Syzygies

That's great! Yeah, I can bust my hump for two days making gumbo for 50, or just make 'cue in the KK, to the same reception. It does almost feel like cheating, huh?

Ahh, I love this forum, we have to try that. I actually have four sizes of paella pans, I've just stopped using any but the largest. Plain? Laurie won't let me make rabbit and snails paella (for two distinct reasons), which is the plain classic. Coleman Andrews also refers to "wharf rat" paella, but that was a simpler time. I do believe the Spanish refer to the paella equivalent of Chicago pizza as "tourist" paella. The classic Spanish approach is over a very open fire at the beach, definitely not covered. We'd been covering any pan that fit and loving the taste of the fire this introduced, then I made some for a party for six in this largest pan, and was crushed that it was somehow missing something. After the guests left, I stayed up sawing off the handles so I could close the lid next time. Nevertheless, we've found socarrat elusive. Point taken.

Above are some pictures of the largest carbon steel Spanish paella pan that fits inside a KK, after sawing off handles: 50 cm. Apparently Spanish Table only stocks this size now in stainless steel. La Paella does stock this size in carbon steel: Spanish Table Stainless Steel Paellera 50cm 20" Carbon Steel Paella Pan (50cm) This is 1/3 kilo of Bomba paella rice, in 6 cups of stock and water, with a splash of wine. Enough paella for two with leftovers, so there's no reason to buy a smaller pan. Add saffran and a teaspoon of salt to the stock. The rest of the recipe can be improvised; the above is olive, chorizo paella with a box of peas from the farmers market. Two TB of capers in salt from the Aeolian islands adds a nice note. Close the KK cover to cook the rice. The salt bowl is from Dracula's castle. Go by scent to move from stage to stage; get an aid dog if you need one. Little dogs should get small servings.

To avoid altitude sickness, it is the height you sleep at that determines your body's response. A conservative rule is: The first 7,000 feet are free. Sleep 1,000 higher each night to acclimate for best fitness at higher altitudes. One can slur or cheat this rule, but it's a good baseline if one has the chance to follow it. I climbed Mt. Whitney (14,500') on a 3 day trip by the "Mountaineer's Route" a few years back. ("Class 4", not the 22 mile trail slog, but not the most technical route either.) Following the above rule, I felt great on the summit. I signed up on the spot for a similar outing. After a week at sea level, I got altitude sickness on the next trip. Sort of like the hangover from hell. I had a great conversation once with Charlie Houston, leader of the first two American attempts on K2. He ending up hanging from the end of the most famous belay in climbing history. There are books on each of these climbs that make great reading if one is into that sort of thing. He became a doctor and the world's authority on altitude sickness. We took turns, he grilled me on the math of card shuffling (I coauthored a paper showing one should shuffle seven times) and I asked him about altitude sickness. But before this hike, I read his books.

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TinyURL Here's a TinyUrl for the map: http://tinyurl.com/2ar984x

That looks incredible. I just ate, and looking at those pictures is still torture. Any left?

Yeah, I only notice the issue when flipping burgers, so it isn't huge. Perhaps there should be some 9 to 3 testers (side to side, perp to the burger spatula), to see if there's an unforeseen consequence we're not picturing? When I read this thread title, it ran together for me with "what's cooking..." As in, if our KK isn't working the night shift on some butt or brisket, we're not serious? (Tonight's pizza rocked...)

+1! Why didn't I think of that? I'm sure the current configuration facilitates the hinge for adding charcoal, which I never use, and which adds to the cleaning workload.

I just slide a plastic painter's tray under the draft door, slide out the draft door, remove the ash screen, and go wild with a paint brush till most of the ash is no longer inside. I don't think I'd want a hole in the middle. Some of the ash does make it to the painter's tray. You'd think that there would only be four choices for how to put the ash screen back in. It generally takes me five or six tries to figure out which way it goes, and that's after just having seen the answer. One of the mysteries of the universe. Sort of like when New Yorkers come home from a night out, to their apartments with three locks. Any of these could turn either way. This makes eight choices, but some people are found passed out in front of their doors, having given up trying. At least they didn't have to drive home.

Welcome! You're going to love cooking this way.

My favorite sport along these lines is getting a KK reference into the K7 forum, without it getting deleted. Of course, not everyone on the KFF forum gets my sense of humor...

+1 Perhaps a longer ramp than that, but it wasn't necessary. I used the Sagulator to figure out how much my ramp would sag.

