Syzygies

Some are rounded. Some aren't. It's not just one brand.

I bought a vintage Stanley wrench off eBay, with the idea of embedding it into a hardwood handle. Didn't cost much at all. You don't need new, and vintage is cool. An advantage of eBay is there's usually a picture. Confirm that the wrench is rounded before purchase.

I also own a Grill Floss. For what it's worth, I loved the Grill Floss. Any reasonably well-adjusted soul should be happy with good life choices. I nevertheless prefer the wrench. One can apply more force from closer in.

For really getting anything clean, such as KK grates after a low & slow (or misuse of my molcajete mortar, or the grates from our indoor gas range), nothing beats minimizing the setup time to using an electric pressure washer. Yeah, a little pricier than a box wrench, but ...

We bought our pressure washer for cleaning our ipe deck before annual oiling. I use it whenever I can. It makes me feel like Jiarby starting a fire (there's an obscure reference for old-timers).

I gave away my rotisserie because I hated cleaning it. With the pressure washer, I'd consider one again. Get a water heater drip pan to hold the grate you're cleaning. No need to plug the hole, this is just to protect one's yard from the pressure washer.

The woodworking project is still pending (as are so many!).

Look to other traditions? The Chinese have tea-smoked duck, for example.

Making Laurie some Rogan Josh, for our 15th wedding anniversary.

I have the ingredients on hand for a Jamaican curry powder, and I don't have an easy source for Portland Mills Jamaican Curry Powder. I like making spice blends from scratch. The one unusual ingredient that jumps out at me is allspice, and as you say, lots of turmeric.

I loved my visit to Jamaica, and the smoke that got into everything (either Pimento wood, or cannabis, or both!). I wonder what the best way would be to introduce smoke into this recipe.

Does anyone have good sources for Pimento wood? I've heard of throwing in allspice berries. I tried growing Pimento wood back when California still had winter frosts (remember butterflies? remember winter? remember those famous coastal cities from the twentieth century?). The frost killed my tree.

One "approximately" doesn't need one, as many will tell you. The Devil is in that "approximately". I like to sleep through the night if I can, or run errands during the day. With practice the KK doesn't drift much, though with a BBQ Guru it doesn't drift at all. I'm a multitasker, I like that.

I used to have their simplest unit with an actual oven dial. Rotary, mechanical. I wore it into the ground. I now have two Digi Q's. One's a spare, I'll cook for 80 where it would be embarrassing not to show up. It's all I need, I just want to set a temperature.

I have both the Pit Viper and a Pit Bull for a 23" KK. The Pit Viper is plenty for low & slow, and the Pit Pull risks letting too much air through with the fan not running. (Guru 101 is to realize these things can't stop passive flow, it's up to you to step down their opening and nearly close the KK top hat damper.) Nevertheless, I can run my pit probe outside into the hole for the TelTru thermometer, and read the KK pit temp without exposing any wiring to fire. Then I can actually control a 450 F fire for bread. Not that I do this often, I'm around more for bread, shorter cook, and paradoxically it's easier to stick 450 F than 225 F. Cut back the air; plenty of folks here have trouble even reaching 450 F. The Pit Bull works fine at 225 F, and has no trouble supplying enough air for 450 F.

So yes, you don't need one, but a Guru sure is handy!

I seized a rare lull in our California "spare the air" days, before the onset tomorrow of a new heat wave brings new fires. Pork belly strips, salt, pepper, pimenton over apple smoke from a smoke pot.

I'll parse out the meat for either Hunan Harvest Pork or Sichuan Twice-cooked Pork. I'll make some lard from the fat in my Vermicular Musui-Kamado, to have smoke goodness in other stir fries.

Yamada Hammered Iron Round Bottom Wok (1.6mm Thickness)

I've lost track of how many woks I've owned over my life. These Japanese woks (round or flat bottom) are by far the best woks I've ever seen. Thickness matters. I made a wooden handle to go in the arm. I own a 33cm flat bottom, which I now realize is a bit small. Our new range will be round-bottom ready, with more BTUs, so I have a 36cm round wok on order.

