Syzygies

I wouldn't use a heat deflector; flames aren't going to reach the upper deck, no pizza stone needs one. I continue to be astonished how tight the KK is. I can easily hold 500 F for a day (24 hours) on a load of fuel. It seems easy enough to start earlier, so the stone has more time to warm up. E.g. the Fibrament people won't sell a thicker stone to home users, because no one gives the stone a long enough preheat, unlike a pizza shop where the oven simply stays on. That said, our old routine (I haven't experimented enough with varying it to adapt to the KK) is to roll the dough onto parchment paper, then transfer it to a pizza screen after three minutes, all on top of the stone. The screen breathes better than the stone alone, and with no deflector and an ample preheat, my problem is instead to not burn the crust. This works.

I appreciate seeing the link, but I'm a bit reminded of Consumer Reports trying to claim that premium audio cables were a fraud, when I could detect actual volume differences (never mind fidelity) between the cheapest cables and the most cost effective good cables. Laurie and I can't stand commercial salt, we're convinced that's part of the reason commercial hot sauces taste so chemical and harsh. And expensive? Buy sea salt in bulk at one of those hippie bin stores (ours is called Harvest House) with homeopathetic remedies in front. It's probably cheaper than commercial salt at a supermarket. In any case, we like a light brine and can taste the difference over no brine. If we're imagining this, please don't pinch us. We're enjoying the dream. My favorite source for brining is Paul Bertolli's Cooking by Hand. He describes how to compute the salt for a target salinity, taking into account the brine water and the water in the meat. For a house-cured ham, this is essential. (Our target salinity is 2.5%, making for a rather light ham.) For a quick bird brine, just use lots more brine than bird, and the calculation becomes insignificant.

Looks beautiful... So what's your brine recipe? I've seen 1/2 cup sea salt per gallon water called a "light brine". This is what I always use (with 1/4 cup sugar), and I haven't found birds get too salty, even overnight. People also use 1 cup/gallon, but for me that's too much. A possible shortcut to air drying is to use a hair dryer. I've done this with other birds, e.g. before deep-frying a duck for Thai cooking. (For another cooking application, Dennis likes to use an old hair dryer as a very directed fan after lighting charcoal.)

Favorite lines:

Wow, Dennis, is that all one meal? The signature use for pork cheeks is to make Guanciale, an Italian pancetta alternative of the gods. Beef cheeks are a classic bistro braised dish; Tom Colicchio has a nice recipe in Think Like a Chef. We've had mixed luck, however, with one organic cheek coming out like the shoe Charlie Chaplin ate in Gold Rush. We figured the cow smiled too much. So to KK a pork cheek I'd reverse all my prejudices, and foil with sauce after the smoke ring forms?

How does this associate with burning wood chunks for smoke, etc? The KK is much tighter and better insulated than my previous cooker, with air flow at more of a trickle. I've seen something like what you describe, not as extreme, where using my smoke pot turns the KK into a wood tea "still" with a brown trickle from the damper. I do not see this, just burning charcoal.

Cheating As part of closing the deal for our new KK, Dennis coaxed Laurie over the phone to assure me that yes, cooking on a KK might be easier, but it certainly wasn't cheating.

Those pictures are STUNNING.

I'm looking forward to trying this quicker method; I haven't. In my experience, the meat itself is crucial. The best brisket I've ever made was a phenomenal piece of organic meat; all I did was manage not to ruin it. The second-best was dry aged for over a week. I'd try a shorter aging next time, but it sure was juicy. In comparison to either of these, I've found any brisket bought on price to be rather grim.

We tried both ways, and thought that foiling made for mushier ribs. There's a style of rib-making where one spends as little as possible on the meat, then makes a special sauce that makes the best of the situation. In this case, a foiling step is said to help the sauce penetrate. I will foil after the ribs come off, e.g. to then transport to a party, wrapped in towels in a cooler.

swamped at work Nice! You'll love it. One of the new ones they just announced today? (A water main broke in my office ceiling, and my iMac survived the experience, power on.)

http://cleanstream.com/ Order online for filters that fit

Re: Livvy turned 14 in June Woof! Woof!

