Syzygies

Re: Tru Tel Options** Both of these responses are fascinating. I never got these temperatures to work. I'll have to try again. We're signed up for a Neapolitan pizza class this summer (we've made plenty of pizza, but her classes are fun); I'll be curious what she does.

Re: Pro Joe - New Ultimate Contender? I've had lots of pizza out of those enormous outdoor wood-fired pizza ovens in southern Italy. They surely go to 750º and higher, but they're entirely different animals. To approximate that pizza in a KK, the ideal temperature for me is 600º. I don't have the faintest understanding of the differences in the physics involved. Reducing a situation to a single number is so much a part of our western mindset, like choosing recreations that involve waiting in lines.

Re: Pro Joe - New Ultimate Contender? Yeah, I once cooked a steak at 900 F, to see what would happen. Tasted funny, and it was like the fat had boiled off in 45 seconds. I started wondering about the safety of such a diet, and never tried again. As for 1000 F readings, I agree I like to stay below 750 F. However, I like room on my dial. A quirk, like seeing a bit of the side of your car, in your side mirrors. Totally unnecessary, but reassuring, helps keep your bearings. Three people were nearly sun ornaments from this issue. As a routine measure, NASA boiled off the contents of an oxyen tank during Apollo mission training. They sat some guy on a folding chair, told him watch this dial and tell us if it goes over a target temperature. (You can't make this up.) Turns out the thermometer went up to this target temperature and stops there, no matter what the actual temperature. The guy saw this, but it never went over the target temperature, so he never said anything. Meanwhile, the wiring inside the tank lost its insulation to high heat. I'm leaving out a lot of the story, but months later, kaboom in space on board Apollo 13, and the guys barely made it back alive. Yeah, I'm more comfortable with a thermometer that goes beyond the range I need. If I accidentally do go beyond 750 F, I want to know how far. Like air bags in my car, I want them but it doesn't mean I'm planning to use them.

Re: Pro Joe - New Ultimate Contender? Yep, I've been using a Tel-Tru thermometer since my KK arrived: BIG Green Egg, Grill Dome, Kamado Replacement Thermometer LT225R, 200/1000 degrees F Here's their complete range of barbecue thermometers: BARBECUE PIT, GRILL, AND SMOKE THERMOMETERS

To get some smoke flavor into corned beef hash, cook the corned beef in a KK. This hash was made with leftovers from a 2.5 lb brined brisket point, cooked nine hours at 240 F to 260 F over hickory smoke to an internal temp of 195 F or so. Hash is always improvisational, so set proportions to taste. Cut up small potatoes and steam till nearly done; chill overnight or put briefly in the freezer. Saute diced onion, carrots in olive oil, with freshly ground black pepper, till somewhat caramelized. Add tomatoes, capers, parsley. (Our tomatoes are partially dehydrated freezer packs from last summer's garden; the capers are salt-packed from Sicily, and the parsley is fresh from the garden.) Set aside. Fry the potatoes in ghee till browned. Add the corned beef and as it warms up, break up into smaller pieces. Combine with the tomato mixture, and serve. Hash pretty much works with any leftover 'que, if corned beef isn't what's on hand. Try for example pork butt.

Re: Everyday Misc Cooking Photos w/ details It went from an 8 or 9 on the salt scale (and we think salt is the new sugar) down to a 6 or 7. Better to not salt so much in the first place,. It came off at 195 F to 200 F. Not sure if this puts me in the "quick brisket" camp, but it sure was delicious. Looking forward to hash tomorrow.

n66750 St Patrick's Corned Beef Café Rouge in Berkeley, CA has a great butcher in back. I was in to restock pancetta, and noticed that as a St. Patrick's Day special they were selling brined brisket flats and points separately, the points at a discount. Go figure. Grabbed a 2.5 lb point, fried a slice to test for salt, and soaked in plain water for 36 hours to somewhat desalinate. Que'd 9 hours at 240 to 260 F over hickory smoke, trimmed off what fat didn't render. An "of the gods" version of the New England Boiled Dinner I grew up with. (My grandmother didn't work with smoke and fire.) Definitely needs boiled potatoes, cabbage and parsnips, good mustard, to complete the experience.