2 hours ago, woody said:

I keep, looking at these and the Breeo but hesitate as they say woodburning only. 

I wrote Solo Stove to ask what they knew about CO and complete combustion; they gave a lawyer's answer "wood only".

I remember from high school chem lab that an alcohol fire doesn't even hurt. On the other hand, the dawn of the Bronze Age involved people figuring out how to get fires hot enough to melt metals.

(There's a famous cave drawing of someone who looks just like Dennis advising caution here. Ever notice how Dennis doesn't age?)

Their concern is that charcoal would get hot enough to damage the Solo Stove. On the other hand, we're cooking here. One compensates for the Solo Stove efficiency by using less fuel, which is a bonus when one's fuel is expensive. A gentle fire from mixed fuels or just charcoal is not going to damage the Solo Stove. I have plenty of experience with this.

I find that a small quantity of wood burns down to nearly nothing too fast. If I step away, I miss the sweet spot for best cooking. Even then, with patience one can cook anything.

Wood is easiest to light. Adding charcoal gives your fire staying power. Err on the side of caution, get less dramatic searing but tasty food till you dial this in, and you'll be fine.

2 hours ago, Adam Ag 98 said:

The rest is a story as to why I'd care that much about brisket drippings...

As a kid I worked a summer at Schaller's burger restaurant on the Lake Ontario shore near Rochester, NY. They really did serve great classic burgers. There were nights I was the only one working who wasn't tripping on psilocybin. We'd draw straws for who got to turn on the machine that chopped 50 onions at once. Everyone else stood by to carry the unlucky one into a walk-in freezer, where staring up at the fan for twenty seconds restored some sight to one's eyes. Man did that sting! Impressive machine, though...

Our hot sauce was legendary. To first approximation it was just grease. The secret recipe was actually to take every mistake burger that week, and cook it down. In a pot of grease, of course. You'd swear your napkin was the best burger you'd ever had, with this sauce on it.

The 'contraption' is a Plancha Griddle Plate by OUTDOORCHEF. There's one left on Amazon.com. They have many other nice-looking grill accessories.

Nice!

The plancha's stated dimensions in cm are W 34.8 x D 41.0 x H 10.0, which don't make that much sense. Tekobo has a Solo Stove Bonfire, with an outer diameter of 19.5", and an inner diameter of 17.5". The cast iron grate pictured earlier has a stated diameter of 17.5" and doesn't fall through. Why? Solo Stove only gives approximate dimensions, and their top ring narrows the top opening, probably here to 15.5" or so (roughly 40 cm). That suggests that the plancha diameter is 41cm, and just fits. Its depth is then 34.8cm.

My Solo Stove Ranger has an outer diameter of 15". I also have their two-piece spark shield. I could set this plancha on the outer piece, and my fire would have room to breath...

We like cooking burgers outside, on a baking steel in the KK. Keeps the food smells out of the house. This would be an alternative. However, California is in the grips of wildfire smoke right now, and any fire like this is temporarily banned.

2 C3H7OH + 9 O2 -> 6 CO2 + 8 H2O + heat

2 C3H7OH + 8 O2 -> 2 CO + 4 CO2 + 8 H2O + heat

2 C3H7OH + 7 O2 -> 4 CO + 2 CO2 + 8 H2O + heat

2 C3H7OH + 6 O2 -> 6 CO + 8 H2O + heat

On further research, the complete combustion of isopropyl alcohol (C3H7OH) yields carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). Even knowing no chemistry, one can confirm that there are 6 C, 16 H, and 20 O on each side of the first reaction.

As one decreases the available oxygen, the combustion produces increasing quantities of carbon monoxide (CO). This is true for any kind of fire. CO has one less oxygen atom than CO2. With a shortage of oxygen, that's what gives.