WAF Our next-door neighbors happily took our old K7. One set of their parents has a green egg, and they've enjoyed our cooking on same said K7, so they jumped at the offer. For those of you on the fence, it's impossible to describe how quickly the "transfer of affection" takes place. The KK is phenomenally well-designed. Looking back at the K7, I feel the same "make the best of this" optimism mixed with horror that one feels upon first addressing a strange campsite grill. In either situation, a good cook can shine, but why struggle? My cover story has been that the K7 cooked fine, Laurie really wanted to get the new cooker (how's that for Wife Acceptance Factor!?), but as the one-who-cooks-with-fire, I'm thrilled.

Dolly celebrates her 16th birthday with a hike on Mt Diablo. Her secret: pork butt or brisket on her kibble, to keep her engaged.

The "drywall dust" filter is a great idea. As a reformed shop-vac guy, however, I can't see bothering with any route except the old paintbrush into a suitable catch container. It's clever having the draft door at floor level, take advantage of it. And why clean all the way? Ash will return...

Been there, works really well if this is your primary use of the shop vac. I found that it eventually clogs the vac filter. On our old K7 I just scooped with a yogurt container. Doesn't matter if you don't get the last 10%, there will be more ash. To soon to develop a pattern for our new KK.

Yep, it came! Spruce Green, we're very happy. JohnnyBoy was a great pleasure to work with. I wish I could buy a suit that fit this well! The fabric clearly breathes; I wouldn't use it to cover ten boxes of printer paper. For this application, however, breathing is a huge win once the sun comes back out.

Re: Interesting Trophies!! Why do those trophies look really sore from a long swim?

Hey, people say the same thing about the KK. You can get halfway there for less than half the money if you're tone deaf. Same with Macs. As a mathematician I am stunned at my good fortune to be alive in the first century of the computer revolution, and I would need to be institutionalized if I dwelled too long on the degree to which Microsoft has ruined that experience for the masses. They're the frozen ground patties of the meat market; the only difference is that the E. Coli don't arrive till you hook up to the net. Macs are rib eye steaks. Linux is brisket, takes work, or great if ground into burgers.

I'm a Mac person, but I've been buying various youngsters in our extended family Dell netbooks. Awesome value for $300, size is nice too. They make a regular laptop look like a 1970's cell phone. The definition of full monty hi def is 1920 x 1080, a 16 by 9 aspect ratio. For work I always buy Dell monitors that go 1920 x 1200, which is a 16 by 10 aspect ratio. The extra height is nice for documents. This will "letterbox" nicely to 1080 for hi def video. I don't have a TV signal in my NY apartment, and I recently replaced my old tube TV with a $200 Dell 1920 x 1080 monitor, which goes with a $40 up-sampling DVD player, my stereo system, and my Netflix subscription. A vast improvement; anyone who hasn't done so already should get every tube out of their life. A MacBook is 1280 by 800 native resolution; The MacBook Pro resolutions are 1280 by 800 (13"), 1440 by 900 (15"), and 1920 by 1200 (17"). These are 16 by 10 aspect ratios, which all will "letterbox" to a 16 by 9 aspect ratio. However, only the 17" has the full pixels for hi def as it is defined. What complicates this is that Macs as of now don't read Blu-Ray disks, which is the only way to deliver this many pixels to a laptop, so any DVD is up-sampling to any of these screen sizes. They all have the horsepower to do this much better than a $40 up-sampling DVD player. Similarly, anyone considering an Apple TV that has the money to fly KK class just ups the ante and buys a Mac mini instead. Over twice the horsepower, and fewer restrictions.

Re: Polarity question Been there, recently, a friend had an expensive coffee grinder with the timer dial thingy on the fritz, grinder worked fine. Turned out not to be mechanical, there was a friggin' twenty component electrical circuit behind the dial, that had failed. It became a classic case of the bomb squad "which wire to cut" dilemma. 'Cept, being A/C, twice as many ways to get it right. Put a hardware store screw-on switch on the cord, took out and bypassed the circuit, and they're back in business for another decade. Of course, one wire really is ground, safer to have the switch shut off the live wire as soon as possible, rather than always having live current running through the motor where it could find another ground. (Just because A/C keeps changing sides on itself doesn't mean one wire isn't doing all the moving.) So perhaps you should put things back how you found them.