Syzygies

Cambro food containers Here's the Cambro combination I use for brining turkeys, and transporting gumbo (Size: 22 Quart): http://www.amazon.com/CamSquare-8-Quart ... B001E0JM9A http://www.amazon.com/Camwear-Cover-Squ ... B002PMV79E Here is another source: http://www.eastbayrestaurantsupply.com/ Here are the Cambro web site pages, showing their product line: Coach (fare class K): http://cool.cambro.com/CamSquares_Poly_ ... orage.ashx http://cool.cambro.com/CamSquares_Lids_ ... orage.ashx First (fare class KK): http://cool.cambro.com/CamSquares_Camwe ... orage.ashx http://cool.cambro.com/Seal_Covers_for_ ... orage.ashx The more expensive clear containers can hold boiling liquids; the softer, translucent containers are only good to 160 F (70 C). The more expensive lids stay on, even if twenty quarts of gumbo tip over in your car. The cheaper lids come off more easily. Cambros are far more versatile and useful than one first imagines, so go for the clear containers, to keep your options open. One size should be the biggest that fits in your fridge.

Shun DM7240 kitchen shears So after watching a few videos of others struggling to spatchcock a turkey, I dropped by a few cookware stores to look for some good kitchen shears. I found a "his and hers" set at Williams Sonoma (not in their online catalog) that included the Shun DM7240 kitchen shears. Shun DM7240 kitchen shears These are intended for poultry, and are bigger than the general purpose Shun kitchen shears. The identifying feature is the different sized finger grips; their general purpose shears are symmetric. They come apart for cleaning. They made spectacularly quick work of a 14 lb turkey. Laurie stepped out of the room as I was about to start, and she was stunned to see me finished when she stepped right back in. I did have to focus my grip and apply a bit of strength at several stages, but it was far easier than the videos make it out to be. Rather than smashing the bird flat, I "released" it into spatchcock position by freeing bones with a few snips. These are great shears . Yes, that's a turkey, not a chicken. The shears are big. I like this description of the phrase: Spatchcocked Turkey No pictures of the roasted bird; we ended up at a neighbor's party, outside in shirt sleeves (gotta love California), and forgot about the cook till two hours in. The Komodo was rock-steady at 350 F, and while I might stop a bit sooner next time, the turkey was delicious, and much of it got devoured at the party. So much for making a side of stuffing and gravy. That's actually the dream "practice bird" scenario: Have the bird disappear immediately at a party. We brined for 24 hours in an 18 liter Cambro, aiming for a computed salinity of 1.5%. More seemed like a lot of salt, but we're going to go up to 2% for Thanksgiving. (We go to 3% for pork loins, but that's making ham.) We could nevertheless tell the difference, and we're firm believers in brining.

Re: where is the spell check? I find google quicker; just search the word. For example, for "fock" one either gets or if I've spelled it wrong.

According to our (new) forum search engine, these threads reference spatchcocking a turkey: Brining Experiments Turkey competition with my wife... (oven vs KK) Cooking a Turkey How did the Turkey come out? Whats cooking for Easter? Turkey Breast & Turkey Legs Happy Turkey Day to all.. To obtain this list I did three searches, for turkey and one of spatchcock spatchcocked spatchcocking, as our search engine looks for whole words, and doesn't conjugate. We're making a practice run today for Turkey day later this month; I'll report back what I learned.

Re: fourth day, first pizza Try parchment paper. It isn't cheating, it just makes every other method look primitive, like you were trying to turn an easy problem into a daunting challenge. Remove the paper after a couple minutes of baking time. Professional pizza bakers don't use parchment paper, but they've made the same dough 87,000 times, know how it handles, and don't wait once the pizza is oven-ready. Not relevant to us. Plenty of electricians work "hot", and the guys who installed my 15th floor apartment windows hung out by two fingers, but I'll kill power before my electric work, and wear a harness when I climb. Parchment paper removes the faintest possibility of "three runners at third" when you try to slide the pizza onto the stone.

"Unread" for lurkers So Laurie notices that without a login, she can't see "unread" messages. Easy enough to create a login for her, but this isn't about fair, it's about selling as many Komodos as possible. Shouldn't it be possible for lurkers to be able to track unread messages without creating a login? You truly want to encourage lurkers, they eventually turn into customers.

Just a guess, but the holy grail of Texas bbq, if you want to move up from brisket, is beef clod, right? Easily weighs in 40 lbs. I've always wanted to try one, but never found the right opportunity (e.g. 40 hungry grad students). I'd use pictures, to get instead brisket. Of the cow (good butchers point to themselves, explaining where a cut comes from) and of the brisket.

