Syzygies

I'm also Bay Area. I buy eight 40# bags of Lazzari hardwood lump at a time from the warehouse near SFO, to complement my hoard of extruded coconut lump. Hardwood for high temps, coconut for low & slow. My main complaint about the Lazzari hardwood lump is lots of small crumbs I can't use; I have to screen the ends of bags for usable charcoal. But at the price, hard to complain. They claim I can bring back crumbs for credit; I never have. We think the mesquite has a much harsher flavor. However, my Thai cooking teacher, also in the Bay Area, insists that mesquite is closer to the correct flavor for Thai barbecue. Her protocol is quite precise. Start a measured quantity of lump in a chimney, and leave in the chimney for a specified interval (50 minutes, 75 minutes) till just before use. Then spread embers and grill. Her embers are fully developed, with not the faintest trace of black charcoal left unburned. Having moved from a K7 to a KK, the KK is better insulated, making this more of an issue even with hardwood lump. One does not want fresh, raw, black charcoal starting to burn in the presence of food. The taste will be off. This is the Achilles' heel of all ceramic cookers, for low & slow barbecue. Correct, classic technique involves two fires; one moves fully developed embers to the food cooker, only when they are ready. In a different thread, I described a Chinese L-shaped grill, whose purpose for street vending was to insure a steady pipeline of fully developed embers. It takes charcoal of extraordinary quality to burn black charcoal in the presence of food without creating off flavors. Extruded coconut lump is such a charcoal; so are the finer Japanese charcoals. "Fully" carbonized is a crux issue. As for others not liking the taste of Lazzari hardwood lump, I'd have to watch the technique. I detest the taste of mesquite lump, but the barbecue was remarkable in my Thai classes, if I meticulously followed my teacher's technique.

Re: Week of Thai Classes Good catch. For a light fire centered on a 17" charcoal grate, resting on top of the firebox, would we be ok? Cooking over the lower grate would then best approximate the low, close grilling of Thai street food. Or I could sometimes use my Weber. In Flushing, Queens, NYC one sees a brilliant charcoal cooker design that I'm told originates in China: The cooker looks like a metal "L" on its back. The short column acts as a chimney to start fresh charcoal. When the embers are ready, they are raked out the bottom along the back of the "L" which looks like two parallel retaining walls. Skewers fit nicely crosswise all along the back of the "L".

Re: Week of Thai Classes So there was grilling the last three days. A strong class, I probably had the least recent practice cooking Thai, but lots of recent practice on grills. By the third day people put together the pattern that it was good having me on grill duty. Friday's boneless chicken thighs marinaded in a lemongrass paste, with chili dipping sauce, was particularly good. I was struck by how my Weber technique varied from my KK technique. Each dish was approximating Thai street food, cooked in close proximity to a small charcoal fire. My little Weber more closely fits this style than my KK. I'm reminded of cooking chicken "for the children" at a large party, on a long flat rental charcoal grill, and having it be the people's favorite. Again, very close proximity to a thin fire, lots of constant turning. I know one can grill on the lower KK grate, but has anyone experimented instead with bringing up the charcoal, onto a wider grate at the level of the lower KK cooking grate? I'd be interested in a charcoal grate intended to fit that level, if one can't simply fit a Weber grate into place there somehow.

Yes. Very common, please forgive the usage. I'm not a big fan of acronyms. Serious academic papers don't have acronyms, but thinner fields with a greater emphasis on branding tend to be populated with acronyms. They serve as a warning that I'm walking in the wrong neighborhood. Then there's the "treehouse" effect where one feels on the outside if one doesn't get the acronym. I don't need to belong to more little worlds.

More tech support from Weston. I suggested many people only bought FoodSaver units to deal with liquids, why did they cede this market to FoodSaver rather than making some accommodation?

Re: Cabela CG-15

Cabela CG-15 Looks like my guess was right. Here's the answer to my support request asking for a comparison: So given that the prices are comparable, it looks like an open-shut case in favor of the CG-15.

