CeramicChef

As a boy growing up I remember my dear Mom making strawberry-rhubarb pie that was to die for. She grew her own rhubarb in her garden. How my Mom raised 5 kids, managed a house, drove us everywhere for sports, etc. I will never know. We always had tasty treats after school like her pies, cobblers, cakes, cookies, I'll never know. @Syzygies - that's a very tasty looking pie on the KK. Kudos to ya!

@Shuley - very nicely done chicken and I love that money shot! Like @ckreef says, chicken on the KK is just impossible to screw up. I should know … I try all the time to screw up chicken and haven't done it yet! I hope your son's trip to the dentist was as uneventful as an extraction can be and that he heals quickly. Kudos and congrats on a wonderful cook! I like that I'm seeing a little soot on the inside of that KK.

I'm in on this deal!

@Syzygies - LOL!! I was always in for a treat whenever I gave an exam, especially when I was teaching Thermo. Answers were so far from reality I almost had a red rubber stamp made that said WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? Alas, I didn't. Too many tender feelings. I'm really liking your ideas here. And I think that they have some real merit. In fact, you got me thinking (watch out!) and I think I'm going to start keeping notes again on my cooks. I also think I'm going to start using your linear interpolation technique to see what we can see after a baseline is established. This should be fun. I was always a theoretician versus an experimentalist. Now I'm living on the ragged edge and it's all your fault! Stay tuned for further announcements ...

@ckreef, @skreef - Friends, what an absolutely beautiful place to relax. THat's just a marvelous place to kick back, pop a top, and smell some smoke. Kudos on your creation!

@Syzygies - too much wine? I've never had that happen in my life! I understand that you may have been a bit disappointed with your cook, but Friend, from the cheap seats here in OKC, I'm not seeing much wrong. In fact, next time you screw up a cook like this, box it up and ship it too me, COD! I'll happily eat every last morsel! Kudos on a fine meal that your guests loved, and that's the important thing, right? Be well. Enjoy your summer break.

@Shuley - Charles hits the nail on the head in his post. That's the way I transfer posts from the Guru to here. No big deal. Copy and paste is about as complicated as I want to get these days. Your initial cooks are absolutely wonderful. And as you get to know your KK over time, things will get easier and you'll be able to walk away and do a whole host of other things rather than mind your cooker. I don't think I've ever seen so many ambitious cooks on a new KK, not even from @ckreef! Congrats and kudos to you!

Shelley - I"m really liking what I'm seeing! That is one seriously gorgeous 23 Ultimate! I could not be happier for you, your husband, and the family. You're going to love KoKo as I've taken to calling your KK. Now hurry up and get that 23 Ultimate lit up and getting dirty!

@Syzygies - I like your ideas. I've gotta think about this for a few. I used to do a lot of heat transfer and thermo back in the day and I've gotta knock the rust off. And I like your analogy of the options traders. The guys who discovered that time is a wasting asset correlated with risk and return won a Noble Prize for their discovery. I think their equation took the form of a second order PDE as I remember. This equation was very familiar to anyone who ever took a course in heat transfer at the graduate level. I also tend to agree with your philosophy of calculus analogy. Economists have survived for decades drawing straight lines in a curved world. Are you saying that to a first approximation, linear interpolation is a valid methodology for adjusting cook times? A couple of questions come to mind. Let's talk butts and briskets. Both are quite heterogeneous. How do you take into account that the cook time for similar 9# butts or 15# packers is so different? How do you account for differences in geometry, i.e. surface area available for heat transfer? I've had a 9# butt be done in 12 hours and I've had 9# butts take 14 hours. The same is true with briskets. And over the past 20 years of low-n-slow cooking on kamados at 225F, I've seen different cuts of meat take time that was unreal. (I've never kept any recent cook data; I'm the guy who cooks to an Internal Temperature and then probes for tenderness.) That's why I like using electronic thermometers. I follow the temp of a cook and look to adjust accordingly. I'm wondering if meat just isn't too heterogeneous for your undertaking. Fat content varies tremendously. So does water content. The protein content will also vary tremendously. All these factors taken together mean that cooks happen idiosyncratically given that heat transfer through a nonstandard medium (meat) will differ. I know my kamado cooking mentor, a Professor of Meat Science, would love to chat with you about this. Alas, he is now deceased and cooking great BBQ in the sky. I will agree with you that to a first approximation, your methodology may not be too bad. I think one has to consider the geometry (since weight really means nothing). A butt cut into quarters will cook much quicker than the same butt left whole. I've really got to sit and think about this whole notion. You're off to a good start. Might there be a publication in this someplace for you? If so, GOOD!