Lazzari Oak Natural Briquettes So Lazzari has recently been selling natural oak briquettes. I searched; Naked hasn't reviewed these. (Lazzari) CHARCOAL BRIQUETTES (Chowhound) Pure briquettes in the Bay Area? The price at the factory is virtually identical with their oak lump, $16 per 40 lbs. For many uses the briquettes are very convenient: Easy to measure with predictable results, no fine crumbs to grade/avoid, no apparent taste difference. I can easily get to 500 F to 600 F, with less chance of overshooting. Lazzari says they're same source, same wood as the oak lump, just a different process. The Chowhound thread says briquettes are inferior for low & slow, but I never use lump either for that, I use extruded coconut charcoal from Dennis. So I'm having trouble remembering why I prefer lump. Something about all the junk in commercial briquettes? We bought a car recently that (gasp!) was automatic, not stick, so perhaps nothing we say can be trusted anymore.

Re: EZ Que Rotisserie Info! If that's Dennis, then I'm interested in the adjustable length doohickeys. We completely gave up on rotisserie use, as it just didn't taste as good as other methods, and it was chewing up the inside of my KK because it fit poorly.

Great chart Yes, great chart, answering Firemonkey's questions. Some bugs generate toxins in their heyday (think Aztec ruins at a smaller scale, or all the radioactive waste we're burying in the ground) that can harm us after they're dead. The example I know is Botulinum toxin, and it too is destroyed by heat. However, the concern for meats is generally that the bugs themselves will continue to multiply in our gut, and here it looks like "low & slow" works because the temperature over time kills them, even if they're allowed a potential heyday first.

Food safety Many foods are traditionally eaten below their "safe" temperature. There's no joy left in a safely cooked egg or hamburger, for example. If no one at the table has an impaired immune system (young, sick, old) then simply take careful notes, so the Thermapen can tell you quicker what you would have decided anyway. Don't slavishly change cooking habits to "fly by instrument" according to some table, or your cooking will suffer. Botulism, either via canning or fermenting, is a serious risk that can cripple or kill. Cooking meat isn't quite so dangerous. One hears of serious E Coli incidents involving commercial food; the take home message for me is to not eat commercial food. That burger on an airplane is far more likely to be mystery meat tainted with feces than anything that crosses our KK grates. Always buy "sushi grade" high quality natural or organic meat, grind it yourself if needed, and cook it however you like? The "four hours below 140 F" danger zone rule is most interesting here. For e.g. a low & slow pork butt, the interior flesh can easily spend more than four hours in the danger zone. In general, this is unbroken flesh, but even the act of inserting a temperature probe could introduce the needed bacteria for trouble. In practice, one never hears of this being a problem. Any rule of thumb has a back story. These bugs grow exponentially, as in doubling every so many minutes. The people making up these rules decide how much of a head start the bugs have in practice. If your meat is cleaner than they're thinking, this translates to extra minutes of leeway. Etc. Etc. This probably explains why low and slow cooks aren't such a hazard.

Carbling? I wish there was a term like "marbling" to describe collagen rather than fat. The connective tissue that dissolves as part of a low and slow cook. For lean meat uninterrupted by any features that benefit from low & slow, I'd side with the fast cook approach. I see this sort of meat at commercial BBQ establishments outside Texas, because it's cheap and customers don't know or don't care. To me it's not brisket. (The best brisket in my life was served to me in Elgin, Texas. #2 through #N have come off my KK, all low & slow and expensive meat.) Paying more for brisket can be one way of insuring lots of collagen. It certainly isn't the only way, and it offends purists concerned about process. (By this argument, should one be using a $3K cooker? ) I spend what I have to for brisket that benefits from a low & slow. With enough collagen, the brisket is never dry.

Syzygy (Oxford English Dictionary) Syzygy (Oxford English Dictionary) Who knew it was a barbecue term! Some of my work is described in that book. More significantly, the author, David Eisenbud, became a minister of the Universal Life Church, so that he could perform the wedding ceremony for Laurie and me on a hillside on Mt. Diablo, a few years back.

Caldonia! Caldonia! What makes your big head so hard? Clearly, you have to name her Caldonia.

Hot sauce n66737 We just bottled last season's (fermented) hot sauce.

Re: Chris Lilly's Six-time World Championship Pork Shoulder

Re: Florida Charcoal 2011 Yep. There's only one reasonable rule of thumb for figuring out how many boxes to order. Measure all available storage space. Plan on filling it. Add five boxes.