Interesting, I was considering Cabela's CG-15 Vacuum Sealer Their manual refers service questions to http://www.pragotrade.com, which resolves to http://www.westonsupply.com. Identical specs. Small world. Weston's Amazon reviews cite a worse time with bags from other manufacturers. I have many boxes of FoodSaver small bags I'd like to be able to use. The Cabela CG-15 manual describes a seal adjust setting one can play with to accommodate different bags. The display does look different for the Weston. Either their site is too brain-dead to post an online manual, or I'm too brain-dead to find it, but the Weston display looks like it is lacking this crucial adjustment. So I lean toward the Cabela unit. Glancing at the Cabela unit, how does it compare to the Weston? Can you adjust the seal for different bags? Have you had luck with FoodSaver bags? Another review comment says that fouling the pump with liquid is not covered by warranty. It appears to be crucial to prefreeze wet loads. Thanks!

Nice! I'd buy one.

Japanese Vacuum Bag "Clothespin" ?? I think I have it: Two dowels, a pair of tight 0-rings, make up clamps like they sell for squeezing toothpaste tubes, one per freezer packet. Flatten to desired shape, freeze, later come back and vacuum seal with a decent (read: not FoodSaver) hunter's vacuum packer.

I'm really afraid that if I keep using Foodsaver products I'll spend the rest of my life in a room they don't let you back out of. This thread makes it clear that the way to go if you have the money and the space is a vacuum chamber unit. With such a unit there is no problem with liquids. Short of such a unit, it appears from many frustrating phone calls and email exchanges that every "higher end" replacement for a Foodfouler can't handle liquids without fouling the pump. They're thinking the only market that will spend more than a Foodsaver is hunters, and they don't have liquid, or they're willing to freeze then pump. If you freeze before pumping tomatoes, or stew, they don't fit nicely in the chest freezer without rethawing, which is bad for the food. And our large chest freezer is filled with ingredients like this, we absolutely must have the packets fit nicely or we'll run out of room. We partially dehydrated 60 lbs of tomatoes over the weekend. Sort of like Thomas Keller's "precious tomatoes" (I realize everything in Keller's books are precious, so this won't help anyone find the recipe) or Tom Colicchio's roast tomatoes, only better suited for mass production so we never open a can during the year. Skin by scalding 90 seconds, slice into a dehydrator with 1/2 tsp++ sea salt per tray, dry 8-12 hours at 135 F till gooshy (we have two American Harvester FD-61's and 16 trays) and vacuum pack. Who'd expect the vacuum pack stage to get finicky? As in, even their top-of-the-line products are junk. So does anyone have first-hand with a non-chamber, higher-end Foodfouler alternative, that can handle liquids without fouling the pump? I doubt I'll be able to post here from a room they don't let you back out of, so perhaps I should just buy the chamber unit?

Week of Thai Classes That's funny, in the morning I'm about to start a new week of intensive Thai cooking classes with Kasma Loha-unchit in Oakland, CA. I've taken everything she offered in the past, this is the first offering of a class with new recipes. She normally gets distracted when there's cooking over charcoal outside (she can't be inside and outside at once), but relaxes if I'm there to handle the fire. Ditto for live fish, I often listen to the opening lecture from the sink, butchering live catfish.

i just swallowed my gum....

I've never been happy with low & slow for brisket that lean. If the hybrid technique works for this, that's very good news. (Nice smoke ring.) At the same time, I feel justified spending 3x for some brisket with decent marbling, which can benefit from low & slow.

Re: ashes and safety

How's the quality? Harbor Freight is an amazing place, but some of their stuff won't make it to your car intact unless you've parked close. I buy things there that only need to have the correct form (wheels for a "picnic table truck" to move my outdoor workbench six times a year max) and return anything where quality can possibly affect function (wood clamps that self-destruct on first use). I fear that a propane torch is in the second category. Proceed with caution.

Five or ten minutes? Depends on your charcoal. For low & slow I like to start a focused fire in extruded coconut, right under my smoke pot. This is good. For higher temps, I've moved over to the Benzomatic JT850 which is quicker. So it depends. If you already have the plumber's torch shown, e.g. for projects around the house, then this is a handy way to use it. (Our previous owner used scrap pipe with four joints for the shower, buried in a wall where a clean single piece of pipe would have done. The joints failed and I learned various skills to repair all the water damage and replace the plumbing.) Remember that thread on refilling propane tanks? Propane is heavier than air. Dennis must have had this in mind designing this gas burner door, as it is flush with the cooker floor, so if this torch goes out unattended, the cooker doesn't turn into a bomb. Good thing. Still, attend!