Pssst! For all you lurkers out there: The way to talk the missus into a ceramic cooker purchase (the KK would be the best choice) is to make noises for a few months first about building something for yourself in the backyard, a Sicilian pizza oven taking up 6' square, a communal oven suitable for an African village square, that sort of thing. The web abounds with plans for such things. Then "discover" the KK and wait to be lead, so much better looking, takes less space, more flexible... That would be my path. Never built the monstrosity in the middle of the yard, but I sure talked about it...

Re: neat idea Oh, his bags are different from that, and they need to be for his application. But the foodsaver can create a vacuum and seal plastic. And third parties already sell channel bags. Put it differently, once a general purpose computer (handheld or otherwise) can take over function once delegated to a specialized device, the specialized device often gets tossed aside. I make exceptions for cell phones, cameras, like a restaurant I prefer being able to do one thing well. But I don't need two essentially identical vacuum packers. And I would have bought the Stoker a long time ago if it were cleanly interchangeable with the Guru. Even now, the hoops I'd jump through would make me feel like I was using a serial-to-USB adapter.

Re: neat idea Sorry I wasn't clear. There's something economists call an externality, when a free market doesn't adequately price certain consequences of our actions. Pollution in general is right up there on this list. If the cost of disposal was assessed for all goods at the time of manufacture, there would be an incentive to come up with designs that had less end-of-life impact. The manufacture of a $100 machine has a significant environmental impact: The energy costs and pollution consequences of building the product itself, and of each material used. Some of that $100 goes to labor, or to corporate profit, but some is paying for events an environmentalist would wish hadn't happened. If my old car runs well, and a new car I'm considering gets 5 mpg better mileage, how much do I have to drive before the enormous impact of manufacturing the new car is offset by its modest fuel savings? My objection to this dry bag device is not only the inconvenience and expense of two essentially identical devices when one will do, but the environmental impact of manufacturing the second device needlessly. All so the guy could make more of a buck. That's pathetic. I'm actually politically dead center. It's everyone else who's off to the right!

M63 is nothing more than a name given by said competitor to an undisclosed product he purchases for resale. I learned as a kid, if I wanted to blot out some writing so no one could make it out, the most effective technique was to write other letters over each letter. Here, you are under a spell you need to break! Try making up similar, but even more impressive names for yourself. Like Z69. or P1120. Write ad copy to go with these names. Read these names, and the ad copy, out loud in the most pompous voice possible. Repeat until you start to laugh, and you are free from the spell. The compositions of the two cookers you ask about are as different as the prices, or the reputations of the makers. I have one of each, and the difference is absolutely night and day. The Komodo Kamado needs no additional refractory materials to be applied by the end user; it is already designed for the rigors of its intended use. Having watched the competing product fall apart, I don't dispute that some additional materials might have helped (or avoiding some astonishingly cheap materials that the competitor did use). What I have to wonder is why something like "Z69" wasn't used in the first place? But sometimes in life, it is simply time to move on. Many of the folks here came here by doing exactly that. The lucky ones started here.

Spatchcock chicken For comparison, try brining the chicken in less (to taste) than 1/2 cup salt, 1/4 cup sugar per gallon water, overnight, then "spatchcock" the chicken by cutting out the backbone and flattening it out bones down, skin up. Now cook on the upper grill at 450 F or 500 F or so. This goes quickly, be sure to check after 30 minutes and frequently thereafter. Or, far more work, make Tandoor chicken. It's great that the KK supports a rotisserie, but none of our experiments make us prefer the rotisserie to other methods. The KK is an awesome Tandoor oven, for example. Any gas grill can be a rotisserie.

Made 17 quarts of gumbo for a party tonight. Smoked the pork and the sausage in the KK, for a hint of the fire.

We imagined pizza, then short ribs (one Flintstones rack). Tonight was "sloppy joes" from the leftover short ribs.

The covers truly rock. Our neighbor (who got our old K7) is a serious artist woodworker. We're thinking of commissioning him to make us an outdoor table (like his) and the first thing Laurie thought of was "we should ask johnnyboy to make us a cover!" for the winter rains.

I switch back and forth between extruded coconut charcoal for low & slow cooks, and Lazzari hardwood lump for higher temps. I ordered a second charcoal basket, so I could avoid handling any unburned extruded coconut charcoal. The spare basket fits nicely on a 14" terra cotta plant saucer.

Talk about caloric restriction!

Re: 2nd device required The KK is more work for this, but a nice effect. The dehydrator has eight or more trays, that's lots of surface area = lots of tomatoes.