@Gnomatic - Buddy, when an idea hits you, it's hits you BIG time! Wonderful cook for being so impromptu, kudos and congrats to you! I love my side tables. They are so dadgummed handy. I use 'em for a cook and then just slide 'em off and stow 'em. Everyone who sees mine loves 'em. Then, when I show my guests the craftsmanship, everyone gets that look of WOW,

@Jeff S - that's a wonderful first cook. All that food looks as if you're feeding an army! Congrats on the KK and kudos on this first cook.

@EGGARY - thanks for that post. It never hurts to review and refresh. Good article.

@Syzygies - that's just a gorgeous bark on those ribs. Touch 'Em all and take a bow, because you knocked this one outta the park. Just a wonderful cook. Now I'm waiting for the money shot. Kudos to you?

@Bruce Pearson - my Friend, I bought a high dollar convection oven when I moved into my new home about 2 years ago. I haven't used it but a handful of times. TheBeast, my BB 32, handles everything. My KKs are the world's best convection ovens. Bar none. Be well and YES! God bless America!

@MacKenzie - now you've gone and done it! Diet ruined! Diet DEAD! What a Greta pie. I love ehibarb pie and that's one I could love for, oh, say 30 minutes, if that long. That's all it would take for me to eat that whole pie and eat a gallons of vanilla bean ice cream! Kudos to ya!

My main challenge to a wood fired oven is figuring out how long I'll stay in one place. I don't want to put a bunch of bucks into a nice pizza oven as part of a nice outdoor kitchen that I can't take with me if I get the itch. TheBeast seems to do just fine and dadgummed dandy.

@DennisLinkletter - been ther, done that, wrote the screen play, and won the freaking Oscar! Have the cymbals quit crashing yet?

Charles, I absolutely LOVE my bourbon, neat. I'm generally drinking Woodford. It's as smooth as a baby's tush. If I'm really in the mood, I break out my Midleton Irish. It makes Woodford look like horse piss, and that's damned hard to do. But, seeing as the Midleton costs about 2.5 times the Woodford, it oughtta be stunning! I gave a sip od Midleton to a young lass that over for dinner. She said, and I quote, "That's like an orgasm in my mouth!". That's all I'm I've got to say about that, to quote a phrase.

@Syzygies - now that cook is some kind of droolicious looking set of ribs! I can't wait for the money shot!

Thanks, Susan.

@DennisLinkletter - CONGRATULATIONS! I have a saying that I have always lived by in my business career:A flood begins with but a single raindrop. This was your first raindrop! Get ready … all the yesterday's of hard work are about to pay off.

@tinyfish - I'll join you anytime at your table for a cook like that one above and I'll even help you dig foundation all day long! That's some fine looking Kobe Cook! I can taste it now! Kudos to you and your shed! PS - do I have to bring my own shovel?

@ckreef - absolutely stunning cook. Looks as if that new burner vindicated all the time and effort invested in it! And it looks as if a little adult liquid refreshment was part and parcel of the evening. That's the way to spend an evening! Kudos and congrats to you and Susan.

@tony b - I know exactly what you mean! I woke up today with nothing to do and by noon I was half-way finished with it!

@Jeff S - okay, congrats on the burn in. Now you're good to go! I was raised in Oklahoma and Texas.. Down here we generally use Oak, Hickory, and Mesquite on our briskets. And we generally just use one smoke wood rather than a mixture. I prefer Oak to anything else, then Hickory, and finally Mesquite. As was mentioned above, if you do use Mesquite, please do so judiciously as it has a very strong flavor. Heres to a great first cook and even better memories with family, friends, and your new KK. Remember, we want pictures!