I don't stick around while the alcohol burns (that's the whole point of this lighting method, I don't have to stick around). And Solo Stoves are designed to more fully burn any fuel. They burn much closer to smoke-free than other charcoal burners I know, so I believe their claims.

I could be overstating the carbon monoxide risk here. Any incomplete combustion risks producing carbon monoxide. There's no additional specific risk associated with isopropyl alcohol.

On the other hand, when I douse my wood and charcoal with isopropyl alcohol, there is clearly more available alcohol than the fire can immediately use. The alcohol takes a while to burn off. If there were ample oxygen, it would simply explode. So I don't know the proportion of carbon monoxide produced by such a fire. Safest to step away!

Indoors, we've got this gas range. It has insides and a top. We use the top more often, but the insides are very important.

Outdoors, those roles are assumed by our KK and a couple of Solo Stoves. Many nights, the meal is not centered around outdoor fire, but outdoor fire is critical to ingredient prep. For that, I can pour a bit of isopropyl alcohol over a wood/charcoal mix in a Solo Stove, light it, and be back in the house in thirty seconds. Real fire, as quick as lighting a gas grill.

Some nights we want pizza or focaccia di recco, or roast or tandoor chicken, or salmon. That's work for the KK.

Tonight's dinner was bean tacos. The tacos were from masa I ground yesterday for chicken tacos (grilled of course). Tonight's salsa was from garden tomatillos and garden chiles. A comal is traditional for blackening these ingredients, but I prefer a real fire.

I'll light the smaller Solo Stove to roast a single pepper. The Weber kettle has gone untouched for years. Anything the Solo Stove can't do, the KK can. I need both.

On 7/22/2020 at 8:56 PM, Wingman505 said:

Good god man... 😄

On 7/23/2020 at 1:44 PM, tekobo said:

Wingman, you do know that Mac is not of the male persuasion?  We claim her as one of ours.  Thank you. 

From what little I can remember of sixties/seventies counterculture (if you can remember you weren't there), the vernacular stripped apparent gender from phrases like this. I'd hear women use "Hey man" with each other. It wasn't a political statement; the complete lack of concern about gender was the triumph here.

This must have stayed with me. I understood all the genders, and read "man" here with nary a ripple that anything was out of place. "Good god man..." is a precious exclamation. As we understood half a century ago, what we took, we took for all.

We have many sizes of 4mil chamber vacuum pouches. The price is right compared to any alternative, and we have a chamber machine.

One can use an oversized bag, then simply clip the bag over the side of the Cambro. Then the bag needn't be sealed, and is reusable.

After summers on the Aeolian Islands and Pantelleria, I've developed a lifelong love of capers. We're cooking for ourselves and our foodie neighbors (while they remodel their kitchen) and I used the last of our capers in the stellar swordfish recipe from My Calabria. Crisis. Worse, one of our two favorite sources (Les Moulins Mahjoub) had become impossible to find in 500g jars. I found exactly one US source, Four Star Seafood in San Francisco. They'll deliver out to us $100 minimum for $5 flat fee. So I added a box of frozen shrimp as part of my order.

CAPERS IN SALT #4/7 – 2.2 LBS - Buon Italia

Wild Mountain Capers - (100g.)/ (500g.) - Four Star Seafood

Gulf Shrimp U10 - Head On - 4 lb box - Four Star Seafood

I've been asking everywhere after shrimp heads for stock. They apparently just throw them overboard or something.

A four pound box, at half the price I'd pay for similar shrimp at Berkeley Bowl, is half shrimp, half heads. The heads fit nicely in the Vermicular with a liter of chicken stock, half a liter of water to cover. Cook 200 F for 45 minutes; any fish stock can over-extract. Then compost the heads; your worms will love you. This will either go into a Catalan Fideua or a gumbo.

My Breeo Outpost 19 came today, and I was easily able to fit it to my $50 Harbor Freight cart, over my Solo Stove Ranger.