Oxygen I have to admit, at the aisle in Lowes where I bought my new torch, I stared and stared at the oxygen canisters. The potential of oxygen was first documented on the web in 1995, in this classic video that disappeared for a while, then surfaced on youtube: I was simply thinking of feeding oxygen in gas form to an already lit fire, perhaps through a JT850. Not wanting to qualify for the Darwin Awards, I retreated to a more conventional solution.

That's fascinating. Our pH is dead neutral, 7.0, while it should be 6.5 to 6.7. It's clear that the end rot is restricted calcium uptake, which we had assumed was a pH effect, but we did also have a cold spring. (It still feels like a cold spring!) Next year we'll go at soil prep earlier, get the pH dialed in before we plant. I've wondered about heating strips in the soil, Laurie considers that cheating! (Not to worry about commercial charcoal, not allowed on the premises.)

That's funny, my old torch (doubles for sweating copper pipes) had stripped its threads. I almost replaced it, bought the JT850 instead today, just before your post. On a test drive as soon as I got home, it sure did a faster job of lighting charcoal than I'd had available before. Jiarby (Glenn Butler) shows up at competitions with a Rambo-style flame thrower that makes the JT850 look like a toy, but he'd certainly approve of the JT850's use in our amateur hands.

Are there any actual gardening advantages to keeping the ashes in the yard? Our tomatoes have a bit of end rot this year, on a very precise watering system, and our analysis is that our soil needs to be a bit more acidic. Ash is basic, right?

One cardinal rule is to make sure the ashes are really out, so you don't burn down your garage. Then, don't overspec the problem. Over the course of a year, if it's twice the effort to get the last third of the ashes out, it's simply not worth it. I use a dedicated paint brush to sweep ashes down and out the ash door. A 16" terra cotta plant saucer (unglazed unless you're sure of the glaze) lined with foil make a very convenient heat deflector and drip catcher, with easy cleanup. The same saucer catches ashes nicely. Some escape, which doesn't bother me.

Re: is there really a difference I came from a Kamado #7 that I drove into the ground (shed its tiles, cracked, but lots of good cooking) over five years. I figured, the Komodo Kamado, much nicer fit & finish, lasts many times longer, but similar enough shape and size that I could jump in with no learning curve. I was wrong. Aesthetics aside, a fundamental difference in how the KK cooks comes from the fact that it is both very tight and very well insulated. One can get to and hold a temperature quicker, with less fuel. Early on, I made plenty of mistakes, trying to drive the KK as if it were a K7. But one learns. I am of the opinion that traditional low & slow brisket is the single hardest entry in the barbecue repertoire. Just saying this opens up a can of worms, for this approach to brisket is easy on a ceramic cooker, if nearly impossible on an offset firebox cooker. And one school here favors quick, higher heat briskets involving foiling. The intensity of the debate supports my belief (shared by many others) that brisket responds to the synergy of skill and equipment. Nevertheless, brisket made this way comes out better in a KK than it ever did in a K7. I can only speculate why: Tight, well-insulated, so less airflow. Does this dry the meat less? I can just imagine Harold McGee lecturing me that this has nothing to do with meat drying out, and if it did, a water pan would correct any differences in cooker tightness. Perhaps. My intuition likes a very slow airflow. No one who can tell armagnac from cognac from moonshine would dispute that distillation is very sensitive to every variable. My hunch, supported by experience, is that so is barbecue. Of course, you buy a KK because you want it.

Wait for Dennis to weigh in? This is his technique. I pictured a simple "blow from above" to get a spot raging, then let time take its course. There was a separate discussion of shop vac filters that could handle ash, with the caveat that embers start fires in unwanted places (garage where shop vac is stored). My compromise is to remove most of the ash manually with a paint brush out the ash door, then clean up with a shop vac sometimes. Ash above the charcoal bothers me, it's crazy to get the last 10% down below. That is, unless the hair dryer trick saves 20 minutes later. But where is the ash down below going to go, if the rest of the KK is clean, and there's a decent load of lump in the way?

And here I thought these were KK tile choices? Oops.