Syzygies

That would be Harbor Freight.

I might have knocked the lid handle loop off. Long ago, I don't recall for sure, pictured is the original two quart smoke pot. I nestle the pot into the coals so it just fits under the lower grate. I have been using a 16" terra cotta plant saucer, wrapped in foil, on the lower grate as both heat deflector and drip pan. They break every year or two, and one just did. The drip pans that Dennis designed look nice...

I deliberately linked to an Amazon search rather than a specific model. It's a commodity market and I'm unaware of quality differences. The ones I actually own are from Sorbent Systems. They're a bit pricier (and not as convenient as Amazon) but great quality. Same commodity looks. The next question is size. The 8" sealer does 6" wide plain Chamber bags like these 6" x 12" bags, but nothing else. That covers all my tomato and stock needs. Very rarely I wish it could seal wider bags. A huge advantage of sealing in food-safe sous vide pouches like these is being able to go straight from freezer to water bath, to thaw. Then nick a corner for stock, and pour into the dish as needed. One can even reseal.

I was just using an impulse sealer last night. Here is 28 lbs of tomatoes partly dried and sealed into 14 packets, now freezing on a cookie sheet to keep them flat.

I own a chamber vacuum sealer in one kitchen, the best external clamp sealer ever made in the other kitchen, and $30 impulse sealers like these (Amazon) in both kitchens. Once one gets the hang of it, for soft, wet foods it is far easier to burp the air out of plain chamber vacuum bags while sealing them with the impulse sealer. This is easier to figure out by experimentation than any wordy description. One squishes the bag to eliminate buried air pockets and to wet the inner walls. Drape the bag, above the contents, over the sealing bar, and pull down gently. Now squeeze the contents while adjusting how one secures the bag, so one end then the other over the sealing bar becomes the weak spot where air escapes. When virtually all the air has escaped, seal on an appropriate sealing setting. Wordy, yes. The driver never gets carsick, you have to figure this out by trial and error. Easy to master, and afterwards, much quicker than any active vacuum machine. I cannot word this strongly enough. There is a pronounced tendency for people to believe in the method they know (particularly if it's expensive and they already bought it). As a research mathematician I cannot afford this psychological inertia, so I regularly go around inside my head wildly swinging a baseball bat, to break up habits. Yes, I have recently tried both an external clamp vacuum machine and a chamber vacuum machine for this purpose, and neither holds a candle to learning the manual dexterity to burp air using a $30 impulse sealer. This method is also ideal for stock. The methods I have tried for freezing stock, over forty years of cooking, are a museum of horrors. Reuse a yogurt or Chinese takeout container, and blast off the ice barnacles with hot tap water before use? Yeah, that was me thirty years ago, and I try to keep my cringing to myself in other peoples' kitchens when I still see similar. Plain chamber vacuum bags, and a $30 impulse sealer, is THE way to go for freezing stock. Consider the more efficient use of freezer space a bonus.

I use a two quart Dutch oven, with three 1/8" holes drilled in the bottom. One hole might do, but I want to hedge my bets on a hole getting blocked, and the lid blowing loose. Similarly, not everyone feels the need to glue the lid on with flour paste. The paste reminds me of Morocco, and one really doesn't want the lid to come loose.

Butts are on for tomorrow's lunch .

Huh. I thought these were the affordable choices! I have to be able to drink the leftovers. I won't pretend that I can't navigate the cheap shelves at BevMo. There was a math department Christmas party some years ago, the department admin tried to wrap things up by 10pm. I ducked out with a determined look, so the grad students held off on bolting for the local bars. I returned with a "handle of Jack". The bottle lasted twenty minutes, and the legend will last twenty years. Then I bolted with the grad students for the local bars. Here is our "cooking Armagnac". I highly recommend it if you can find it. Have you seen the prices on the good stuff?

Getting four pork butts ready for Laurie's Greek Orthodox Church on Sunday. I cooked for them last year and they asked me back. Taking one for the team, trying bourbons for the Bour-BQ sauce from "Smoke & Spice". I'm not normally one for such adornments, but a friend made this and it's awesome; we both make it now for large events. I'll mix some in with the pulled pork for "sloppy joe" style sandwiches, with a layer of coleslaw. That works.

