Syzygies

Long time 23" Ultimate owner. I've experimented with many approaches to "radiant heat". I wouldn't double the basket splitter. I'm a big fan of the 23" ULTIMATE DOUBLE BOTTOM DRIP PAN. It makes a great heat deflector, and an easy to clean drip pan when lined with foil. (Some people use the drippings for gravy, where the double bottom helps prevent scorching.) I use it as a heat deflector for pizza. Using any ceramic cooker as a pizza oven, one needs to confront the "heat from the bottom" effect. Wood-fired dome pizza ovens don't work this way. The best deflector helps here. Long ago, I'd get several years at a time out of a giant unglazed plant saucer (no lead risk) lined with foil. Again, leave several inches around the outside. The real art to radiant heat is to time the fire's arc. Cook on the return from "low earth orbit" when the fire is waning but the dome remembers.

Custom manufacturing has turned being a DIY "maker" on its head. I've personally used SendCutSend, Ponoko, Western Dovetail. My master woodworker neighbor hasn't made a drawer for clients in years; why do! My Venetian Bigolaro came with a handle that couldn't take the stresses of more restrictive pasta dies, so I made my own handle. Same for stainless steel spacers for my Orange-X juicer, or to better seal the interface between our kitchen faucet and sink... My 23" basket splitter is just a couple pieces of flat metal that fit together same logic as some cardboard boxes. I could upload a picture. Me, I'd mock one up in plywood, just don't light it. Be aware that most metals don't belong in a food cooker, so don't improvise: Galvanized metal in particular offgases toxins. There are always metal working shops in town, too. Get a quote. They could be half the price of buying a pizza steel from Baking Steel, at the expense of hours of prep. They were twice the price for my bigolaro handle. Our KK community is experimental, and Dennis has perfected various community good ideas once they get traction.

One can butcher or request "country-style ribs". They are indeed cut from the blade end of the pork loin, near the shoulder, often with generous meat. I used to cut these myself, trial and error after buying bone-in pork loin roasts. I'd always put the bones back in, and eventually it dawned on me...

A few decades ago I was at a math conference in College Station, Texas, and lead various forays into the town's ok BBQ. On yet another wine buying stop for the courtyard parties at our hotel, I asked if I'd found the best place. I don't It's tough being a New Yorker, while traveling. Paragraphs flit by in one's mind in the pauses between words, elsewhere. It's polite to appear to be paying attention, but that requires focus. eat barbecue Oh gawd! I'm asking the one vegetarian outside Austin! How do I get out of this conversation gracefully? round here! Well then! He sent me to Elgin, Texas. They're known for their hot links, sold in supermarkets across the state, but there were several places selling extraordinary brisket. My own best efforts would be #2, #3, #4 for me, but they were #1. I brought back more on the plane to NYC (causing some commotion) to reheat at the kind of wine tasting I now avoid. They started ordering delivery.

How low does your (convection?) oven go? We can all imagine the obvious worst case scenario here, but if you don't bump the knob your house shouldn't burn down. The obvious choice (safer but more work): your KK is an oven. As it cools after a regular cook, use it to dry pellets? I have a KK double bottom drip pan which I use all the time as a heat deflector; on the main rack filled with pellets, once the KK cooled far enough, would be a great drying environment.

Huh. I don't doubt your experience, but it's quite different from mine. I'd love to meet you halfway. What KK? What stone? What dome temperature? How long do you let the fire settle, stone heat? I do have a baking steel, but it's dedicated to tortillas; I don't want to mess with its seasoning.

