CeramicChef

I remember (sort of) the welcome party that the Department threw every fall semester for the new cohort of doctoral students. Fun times. And where I went to grad school, it was well known that no-one left until every bottle was dry.

@Bruce Pearson - won't break anything but my dadgummed foot/toes/ankle and neck from falling down after trying to hop around on one foot!

Dennis, I'll be call in the next few days to get an entirely new set of the roti shaft. you never cease to amaze me at how responsive you are to your customers and how imaginative you are at solving problems.

@Bruce Pearson - thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it greatly. Here is the slaw recipe. IT was from Herman's Seafood House here in OKC that was quite famous. Here is a recipe for cole slaw, not original to me, from a famous seafood restaurant here in OKC that people rave about. Herman’s Cole SlawIngredients:1 head cabbage, thinly sliced 2 onions, thinly sliced1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar1 cup cider vinegar1 teaspoon dry mustard2 teaspoons salt1 teaspoon celery seed1 clove garlic, minced1/2 - 3/4 cup vegetable oil (Use 1/2 cup of oil for a more vinegar taste)2 bottles of sliced pimentosDirections:Shred cabbage & onions. Cover with the 1/2 cup sugar. Set aside for about one hour. Boil vinegar, 2 Tbsp sugar, mustard, salt, and celery seed; pour over cabbage while hot. Add grated diced pimientos. Add garlic & salad oil. Let set 24 hours; serve cold. It is quite tart, so add sugar "to taste". Will keep in refrigerator for weeks.My guests like this slaw so much that it has become standard fare whenever I entertain. Enjoy! Let me how you like it. It's simple, quick, and because it is vinegar based, I have no worries about temps on tables. NOTE: I tend to use Splenda as some of my guest are diabetics. 1 to 1 substitution works just fine. Here is the link to the original post here at the KK Forum.

@DennisLinkletter - what does this add that I don't get with my baking stone? I'm intrigued.

I'd be all over those chunks. Looks as it that size would fit the 2 Qt Dutch Oven Smoke Pot just fine.

Thanks, Tony! It was indeed delicious. If it was up to Pete, my table would be a pork free zone.

@Stile88 - it was a really tasty treat. That something like this salmon dish is so tasty and yet so easily made almost is beyond belief. Thanks!

Shelly - the salmon was really done perfectly. It was flaky, moist, and had just the right amount of smoke on it. I can't compare it to commercially smoke salmon as I've never eaten any.

@MacKenzie - thank you very much. I appreciate that. The veggies, potatoes roasted in Beauty!, and the cole slaw set the fish off beautifully. Thanks again!

Howdy KKers! I've been craving smoked salmon lately, so the last time I was in Sam's Club, I bought a couple of fillets and cooked them last night for my dinner guests. Here is a pic of the fillets fresh from the packaging. I made up a dry brine of brown sugar, sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, cinnamon, and all spice. Here are the fillets' covered with the mixture. I covered the dish and put it in the refrigerator for about 15 hours. As you can see a great deal of moisture has been drawn out of the fish fillets. Rinse the fillets and pat them dry. Then set the fillets on a drying rack back in the refrigerator for about 4 - 5 hours. This is what your fillets should look like right before you place them in the cooking grate in your kamado. And it's on to the cooking grate in TheBeast. I smoked these fillets for about 2 hours @ 175F using Alder and Peach chunks. Here is a picture of the fillets right after they were pulled off the cooking grate. You can tell they are dome by the little droplets of the cream colored liquid that you can see on the fillets. Here is a closer picture of the cooked fillets. Finally, here is the plated shot. The fillets were served with KK roasted potatoes and a vinegar based cole slaw, the recipe of which is posted in the recipe section. As you can see, Pete The Salt Pig heartily approves of us eating heart healthy. This is an easy cook and only takes a few minutes prep time in the kitchen. Thanks for looking.

Can I get a dozen to go? Half soft, half crunchy. Looks tasty. Kudos!

We're all good here in OKC! We know what we have and we're not worried. To really foul things up .... a computer is in the loop somehow.

+1^ Bery well stated, @MacKenzie.

I generally heat soak for an hour once my temp gets dialed in. For pizza I'll do about an hour and a half. For cooks that need to go on the grate very early in the morning, I'll fire up the KK, set an alarm and go to sleep, get up and put the cook on the grate, and go back to bed. That means the KK can heat soak for 5 or 6 hours. No big deal.

@Syzygies - that bread looks wonderful. What a beautiful color on that crust. Kudos.

@MacKenzie - that's a stunning money shot! Are you sure you didn't have a career as a food stylist? And the rest of the cook looks absolutely beautiful. Kudos on a wonderful cook!

@twharton - please, the name is Ken. CeramicChef sounds so dadgummed formal! And i'm anything but formal. I remember the first low-n-slow, a butt, I did on TheBeast. Now my previous kamados were BGEs and Primos and I was used to how much lump I could expect to consume during the cook. With TheBeast being much larger, i expected about a 50% imcrease in lump usage. At the end of the butt cook in TheBeast and after everything had cooled, I pulled everything apart. I was gobsmacked at how little lump had been burned in the belly of TheBeast. This was the single most efficient burn I had seen. I was simply amazed. I had heard the story about a 225°F burn that lasted 80 hours. At first I was sort of skeptical. I am a four-square believer after I went over 50 hours at 350°F on a full load of lump. These KKs are the most efficient kamados I've ever seen. Dennis has really thought through this system.

@twharton - I really hate to tell you this,. but this is just something you're going to have to learn to live with!

@Izzy - I'm glad your runaway KK BB didn't go all the nuclear. This is a lesson that is usually learned the hard way and then never repeated. I think part of the problem is that you used 6 fire starter cubes to initiate your fire. In my experience that is way too many. I've never really had a problem using 3, at the most. Using 6 lights a tremendous amount of lump at once and if you forget your KK, well, you know the result. Try using 1 fire starter for temps between 150-300, 2 cubes for temps between 300-450, and 3 cubes for temps 450+. You'll find that the airflow in your KK BB is so efficient that less turns out to be more. Living in Oklahoma, I know all about severe weather this time of year. I'm glad all turned out with the weather, the chicken, and the runaway KK BB!

Damn! And I was feeling pretty proud of optimizing a generalized cubic equation of state for natural gas and gas mixtures! Ill just my seat in the back of class and shut up!

Aussie! Now that's bacon done right! Apricots are one of my favorite fruits and bacon … well, everyone knows about bacon! Combine the two and you're talking heaven on earth! Kudos all under to you.

BOOM! That sandwich is the bomb. Beautiful cook all around ... the veggies, the bread/buns, the meat, it just doesn't get any better! Kudos! I'd say your 6 year old is a very good judge of sammies!

That gets it done every single time! Very nice cooks and even better party. Very nicely @twharton. Kudos to you!

Aussie - I'd eat those cooks all day long! Great colors and wonderful pics. Kudos to ya!