My neighbor has a true adjustable height Argentinian grill. This is my toy version. I've already got lighting a fire down to thirty seconds: Wood chunks, lump charcoal, isopropyl alcohol, hearing protectors, match. Now I need not be so concerned about waiting for the fire to settle. Just raise the grill!

20 hours ago, tekobo said:

Mainly because @Syzygies turned us on to this aluminium disc innovation before I got around to buying any chain.

Doing something in a home oven isn't original to Thomas Keller, but his Bouchon Bakery cookbook brought the idea renewed attention. He recommended chains and stones. What he gets right is that scale matters. The steam from 350g of water will displace the air in an oven or a KK several times over, scalding the cold dough with a great transfer of heat energy. 10g from a plant spritzer is just genuflecting. Baking inside a Dutch oven is different.

Stones, really? They would probably work. They wouldn't explode all that often, right? Not for me. Anyone who sells $400 restaurant meals is an illusionist. There's a romance to cooking with stone. But still...

While I prefer home cookbooks by cooks with serious professional chops, I've come to always view their home equipment recommendations with extreme suspicion. Paul Bertolli may have gotten us started grinding flour for everything, but his equipment recommendations and handling instructions made no sense. He was clearly getting recently ground artisan grains delivered to the restaurant. Professional cooks are too busy to cook at home. I have this image of the Bouchon Bakery trying a pan full of stones once, for the book. They've got to have the correct professional gear, at the bakery, and that's where they bake.

The aluminum disks came about by chance. I'd discovered them on eBay. Someone is getting paid to cut holes, and they're selling the holes, got to love the business model. I wanted additional thermal mass under my Baking Steel for use as a griddle or a pizza stone, and of course I over-spec'd the problem. My baking steel was already so thick that it hardly needed the help, and the aluminum disk was too thick to easily toss about. So I stored the aluminum disk in my cast iron griddle for steam generation, under the chains. It just barely fit, and with differential expansion it shattered the cast iron griddle. Cast iron rusts, in any case, so I replaced it with a commercial cake pan. I ordered a second aluminum disk so I could also ditch the chains. Then I redid the physics, coming to the happy conclusion that one aluminum disk was sufficient.

Can't leave well enough alone. That's why Dennis is one of my idols. I've also been trying to improve my Spanish by reading Cien años de soledad in the original. The first chapter concerns the exploits of José Arcadio Buendía in the long-ago Colombian village that he founded, as he obsesses over invention after invention that he buys from traveling gypsies. My ancestor founded Concord, Massachusetts, so I read this novel as a dream version of my family history if my family had been crazier. Gabriel García Márquez appears to be having great fun with the guy, but his response isn't exactly ridicule. Neither is mine. The absurdity of it all is uncomfortably close to home.

(My brother is a speech pathologist, amateur linguist who's been helping me design computer tools for language study. We want the magic bracelet where one can just understand as one reads and listens. There are version of this that are practical in software. We believe that standard tools don't work that well.)

Mine is back from warranty repair. I had an extreme bean boil-over incident.

All of my recent photographs are of skewers on my Solo Stove, or my new wok made-to-order in Japan, or garden tomatillo salsa in my newest molcajete made-to-order in Mexico, or nixtamal turning into masa in my Indian wet grinder. But this picture is of pork carnitas about to simmer for many hours. An ideal use of our "Indoor K". It was the new puppy before I gorped it. Now it's just another dog in a large family. But I love it.

@Wingman505 The instruction manual is buried on their site. It appears at all in response to my feedback:

Vermicular Instruction Manual

I would say that one should read the manual before purchase. This isn't fair, for various reasons. I didn't. The instructions are easier to follow if one can try them out while reading. And it comes with an elaborate coffee table book that does cut to the chase on heat setting recommendations for various applications.

In addition to various rice programs, the cooking settings are MED (445 F, 230 C), LOW (300 F, 150 C), EXT LOW (230 F, 110 C) and WARM (adjustable, 90-200 F, 30-95 C). One can set a timer for up to 6 hours for MED, LOW, EXT LOW and up to 12 hours for WARM; there are two user presets. Otherwise, heating stops after 90 minutes.