So we like to grind various meats for burgers (using The Sausage Maker TSM Stainless Steel Meat Grinder #10 and various blades, accessories). Best bets in the past have included short ribs, brisket, skirt steak. Tonight at my favorite butcher (Diablo Foods in Lafayette, CA), Porterhouse and T-Bone were on sale for $11 per pound. I asked for a few steaks and let slip I'd be grinding them. (We really do prefer burgers to steak, if they're done right.) An up-and-coming kid was horrified; he insisted on cutting me a 3 pound "first cut" chunk off the end of a whole chuck, next to where the rib eye steaks come from, for all of $10. I ground it through the 1/2" and 1/4" plates in turn, discarding what didn't pass through easily, and made 150g burgers. I grilled them on the main grill two minutes per side at 600 F, coming off rather rare, but cooking further en route to table. Best burgers ever, both texture and flavor. I'm sure I'm preaching to the primeats choir, but I thought I'd nevertheless share.

Re: SB XLV Chicken wings recipe? I have a friend who makes Buffalo wings indoors (deep fried) that are twice as good as any restaurant version I've ever tried. (As in, someone else ordered them. I wouldn't.) The two critical pieces of advice: Cook thoroughly[/*:m:osnzdnqv] Use a potent hot sauce to prevent soggy wings[/*:m:osnzdnqv] How one best translates this to the KK is a good question, but these two principles explain every dreadful wing I've ever had in a restaurant.

Re: Introduction, a bit late and my new love No, Kamado King is not RJ. Here's a guide to ceramic cookers (quite inclusive, they also list cookers made from portland cement): http://biggreenegghead.com/big-green-eg ... ic-cookers

Re: New HandHewnFloors.com Site up and Running So it's not prohibitive to ship to the states? You make me want to change jobs so I can build a house. Nice site!

Re: Thermapens on Sale We can't imagine not having a Thermapen for our KK. Laurie gave me a second one for Christmas, for my New York apartment. Just before the sale, which is on through Jan 31. I just used it to keep an eye on my "reverse sear" shell steak. Dry aged from Fairway Markets; vacuum packed with salt, pepper, butter and heated in a Sous Vide water bath to 134 F. Then pan-seared and sauced with mushrooms, side of sweet plantains.

Re: Grill Floss vs Billy Bar Ok, here's what I know, and what I don't know: The Komodo Kamado has 3/8" - 304 Stainless grates. This is beefier than other ceramic cookers. Grill Floss tools come with a "Dual Sized Cleaning Head", 5/16" and 3/8". The larger head matches the KK spec. Billy Bar tools come in a single size, which fit my previous K7 (not recommended) grates well. My guess (the site doesn't say) is that they were 5/16". In any case, I formed the impression that it was a poor fit for my new KK, so I gave the tool to my neighbor along with the (now tileless) K7. (He was thrilled, a fire is a fire, but given the choice he'd take the KK any day.) So what's the debate here? If the Billy Bar doesn't fit, it doesn't matter if it's made of Play-Doh, right? My primary cleaning regimen has been to place the grill in an Oatey 24" water heater pan (plastic or metal, Home Depot, Lowes, or Oatey #34078 24" Aluminum Water Heater Pan (Amazon)). Plastic is fine if the grill is cool, one also needs a rubber stopper for the plumbing hole in the pan. After a decent soak, a wad of aluminum foil does a great job of cleanup. I also like to alternate low and high cooks; only the second low cook in a row presents interesting hygiene questions. Then, I might use soap. Nevertheless, it's nice to get the grill as clean as possible before the soak, or before a high cook. I just ordered a Grill Floss; I'm convinced. Come to think of it, I've never used the hinge feature on the main grill. I mainly wish it weren't there, when I flip the grill in the KK to get a better scrape on the underside. I'd vote (and pay) for a reversible main grill, given comments here and my experience. For that matter, a hinge could go either way; the main obstruction to reversibility are the tabs for grabbing the grill with the lifter tools.

Re: Saying expectations were exceeded is like Well, I deliberately added "group" to try to deflect attention away from the Yeats "Love has pitched his mansion" quote...

Re: Saying expectations were exceeded is like Yeah, it's crazy how people mix up the terms "anal retentive" and "obsessive compulsive". Different muscle groups...