Syzygies

Alcohol starts Huh. Didn't know there was such a thing. While I tend to use either mapp torch (very directed, starts fire under my smoke pot, to spread over 24 hours for low & slow) or chimney or electric starter, I've also been a big fan of alcohol starts. One needs as close to 100% alcohol as available, not the 80% stuff. I pour it on, get ready to close the cooker, light with a torch, close and back off. The womp can cause birds to fly away in the neighborhood, like in the movies. All show, I've never been hurt. A serious advantage is that unlike lighter fluid, this burns off completely with no aftertaste. It's all about where you are in molecular weight; petroleum byproducts are heavier, nastier molecules. Even parafin is a petroleum byproduct. It doesn't smell nearly as bad as lighter fluid, but it isn't my choice. Alas, the disadvantage is that drugstore alcohol isn't ethanol. (One can buy large cans of denatured ethanol at hardware stores, but seldom as cheaply.) Ethanol is the lightest alcohol molecule, it burns safefly into water and carbon dioxide. It also doesn't kill you when you drink it because as it breaks down, it has nowhere to go but safe. The drugstore rubbing alcohols burn less safely, with carbon monoxide as a byproduct. In your body they can break down into some nasty byproducts, which is why you don't drink the stuff. Nevertheless, this is fear-mongering. Charcoal itself produces plenty of carbon monoxide, which is why we don't use it indoors, and one can simply clear the area while the fire lights. (I hold my breath as I walk away, so I don't have a bad math day.) No one was planning to drink the stuff, and it wouldn't be legal for sale to rub all over if this had the same effect as drinking it. Once the fire gets up to speed, the alcohol is gone. Period. End of story. A purist wanting an accelerant would light their fires with pure ethanol, and view any solution whatsoever involving heavier molecules as inferior.

I line with heavy duty aluminum foil an unlined 16" terra cotta plant saucer from Home Depot. Heat deflector and drip pan in one. The foil always leaks a bit, giving the terra cotta some character. I'm on my second or third saucer, but they're inexpensive. Don't buy lined unless you're prepared to test the glaze yourself (same mistake as galvanized metal in a cooker).

I wouldn't go 750/800 F dome for tandoori chicken in a ceramic cooker, at least for any recipe I know. Every 50 F step above 550 F is pretty dramatic, I'd take them one at a time. Temperature is only one element of the puzzle, and more is not always better; every cooker is different in its heat delivery characteristics. This is not a single variable (temperature) problem. For an example which is approximately two variables, take a pizza stone, where the temperature and the thermal transfer rate of the stone material work together to determine how the stone cooks. A ceramic cooker is a more complex system, closer to a tandoor than to a conventional oven, but not the same. I can't use the same pizza temperatures in my cooker that I saw Sicilians use in room-sized wood fired ovens, and I can't use the same tandoor temperatures that an Indian would use in an authentic tandoor. Nevertheless, if one makes an adjustment to one's cooker, the results can be delicious. Here are some pictures of a tandoori chicken recipe that I like: Here are some notes of mine from 2005, that I've edited a bit for this post: "Tandoor" by Ranjit Rai (ISBN 1585671444; addall.com, overstock.com) is a definitive treatise on Indian Tandoor barbecue, written originally for publication in India. It is quite approachable, particularly if one has cooked other Indian dishes before. Nevertheless, he assumes that one is using ingredients as found in India, and actually cooking in a Tandoor. I find this refreshing; I'm comfortable making adaptations to my circumstances, but I cringe at the idea of others making adjustments for me, that may not be relevant to my circumstances. For example, a ceramic cooker is very much like a Tandoor; much could get lost in translation by starting with a recipe adapted to a conventional oven. The following is my adaptation for a ceramic cooker of his "Tandoori Chicken"; I have tried to be as faithful as possible to his original intent, e.g. bringing into this recipe comments on technique made elsewhere in the book. There are many other recipes given for poultry, lamb, fish, vegetables, bread, accompaniments; I hope that this adaptation serves as an advertisement for the book, which belongs on any comprehensive barbecue bookshelf. This chicken is the first dish I've made on my cooker that is both exciting enough for me, and exciting to Laurie's nine year old daughter, who has requested that we make it every night. 1 whole chicken, 3-4 lbs 2 TB vinegar 3 TB oil 1/2 TB ground chile or hot paprika 1 tsp salt This is a typical size for a U.S. chicken, but roughly twice the size of the chicken specified in the recipe, so I give cooking times longer than the book. Nevertheless, quantities here yield plenty of marinade; I'd double everything for three chickens. One can follow the book's cooking times more closely for "tikka", or uniform chunks of meat. Quarter and skin the chicken, and pierce various places with a knife. Trim the quarters of any extraneous extremities, setting the scraps aside to freeze with the wings and backbone for stock. Mix the marinade ingredients, toss the chicken quarters in the marinade, and chill for an hour or so. Arrange the ingredients for the second marinade: 1 cup yogurt 1 tsp salt 2 TB ginger 2 TB garlic 1 bay leaf 3 cloves 4 green cardamom pods 1/4 tsp mace 1/4 tsp nutmeg 1 TB black peppercorns 1 tsp caraway seeds 3 red chiles 1 TB oil Drain the yogurt through a paper towel and a strainer. In a large Thai mortar and pestle or equivalent machine, pound the ginger and garlic with the salt to a paste. Use only the black insides of the cardamom pods; seed the chiles. In a heavy frying pan, gently roast each of the dry spices until fragrant, grind in a spice grinder, and pound into the mortar paste. Mix in the oil and yogurt. Drain the original marinade from the chicken, coat with the new marinade, and chill for six hours or as long as practical. ("White" cardamom is simply a bleached version of the green, so stock one kind, green. If you can find mace in strands as shown in the picture, it is far superior to preground mace.) 4 to 8 TB ghee (or clarified butter) Preheat the cooker to 600 F, and set up the upper grill for direct cooking. Have a mop and melted ghee at the ready for basting. Put on the quarters, adjust the cooker to 550 F or so, and turn and baste every 5 minutes. The chicken will be done in 20 to 30 minutes, a matter of taste, the actual cooking temperature, and the size of the bird. As tempting as it is to apply this approach to spatchcocked (butterflied) chicken, at these temperatures either the legs or the breast can finish first. In my opinion the breasts are done when a Thermapen registers in the 140's to 150's F anywhere one probes, and the legs are done in the 150's to 160's. Some may regard these temperatures as undercooked, so cook instead to your liking. The quarters will continue to cook a bit after they come off.