Not having continuous controls is an interesting choice. I've made my peace with this design constraint. One learns what each setting does, and then trusts it. Less opportunity for user error. My friends with Sous Vide equipment are always calling me to ask "what temperature?!" Here at least the choice is quantized. Each level is handy and well-chosen; one moderates the shape of the cook in the time dimension, rather than fine-tuning the temperature.

I had thought I'd be using WARM as a kind of sous vide where I could take the lid off and stir. EXT LOW has taken over that role for me, even though it bubbles away. When I was in Morocco I took various cooking lessons, and saw tagines bubbling away. Somehow they never stuck to their clay pots. This cooker similarly envelopes the Dutch oven, so each temperature is more uniform than one would experience cooking over a flame, or even an induction hot plate. The effect is more like cooking in the oven, a great way to braise without burning, with the added convenience of stovetop access and not heating up the house in summer. In particular, EXT LOW is ideal for replicating how I saw tagines cooked in Morocco.

On 6/24/2020 at 12:24 PM, Syzygies said:

I've also ordered some over-the-top barbecue skewers, Original Super Skewers hand made in Salem, Oregon where our daughter now lives. Heavy duty double skewers, for stability and to conduct heat into the chunks. We've been making satay and tandoor more frequently again, and I finally see the point of good skewers rather than a grill grate.

Wow, I'm hooked on skewers. These skewers are great.

Anything a Weber kettle can do better than a Solo Stove fire pit, a KK can do far better than a Weber.

This kind of grilling is the thrill and the taste of roadside grilling in Thailand or Morocco. I could never quite recreate this flavor profile on a Weber or a KK. I believe that there's a big advantage to the taller-than-wide orientation in a Solo Stove fire pit, that would be lost with their new grill. Whatever goes over what's left of these embers is surrounded and bathed by the rising spotlight of hot air and radiant heat, a convection oven effect.

34 minutes ago, tony b said:

Another Forum member (I wonder who that was? )

Oh that was me. Just came, haven't tried it yet. Looks similar to KK extruded, but I'm expecting a different flavor profile, probably more pronounced. And I build a door-sized shelf into the back of my rear shed just to hold Dennis charcoal, including KK extruded. I have every generation including the first draft that pleased me more than Dennis, and various generations of Sacramento POSK extruded. I'm a hoarder. Cannabis dealers took great care of me in college, because they would come by during a drought. "Oh, you still have that!?" Well, not after they left.

So I won't need to spend $$ on actual binchotan, as much as I miss Japan and admire the stuff.

On 10/28/2018 at 3:20 AM, tekobo said:

At last! My konro grill arrived on Friday.  It took me by surprise as I'd been sent some tracking data for UPS that didn't work and, by the time I got around to checking it out with the seller, the DHL man was at my door with an enormous, heavy box.   Why was it so big?  Well that is @Syzygies's fault.

Ok, I'm really getting into skewers. I probably want the best Konro I can find.

A dear BBQ friend and I saw a great grill on a street corner cart in Queens Chinatown, a few years ago. The thing was cut and welded together from a few pieces of steel plate; if people take up pottery and woodworking (I have) I could learn metalworking, right? There's that chapter in Aaron Franklin's book where he describes how to turn a recycled 500 gallon propane tank (he uses 1000 gallon tanks at the restaurant, he's cutting us some slack) into a cooker. If one had "basic" metalworking skills. I laughed here, at the same time daydreaming. I have a nephew by marriage that could teach me...

In any case, this skewer grill was an "L" laying on its back. The main section was a trough over which one grilled skewers. At one end was a chimney (all rectilinear) where one added charcoal into the top, raked charcoal embers out the bottom. This was a brilliant design.

Of course, I don't cook all night like they did. I probably want the best Konro I can find. The KK of Konros. What is it?