I'm a fan of the gas burner assembly. I get the impression that there aren't many of us, but it has its uses. As a general principle, one can take the approach of learning how to use a KK with minimal accessories, and then buying later to meet recognized needs. How one imagines the KK will work rarely corresponds to how one observes that it actually works. It's hard to identify needs in advance, before getting experience. That said, I consider the pizza stone, and the double bottom drip pan, essential equipment. I use the gas burner assembly to get a hot fire going more quickly, for example for pizza. The issue is that one is lighting charcoal from underneath, so the fire wants to burn all at once then go out. This can be mitigated by controlling airflow, and by using large pieces of lump, such as one can buy from Fogo. As Dennis notes, one could turn off the gas but leave the gas burner inserted. I swap it for the regular door. It just feels right to get propane equipment out of the way, though I recognize that there's no actual safety issue here. My approach to pizza is to catch the KK on a downward arc, where the fire is mostly spent but the walls are still radiating a good deal of heat. I don't let the fire go into low earth orbit, because the pizza stone will get too hot, so I control airflow to limit the maximum temperature. On the other hand, the pizza stone needs to get hot enough; this is a balancing act. This is where I consider the double bottom drip pan to be essential; it's the best heat deflector for shielding the pizza stone from the fire below. In a conventional wood-fired pizza oven, the fire is not below. Using a KK, this is a key difference that requires attention. One doesn't want a burnt crust before the top is done. With this approach, I don't care that the fire has been lit from below and wants to burn all at once. My goal is to burn it all at once, within my imposed upper temperature limit.

We don't eat hunks of meat as often as we used to; our KK sees most use for chicken, pizza, Focaccia di Recco, bread. I do quick grilling (salsa veggies, taco meat) over a Solo Stove fire pit, the air fryer of the gods. We nevertheless use lots of meat-as-ingredient, and what meat isn't better with smoke? Then there's the Maillard reaction, very special in a KK. Thinning the herd in the chest freezer... The pork butt will become carnitas or tamales filling, the ribs will become a pasta sauce from Rosetta Costantino's My Calabria (we just got back from her food tour), and the brisket will become braised beef for Dan Dan noodles from Robert Delf's The Good Food of Szechuan.

Beautiful! Back in the shallow end of the swimming pool, I'm also fond of guerrilla woodworking. At our daughter's previous house in Salem, Oregon, working outside in her carport next to pouring rain with minimal tools, watching the wood warp in real time as I worked. I rejected dado cut joints in favor of explicit shelf supports I could clamp the shelves onto, taking out cupping as I screwed them in. Back went on last. Serviceable, and they made the move to her new house in Arizona.

We love our Vermicular Musui Kamado, and use it frequently. Also, as part of the cohort that can afford a Komodo Kamado, we did not blink at buying a new Vermicular Kamado (base) after our original touch display failed after four years. They may be Japanese, but they're not Toyota. Anyone who is on the fence over price needs to accept that the $340 (USD) Kamado base is potentially a purchase every three years. If someone's reaction is "screw them!" I understand. While I can be dispassionate enough to repurchase the base, I'm also fairly pissed off that they didn't at least volunteer a technical description of what is typically wrong, and what they'd do under warranty. Although, my own experience is that they replace rather than repair. While I appreciated the new unit, this is how we're destroying the planet.

I asked my wife, who belongs to a Greek Orthodox church. Her immediate answer: They overcook it. My advice would be heretical: Sous vide for a long time at a rather rare target temperature, then grill on the KK to get a nice exterior. That's my go-to for any meat better served rare than "low and slow" trad BBQ.

At the moment the two most recent threads are spam, 5 and 10 hours old, by different posters. There are dozens of people here I would trust with the authority to delete threads, under a "one strike" rule: If any deletion is even remotely a judgment call, as determined by our actual admins, that authority is permanently revoked. None of these spam threads would last 30 minutes, under such a system. I'm going to take a break from posting until we sort this out.

May I ask, what is the rack? I want one!

I ordered the Fourneau mat, which fits on my mini pizza peel, and doesn't need handles. I do own scissors, but do the BreadMat-C handles get in the way of closing the Challenger? Once I toss in three ice cubes, I feel like I'm on a tight clock. Steam does make its way between the Challenger pieces and the knitting of the Challenger gloves. I've never been burned, but I don't feel like waiting around! As in, any extra step that takes another half second would be dumb. They do say two ice cubes, but they don't specify a size. Huh. Their handles are to overcome the difficulties in lowering an unbaked loaf into a tall-sided Dutch oven. A solid border prevents deforming the loaf. However, the Challenger doesn't have tall sides, and readily accepts my mini pizza peel. Do the handles stay up, so they're never in the way when one replaces the Challenger lid?