wilburpan

Great job on that duck, Tony! Don’t be afraid to go higher on the temp at the end to get the skin where you want it. I went to 400ºF at the end, but this was a direct rotisserie cook, and I’m not sure whether you were cooking direct or indirect at the end of your cook. If it was indirect, you may want/need to go up higher than 400ºF. When we were in Beijing, at the restaurant that served the best Peking Duck I think I will ever have, I got a brief look into their kitchen. They finished off the duck by hanging the whole duck in front of a wood fire in a brick oven, fairly close, and rotated it around to crisp up the skin. I’m sure that the temperature in that oven was pretty high for that step.

My prime rib cook from last year was a 8-9 lb. prime rib roast. I cooked it at 200ºF, and ramped up the temp to 250ºF at the end for a total of 6 hours of cooking. The target temp was 120ºF, and then I seared the outside. This prime rib had the bones on, which is important, as a boneless prime rib will cook faster. All the details are here: http://komodokamadoforum.com/topic/5080-post-christmas-prime-rib-roast/

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, too, Dennis, and everyone! That’s awesome news.

Beeswax is a great food-safe finish. The only problem is that it will wear off after a while, so you’ll have to reapply it at some point. But it should work great. As far as tung oil goes, the problem with how finishes are regulated is it’s entirely possible to describe a finishing product as “tung oil†when it has no tung oil in it at all. In addition, you can do things like label a finish as “Danish oil†and have it really be a varnish thinned with a solvent, without any oil. Either way, once the finish has cured, it should be relatively safe for BBQ purposes as far as not contaminating your food. I wouldn’t use the table as a chopping board, but it would be fine to hold plates and trays.

Do you want the skin to turn out crispy, or does it not matter? Edit: never mind, saw what you wrote about the cracklings. Whatever your planned cooking start time is, I’d add in another hour for lighting the grill and letting it stabilize and heat soak. This was counterintuitive for me when I first started using Smaug, but it takes less time to heat up the grill for a hot and fast cook like steak than it does for a low and slow cook. The other thing is the skin. The low and slow will leave the skin cooked, but not crispy. You’re going to have to do something about that if you want crispy skin. Either slice off the skin and cook it separately at the end, or take out your deflectors at the end, let the grill heat up to a higher temperature, and finish cooking the outside like a reverse sear. Again, you’re going to need to build in extra time for this.

That looks great! How did you source your bison brisket? Did you go through a local butcher/meat supplier, or did you have to mail order it?

That shot of your eight pounds of wings was impressive. As was how your ribs turned out! One thing to keep in mind for your next wing cook: if you plan on cooking indirect (that’s what I prefer as well), you need to make sure the wings on the outside are over your deflector, and not too close to the walls of the grill. Otherwise you’ll have a perimeter of overcooked wings. DAMHIKT.

If your sear time is a minute or two, which was my searing time, I’d do the reverse sear. You’ll have better control over the outcome, and if the difference between the sear with cold meat and a sear with meat at 120ºF makes a meaningful impact on your prime rib, then you are really cooking a tenderloin instead (if you get my drift ). I’m not sure that reverse sears are great for all cooks. I’m not a big fan of reverse seared steaks, for example, because even at 1-1/2†thick, a steak is thin enough that you don’t have to worry about achieving a good result with direct grilling over an appropriately high flame. But for bigger pieces of meat, I think reverse sears are great. This also includes cooking a whole bird: roasting a whole bird at a lower temperature and finishing at a high temperature to crisp up the skin routinely gives me better results than high temps at the beginning, and then dropping down to a lower temperature. In my hands, this was true for oven cooking, and is true with Smaug. Besides, if overcooking the outside part of a prime rib is the issue, I don’t see how I’m going to do much better than this. This was the result of a reverse sear.

Me too. 120ºF was my target temp for last year’s prime rib roast. Based on how it turned out, 120ºF will be my target temp until I die.

Great job, Bosco! I was waiting for you to try a pizza cook.