On 6/19/2020 at 9:34 AM, Basher said:

Do any of you have the Breeo?

https://breeo.co/pages/backyard
Are they rated better or worse than the solo?
Forget about cooking on the lip- what a mess this would make.
I thought they looked heaps better than the solo.

I have the same reservations about cooking on the Breeo lip, but their "Outpost" adjustable rack, toy version of my neighbor's Argentinian grill, is a great idea.

To me the Breeo design is more cluttered, with stuff in the way I don't want, making it harder to put on a cart. The Solo Stove is stripped down form = function, and I find it beautiful.

I really like grilling on the Solo Stove Ranger, it has become my primary grill. 30 second lighting protocol is wood chunks bottom layer, then charcoal next layer, pour on isopropyl alcohol, don hearing protection or vow to use less next time, drop in a match.  !! Pong !!  Then shooting flames till everything is lit, and the wood chunks burn to start the charcoal. No further tending necessary till time to cook. Though it's barely big enough for two.

The issue here is waiting till the fire dies down to cook. I've ordered a separate Outpost 19 which I plan to attach somehow to my $50 Harbor Fright barbecue cart, so I can begin grilling when the fire is too hot.

I've also ordered some over-the-top barbecue skewers, Original Super Skewers hand made in Salem, Oregon where our daughter now lives. Heavy duty double skewers, for stability and to conduct heat into the chunks. We've been making satay and tandoor more frequently again, and I finally see the point of good skewers rather than a grill grate.

1 hour ago, Jon B. said:

@ckreef   Oh No!!!!!!!!  (not too sure about the no messing with air vents feature)(looks like there is a top vent/air control) ??????????? 

Solo Stove Grill

Ooh! Ooh! I saw that too. I had been searching for years for a high tech version of the Weber, this could be it. Though I prefer the smaller scale of a Solo Stove, more efficient use of charcoal. I doubt that this grill funnels skyward a "the party's here!" searchlight of radiant heat and rising hot air as well as the fire pits do. The fire pits are taller than they are wide. This is wider than it is tall.

Though Solo Stove understands this. Their fire pits are too hot for grilling, then a narrow ideal window, then great slower grilling few of us have patience for. They've tried to tune this here. That's exactly why I ordered the Breeo Outpost, an alternate solution to the same problem. Fire too hot, don't want to wait? Cook further from the fire.

I almost impulse bought one, but it's too big. Solo Stoves work best when the fire is scaled to the stove, and I have expensive tastes in charcoal. For example, I bought my own palette of KK coffee lump.

In other news, I ordered box of Pok Pok Thaan Thai Style Charcoal as described in

Acclaimed Chefs and Amateur Grillers Swear by This ‘Mind-Blowing’ Charcoal

It's very much in the style of KK extruded coconut, though I expect a different flavor profile. I'll report back once I try it; it just came.

58 minutes ago, MacKenzie said:

I thought I'd try a sourdough loaf in the Musui from the Vermicular. The edges are ground to make a super fit and I thought if the bread was baked in the Musui in the kitchen oven I might get a nice spring.

Did you preheat the Musui then lower in the loaf using the parchment paper? In my cast iron days flinging the loaf into a hot Dutch oven always felt like the wild card in the whole process.

I also use my "aluminum disk" steam generator in our indoor oven. Comparing crusts with a Dutch oven always seemed to me to be apples & oranges, as in one can make great bread either way. I never did controlled experiments to articulate exactly what the difference is. Can you?

Kay.

Actually, "The Kay" as grammatical cue that we're not talking about a person. This is common in many languages.

Her nickname, in the rare event that something goes wrong, is "Oh Shuck!".

On 5/24/2020 at 3:09 PM, MacKenzie said:

Now there's a use for leftover sourdough starter.  

NYTimes - Biryanis With Something Extra

3 hours ago, MacKenzie said:

Now there's a use for leftover sourdough starter.  

Wow. Particularly as I've settled on a 3:4 ratio closer to my dough hydration, for a different flavor profile and easier mixing. That would be perfect for sealing smoke pot lids!!!!!