Re: advice +1 The KK is so well insulated that fuel is not an issue in choosing. I can't imagine any downside to the 23" whatsoever, cooking for two.

That's clever! Will adopt.

Re: Arrival American Royal Sounds like fun. Welcome aboard.

Re: World Spice - Ingredients, Ingredients, Ingredients... A matter of taste, I've come down slowly from 1% of meat weight. But, yes. I can't imagine just guessing after working this out. Cooks may be fiercely proud of cooking by eye, but bakers tend to measure, and salting is one of those things that rewards a baker's precision. Of course, there are still all sorts of variables, like percentage of bone, how far the salt makes it into the meat with the time you give it. But per type of BBQ, one can keep notes and come up with personal constants. I use 0.6% (down from 0.8%) for spareribs, make similar guesses for butt or brisket, despite the size difference and lack of bones. I figure the salt stays near the outside, to compensate. It tastes good!

Yum! A friend of mine used to make the best "Buffalo" stye chicken wings. His secrets were to deep fry till the wings were truly cooked (about twice as long as any sports bar now cooks them), then use as little as possible of the absolutely hottest hot sauce available, to flavor them without making them soggy. You're inspiring me to try this on the KK.

Re: Shipment Update? There's an effect making things such as furniture, where one is agonizingly aware of every imperfection, but does one's best. Then, over the lifetime of the object, no one ever notices again, including the maker. As a reviewer of your first batch of charcoal, I have to say that I indiscriminately use the remainder of my original hoard of "reference" extruded coconut lump, and your first shipment of extruded coconut lump. The boxes are all a bit hard to reach, and I grab whichever box I can, then don't give it another thought. The flavor difference is all I care about, for low & slow cooks I much prefer any extruded coconut lump over any hardwood lump charcoal. Ash is secondary, I live with it. For 24 hour or less cooks, it really hasn't been a problem. So of course, if the shipping imposes a significant premium, it's worth preparing the best product that you can. But if I ran out, I'd pay what you asked for the best charcoal you could make at the time, and not agonize over it. People who don't have my hoard of extruded coconut lump may feel this way right now.

I don't have experience with this source, but we've switched from butt to shoulder (butt + picnic) with no change in protocol. We cook 21 hours or so, at 220 F or so. Perhaps higher, less or a bit more time. Pulled pork is done when a push at the meat reveals a loose bundle threatening to fall apart, not at any given temperature. This makes sense, even if one stipulates for simplicity that all meat is identical: Final temperature is the barest audit trail of how the meat got there, with durations at lower temperatures affecting how completely connective tissue has dissolved. The final internal temperature tells you nothing about these durations. A shove tells you everything. Let me say it: Pulled pork is generally dreadful. Not yours or mine, of course, but what passes for pulled pork at large events or commercial establishments. Romanticizing stringy greased rope fragments is how they get away with palming off inattentively overcooked pork. My very traditional French cooking teacher nevertheless disparaged tradition, calling it "the last bad performance." A pork shoulder can be wonderful, and not yet at the point where it disintegrates completely into this potentially ghastly, overcooked "standard". Why might a shoulder cook like a butt? Once a cylinder is long enough, it cooks in from the sides, with a bit of "burnt ends" effect on both ends. From this perspective, the cylinder could be 20' long and still cook the same (if it fit in the cooker). One just gets more middle, still just two ends. So switch to shoulders as a rule, but cook them exactly as you know best already, without fretting. You'll only make minor future adjustments.

I've been on a woodworking tear of late. I've made things of wood my whole life, but hit a critical mass of tools recently that put me up on a new plateau of what I could do easily. For example, a router, router table, and a set of bits. For a mathematician, the router is the quintessential woodworking tool: One spends more time making jigs that help do the job perfectly, than doing the job. Math is like that, only many dream levels deep, like Christopher Nolan's Inception. On my short list is some stacking boxes with dowel grates at various spacings. Has to be dowels, so the pinch is but a moment and charcoal can't get stuck. Yes, I've always also used my hands, but it would be nice to have graded lump in easy reach.

We went with "compact", of uncertain descent. She's surgically attached to Laurie. She is a barbecue "aid" dog. She has around twenty levels of response to food, although the lowest levels aren't useful to us because we don't share her interest in cat vomit and trail feces. She caught a rat on a night out a few weeks ago, showing the bigger dogs how it's done. She was very proud of herself, had all the kiddies screaming. But her highest levels of food response help us figure out when we've nailed a dish, far more accurately than any polite dinner guest. Just have to remember, she only gets a taste, she's small.