Recipe attached. 45% red winter wheat, 10% rye, 10% soft wheat berries. A lighter blend for summer, we up the whole grains in winter. Sourdough Bread (45-10-10-10).pdf

Sourdough bread from homeground flour.

That's how I've used it. Buy pork chops at local farmers market from Massa Organics. Freeze. Thaw in sous vide circulator at 0 C. Brine four hours in light brine (1/2 cup salt per gallon water, less sugar). Sous vide an hour to 132 F. Grill over KK coffee charcoal. This was my favorite beef or pork in the last year; we restocked. As pictured the mini basket comes quite close to the lower grill, so fat flares up pretty easily. Next time I'll try the main grate and trim more fat first. A lot of thought goes into "ideal" KK use: Heat soaking the walls. A basket splitter that forces airflow through the charcoal. Yet don't let the best be the enemy of the good, and fire up a Weber for quickies like this. The mini basket inside a KK is easier and more secure. It works; there's plenty of heat for such an application.

I too use a torch: A pair of long neck weed burners (I kept the first after it stopped lighting; only one needs to light) with hose clamps on the neck so they perch on the KK rim and under the charcoal basked rails. Propane is fine, though MAPP gas burns hotter. I used to use 99% rubbing alcohol. Pour a generous quantity on the charcoal, wait for it to soak in, and toss in a match. The womp will get the neighborhood dogs barking, empty every overhead power line of birds, and get new neighbors to come check if everything is ok. It also does an adequate job of starting the fire. The fumes aren't great. Ethanol is relatively safe because it's the simplest alcohol, looking at the molecular structure. Whether burned or ingested, it breaks down into simpler compounds. Isopropyl alcohol is has a more complicated molecular structure, so breaks down into toxins when ingested. It doesn't burn as cleanly either: Instead of H20 and CO2, one gets the chemical equivalent of unwanted pennies in your pocket as change: Copious amounts of undetectable carbon monoxide. However, if you stand upwind and don't manage to off the neighbor's chickens, it all burns off cleanly and one has a fire. Torches are easier.

Did he really mean "900 C" at the 0:54 mark? Aluminum melts at 659 C. Bronze melts at 913 C. Fat on a steak pretty much vaporizes well below this temperature, a stunt I don't find enjoyable.

The taste evolves as the plant matures, and different varieties have different profiles. Genovese basil has a delicate profile; other varieties grown further south in Italy and Sicily have sharper flavors, more suitable for other applications such as tomato sauces. Well before any variety goes to seed, the taste becomes "weedier". We experience similar patterns with our mint bed. Of all the mint we bought, we only liked the taste of one. Luckily it is perennial and nearly impossible to eradicate. We regularly cut back half, hard, and the new leaves are what we like for cooking. The idea of having the same mint Ernest Hemingway tasted in his mojitos is hopeless; mint changes if you move it fifty feet, let alone across a body of water. Similarly, we can't reproduce the conditions of basil as used in Genova for pesto. Starting with the right variety, and picking young, helps. Still, no two sources of "Genovese basil" taste the same, and each crop is a record of the weather that month. This is an empirical question. Let any basil plant go to seed, and keep tasting the leaves over the entire lifespan of the plant. Your idea of the peak flavor window may not agree with any Italian view, but there will be a window.

We grow Genovese basil from seed for pesto, first batch tomorrow with guests. This is further than I usually let it go, perhaps 5" high each. One of two barrels. An automatic irrigation system is a must (we use Hydrawise) as these seeds need watering multiple times per day. My first trip to Italy, half a lifetime ago, friends in Genova 'educated' me by showing me the basil sold at market. Rather small bunches. They characterized United States basil as lawn clippings, the primary reason that United States pesto was ghastly, inedible. They were very sweet about this, but this was a fervently held belief. English to english translation: We were morons to grow our basil so big, as if we preferred eating six year old sheep. On the other hand, I specifically seek out large weedy basil as a bed on which to cook salmon, which will be our second course tomorrow: Brine the best wild salmon you can find, 1/2 cup salt per gallon, less sugar, four hours. Place on a bed of weed basil in a Spanish cazuela, smoke gently using apple wood till melting. To die for.

