pebble is the best. P.S. Make sure Aashni gets to cook on it, too.

If fear of the unknown is ever a concern, remember that I jumped into a KK as my very first kamado grill of any sort. I haven’t regretted that leap of faith one bit. And I’m someone that tends to get himself into a “paralysis by analysis†situation fairly regularly, so if I can make that leap, anyone can.

Your prime rib looks terrific! Great job! As long as the food turns out good, I don’t sweat the difference between medium rare and medium too much any more. Meat cooked to medium still comes out more juicy on a KK grill than meat cooked to medium on other grills, kamado or not. And maybe you can turn your brother in law onto the idea of getting a KK of his own, perhaps by inviting him over for food more often, and let him have some more up close and personal time with your grill.

I can’t claim to be a brisket expert, but one time I cooked an unexpectedly large 21 lb. brisket that turned out great. One thing I did during the trimming process was to trim out as much of the fat line between the point and flat as I could without actually separating the two pieces. I think that was one of the reasons that my brisket turned out as well as it did, since the brisket became much more even in thickness after removing that fat layer, and I didn’t have to render out that fat during the cook. In fact, I’ve read that some of that fat layer is more difficult to render. All the details are here: http://komodokamadoforum.com/topic/5801-i’ve-climbed-the-mountain-21-lb-brisket/

Doesn’t the 10 day brining step make that pastrami instead of brisket? Either way, looks fantastic!

I’ve had a tile or two pop during the venting process. I just pushed them back in place after I shut down the vents, and they settled in place. No big deal. FWIW, based on the reports of people’s venting experiences, I don’t think there’s anyone who messed up that process more than I did, in that I found bubbles of unvented areas six months into using Smaug. For some reason, I never really checked the back of Smaug for bubbles, and during a high heat cook I found a large bubble on the back, below the spring mechanism for the hinge. I was worried that because I had used Smaug quite a bit over that 6 months, and I never relieved the pressure in this bubble. I could only assume that the bubble kept popping up with my high heat cooks, and I never noticed it. I was afraid that this bubble was permanent. I used a knife to cut a slit in the grout towards the bottom of the bubble, and liquid came out. Once I did that, over time this area calmed down as well. The other piece of advice I like to pass on is not to be too concerned about helping the venting process by using an Exacto knife to cut a small slit to help the gas escape. I think I was a little too precious about that part, which I think is why it took me a while to have the bubbles settle down. If I hadn’t been so reluctant to help the process, the tiles would have settled down more quickly.

I let the prime rib stand while the grill was heating up to searing temperatures, but that was more for the grill than the prime rib. I used the searing rack for the searing part. We let the prime rib rest for a little while after the sear, but that was mainly while we got the table set and the kids settled. The low and slow part for my cook was 6-1/2 hours. I think the prime rib was about 8 lbs. I was pushing the temp on the low and slow part at the end.

I’d do a reverse sear for this cook. - how long should I leave it out of the fridge before roasting? 1 hour, although I would say that the hour wait time is mainly so the salt in your rub has a chance to penetrate the meat and work its magic. I salted my rib roast the night before and let it sit in the fridge overnight. - seasoning recommendations After the salting step, I’d make a rub from black pepper, thyme, rosemary, cayenne, and minced garlic. - deflector/no deflector - dome cooking temps 200-225ºF, indirect to start - going for medium rare, what should the IT be when I pull it to let it rest in a cooler for a given length of time Stop the indirect cook at an IT of 120ºF. Take out the deflector, open up your vents, and sear until the outside gets to where you want it. -is searing an option even if the bones are tied on? Yes. The string won’t burn that quickly.

Totally agree with this. Decide how you want your prime rib roast to look and/or whether you want to deal with maneuvering things around for a reverse sear, and then do the cook accordingly. Either way, the one thing I would do is cut the bones off and tie them back on before starting the cook. (See this post for an example.) It will be much easier to carve the meat afterwards when you can just cut the string and pop the bones off rather than trying to maneuver around the bones or cut them off when the meat is hot from the cook.

I have a history of making the occasional poor judgement call. But not that poor.

One other thing to know if you're still wondering about casters on a big grill like the KK 32": even at a half ton, with four casters, each one has to support 250 lbs. It's not difficult to find high quality casters that can support twice that weight or more. I have a KK 23â€, and can move it around on my back patio which is covered with pavers just fine, and I’m not a big guy at all.

That looks so good!

Yes, I did see that. I'm going to get one.

Great job on that cook, Bosco! There’s a joke in here somewhere about how one can order a grill that goes back and forth across the ocean before it finally gets delivered, and you’re still doing a rotisserie cook sooner than if you waited for the Joetisserie. Was there a reason you let your roast sit in the cooler for three hours, or was that just a function of when the roast hit your target temperature? And it looks like the cook was done direct over the charcoal without any sort of deflector, right?