When I raised this issue in a different thread, it was pointed out that only down where the charcoal basket normally lives are the KK walls prepped to be next to a fire. I was fully prepared to get a Weber charcoal grate to suspend below the main KK grill, before hearing this. Sure, some of us have been discussing a method with a thin, spare arrangement of coals that aren't that hot. It may be "obvious" that this is ok. Nevertheless, I'm not putting any fire above the official level without an explicit OK from Dennis. Oh yeah, and we have a small Weber, which cost 1/50th of the KK. The only debate here is if one is pressed for space. Remember, I'm here because I basically destroyed a competitor's K7. The KK can take much more, but I'm not using it outside spec without an OK from Dennis.

Nice!

I can, and I have. It tastes different. This was brought home to me again, grilling at my Thai teacher's classes. If I were to have one cooker, it would be the KK, and there's a way to do everything. Up there with the best chicken I've made in a decade was for a large party at my brother's place. It was supposed to be a tossed-off course for the kids, in case they wouldn't eat steak. We rented one of those 2' by 4' metal caterer's grills, I spread the embers thin a few inches under the cooking grates, over eight square feet. I turned the chicken fairly constantly. There are a number of different ways I love chicken from the KK, but any of us could have picked out the above grilled chicken, blindfolded. It tasted different. I don't know how to make a wide, thin layer of embers in a charcoal basket. Sounds to me like confusing a plate with a cup. I'm not saying you can't just have one ceramic cooker. I'm asking, why have two ceramic cookers if you could instead have more diversity? A Weber is a workhorse that could care less if you believe the KK outclasses it. I'd be worried about the Egg's feelings, it would seriously be out of its depth in this company.

The first is still a beautiful picture! (Linux was over the other day, admiring the KK build quality. I'd say it's only a matter of time!)

Save your money, get a Weber to back up the KK. There's a style of close grilling, patterned e.g. after close-quarters street food cooking in Thailand (or Queens, NYC), that I can match better on a Weber than a ceramic cooker. The key issue is the ability to spread out a very spare layer of embers, just under the grill for the entire length of the grill. The KK ceramic layers aren't designed to be compatible with an optional charcoal grate in this position, just under the main grill. Just as it's a mistake to match pots in the kitchen, you want diversity here. What do they say?

Norton Waterstone 1000/4000 Norton 24450 Japanese-Style Combination Waterstone 1000/4000 Grit, 8-Inch by 3-Inch by 1-Inch For any of these Japanese knives, there will come a point where a steel, ceramic or otherwise, is not enough to keep it sharp, and you'll want to sharpen it. Western methods won't work as well as a waterstone. I have perhaps half a dozen waterstones, but the Norton 1000/4000 combination stone is my favorite. At 3" wide, it is easier to use than my first 2" stone. Being synthetic, it is harder to slip and dig into the 4000 grit side. For home use, one won't live long enough to use up either 1/2" side. For a kitchen knife, there really is no point to going past a 4000 stone; some feel 3000 is enough. The higher grits are intended for woodworking; the kitchen is considered a less demanding application. As I mentioned earlier, going even to 4000 is a compromise, giving one the satisfaction one's knife is "sharp" (like "smart", a single-dimensional word trying to describe a much more nuanced reality) at the expense of slicing prowess best found by stopping at a lower grit. Eventually, any stone gunks up and goes out of flat. Fixing this is the main source of actual wear on a stone. The fancy way to fix this is to rub against a diamond stone. The easy, inexpensive way is to tape some fine wet/dry sandpaper against a flat surface, and rub. I don't bother with angle guides. Work carefully, and it sounds right when you've got the angle right. I like to prop my stone up on a Thai mortar in the sink, with water dribbling over it from the faucet. Not exactly traditional, but one can improvise here.

Re: Knives Thanks for making Fujitake knives look like the "value" choice! Beautiful, and my Fujitake knives don't hold their edge forever. Do these really hold their edge longer, as claimed? Once you've got a decent metal sandwich, I'm not sure. I prefer austere, straight-up design. It actually took me a while to get over the idea that tiled cookers look like French Poodles. I like using a knife that an uninformed eye might not even notice.

Actually, one doesn't want the same final grit for slicing vegetables as for chopping. Using only a coarse stone creates a serrated cutting edge.