You’re welcome, although I’m not sure what I did to deserve the compliment. Just in case you haven’t seen this, this is the prime rib roast I made last year. http://komodokamadoforum.com/topic/5080-post-christmas-prime-rib-roast/ It is really simple. Essentially, you’re doing a big reverse sear. Most of the low temp part was around 200ºF, bumping up to 250ºF at the end. I think the biggest factor in the success of this cook besides using a KK grill was salting the meat ahead of time, and applying the rub afterwards. I mention in that writeup that I’m not sure if I would use the rosemary and thyme again because the herbs got burned off during the sear, but I think I actually would use the rosemary and thyme again anyway. And I would definitely not forget to make a sauce from the drippings the next time.

I really like that light reflection, too! And that’s coming from someone who ordered a matte pebble tile for my KK grill.

I’ve never had a low and slow go out on me in the middle of the cook because of ash buildup. I have closed down the lower vent so far that the fire went out when I was playing around with vent settings.

Well, here’s the glass half-full side: folks into cold-smoking salmon and other foods would kill to have a kamado that could hold temp at 150ºF for four hours.

Here's the conversation I had with many of my friends after Smaug arrived. Friend: How much did your new grill cost? Me: I DON'T CARE. Friend: What do you mean? Me: [Gives him a rib or some pulled pork to eat.] Friend: Ohhhhhhh. Got it.

Great job!

Right on!

For future reference, here’s what I do to get Smaug to a given setting. High heat/steak searing cooks: Light a full basket of charcoal in as many locations as I can, with the bottom vent fully open. Leave the lid up for 5 minutes. Use tongs to spread out the lit charcoal lumps over the top layer as evenly as possible. Place my grates in, close the lid, and open the top vent as much as possible. After 10 minutes, I should be able to hit 500ºF or more, which makes 15 minutes altogether. Low and slow cooks: Light a full basket of charcoal in just one spot, with the bottom vent open about 1/8â€. Leave the lid up for 5 minutes. Place the deflector and grates in, close the lid, and open the top vent as much as needed for my target temperature. Here’s where spending an afternoon calibrating your vent settings really helps. For Smaug, for 250ºF, it’s 1/4 of a turn or less. For 300ºF, it’s 1/2 turn, and the bottom vent open about 1/4â€. For 350ºF, it’s 1 turn. Your settings will probably be close, but different. Wait 15 minutes, and see where the grill settles out at, and adjust vents as needed. Heat soak for 1 hour.

I can routinely get Smaug from unlit to 600ºF in 15 minutes or less. What you’re seeing is the increased efficiency of a KK grill compared to your KJ grills in action. If you need to heat soak, you will have to wait longer than you’re used to as well. For low and slow cooks, or indirect cooks like duck at 375ºF, I’ll let Smaug go for an hour. You will also probably need to get used to smaller vent settings than you’re used to as well. These vent settings might seem ridiculously small — for low and slows, I’ll have the bottom vent open only 1/8†or so for a target temperature of 200-250ºF. But they work. Again, that’s the KK grill’s efficiency in action.

Those short ribs look amazing. Beef ribs are one thing I haven’t tried yet, and I’m hoping my first attempt will be half as good as this dish! Just for future reference, what temperature did you use, and how long did it take your ribs to cook?

Bosco, do you have the Big Joe expander rack? I think you might be a little generous in the expander rack size. I remember seeing the Big Joe expander rack, and to my memory, the KK 23†upper grate was bigger. On the Kamado Joe website, they don’t specify how many square inches the expander rack is. The Big Joe spec sheet says this: Dimensions ........................... 50 in Wide x 54 in High x 31 in DeepCooking Surface .................. 24 in Diameter/452 sq inw/Grill Expander .................. XXX square inches The ad copy for the KJ grill expander says this: Add up to 60% more cooking surface to your grill with the Kamado Joe Grill Expander. That “up to 60% more†seems a bit deliberately vague to me. Why not just state the area of the grill expander? My guess is that the 60% more grill space may apply to the KJ Classic, since it’s easier to be 60% more of a smaller grate than a bigger grate.

I should also mention that if you have the basket splitter set up with the half circle piece, you effectively have the same sort of set up as the Divide and Conquer system.

I do have the rotisserie bracket mounted all the time. You can put the right shelf on without taking the bracket off.

There's a picture of my basket splitter set up in this post: http://komodokamadoforum.com/topic/5415-rotisserie-chicken-on-smaug/

Splitter for the 23" or the 32"? For Smaug, the vertical piece goes in the middle, and the half circle piece sits on the ring halfway up from the bottom.