Mine is on a counter in the next room. Easier to move the food! We use the dining room table for staging.

That is the key. I pushed a bit to get the POSK. Laurie bought me the KK. (Her favorite part was talking with Dennis.) Don't emphasize price. Try different techniques, and ask attentively what you should do the same, or different. She'll lead you. I'm pretty much under orders to only use coconut extruded lump and my smoke pot for low & slows. And we're eagerly phasing out ordinary charcoal for high temp chicken, now that we have coffee lump. We're not affluent, but we can afford what we want, and food matters. The problem with more charcoal is finding space to store it.

Yeah, I was just struck by the alliteration, baking steel at bakingsteel dot com, baking stone at baking stone dot come. So I kept going...

I have three baking steels from http://www.bakingsteel.com/, several baking stones from https://bakingstone.com/, a baking bong from http://www.bakingbong.com, and a KK baking stone. These are spread over two coasts and friend's kitchens. For bread, I tried a rectangular kiln shelf, but it had the wrong thermal properties. I had a baking stone cut to match, and I now stack them in my KK for bread. For pizza, I prefer a baking steel. It's hard to make apples-to-apples comparisons here, as one adapts to each stone. From a reclusive childhood playing chess with myself, I've learned to be fair, giving each option a chance. The technique nevertheless needs to adapt to the stone.

That is absolutely a Kamado from Richard, perhaps Sacramento. My first Kamado looked like this, till the tiles fell off. The less you know about its provenance (cough! cough!), or its common acronym (POSK) the better. It is cheaply made, but worth rescuing if there are no major cracks. Take apart the top hat, buy matching stainless steel bolts and nuts, and use them to retrain, clean and (food-safe) oil the threads, or you'll lose the top hat when it gets stuck. I could have bought an early KK instead of that Kamado. I mistook the KK for a copy, a Manfred Mann version of Quinn the Eskimo, even though Dylan's original was wretched. As I understood it, some workers at the prosperous teak flooring enterprise that Dennis owns in Bali came to him, some lowlife had abandoned the workers at a tiny ceramic cooker factory down the street, when said lowlife got into some sort of trouble. Relocate, a lifelong pattern. Dennis said hey, that sounds cool, took over the factory so the workers could continue feeding their families, and got very interested in redesigning the cookers. This is at least the KK origin myth that some of us understand. The part I'm sure of is that Dennis is a very good person. I know far more than I wish I did about restoring said Kamado, ask questions as you proceed. People make old cars into barbecue pits, you can certainly contain a fire in this artifact. If you value your time, buy a Komodo Kamado.

I restored the lost pictures for my tandoori chicken recipe, an ancient post (look at my primitive cooker): Tandoori Chicken

I use a baking steel for pizza at around 600 F; I believe that you'll be happy. Consider the upper deck, to get as much radiant heat as possible on the pizza top. None of my baking steels have grease troughs; I believe that this is called free soloing. I've never had a problem, but I always have to check the bottom after a friend uses one.

Incomplete combustion is bad with raw fuel, not so bad with beautiful embers. Try it! This is an empirical question, and I certainly lurched at my share of mirage windmills my first years doing this. The practical problems are finding a protocol that isn't too much trouble, and avoiding a runaway fire. If you get the KK too hot you're not easily going back.

I'd never tried a whole lamb shoulder before, so when Berkeley Bowl offered me a 9 pound lamb shoulder for $50, it was hard to say no. Have the neighbors over. A bit rich for the oppressive heat, but tasty. This called for Mediterranean rather than classic barbecue flavors, so the rub was a marinade of 1% salt (by weight of the shoulder), black pepper, smashed garlic cloves, lemon peels, rosemary, olive oil. The oil tends to suspend the salt and impede absorption into the meat, so better technique might be to lead with the salt, and apply the marinade later. Multiple sources propose four hours at 325 F, for smaller shoulders. I used pink butcher paper in the style of Franklin Barbecue for the last hour, which turned into two with late arriving guests. Incredibly moist. Or is that sensation fat? A great change of pace, but this doesn't edge out pork butt, where the fat is easier to manage. Working over the leftovers for hash will be like dealing with a bone-riddled fish. I'll vacuum pack as-is, and pick over after warming sous vide.