This is all relative, because one learns to cook based on a given instrumentation strategy, as long as one is consistent. The debate whether to do a low & slow at 210 F or 225 F gets mixed up with this debate; no two people can accurately compare these numbers or their probe locations, but one person can learn through consistency how to obtain the barbecue that they like. I reason that with the probe 2" from the meat, I'm measuring the boundary effect that directly determines how the meat will cook. If there are other lags in the system (there are!) then they're not distracting me, e.g. I'm not waiting for the dome temp to equalize with my grill measurement before I get "full traction" from the control process. In other words, I don't see what advantage I gain from the grill temp around the meat starting out lower than a dome temp held steady by a guru. If I want a lower starting temp, I could just dial this in manually. On the other hand, having made the decision that I'd rather regulate the temp 2" from the meat, I regulate it as a lower temperature than I would have selected for a dome temp. To summarize, I want to control the temp where it matters most, then compensate for how this could be a different number than I'd choose for a different location.

I'm disappointed that they're discontinuing the Pit Minder E-temp. I actually downsized to this, giving my fancier guru to a friend because I actively prefer the simplicity of twisting a dial, setting a temp, and that being the whole story. I am not a Luddite. I've built many computers from scratch, and designed simple circuits such as a current mirror that can charge 8 AA cells from an iPod power supply, getting by with only 0.1 volts overhead. So I'm not afraid of complexity. I just think that complexity isn't needed in a pit controller; nothing beats a simple dial.

FM, do you get arrested at airport security often? Or is this forum your safe haven outlet? I found a source of 3 oz bottles for making up a "carry-on travel" size of this year's hot sauce batch. The bottles truly are 3 oz each, but they look for all the world like they hold a quart, I was worried mine would be misjudged and then seized by the TSA. All manner of rejoinders to the TSA supervisor as to why the first agent got it wrong ran through my head, some not unlike your comment above. "No, Dave, you're an adult now. Just give up the hot sauce, get to your destination..." No problems. I was upgraded, with a decent burger snack in first for the red-eye, and slathering it with hot sauce was a nice new treat.

As Lazzari has their warehouse not so far from me, I systematically use oak lump for hotter cooks, and KK extruded for low & slows. For low & slows, I'd say that the KK extruded passes the final test for me. There's tremendous potential for wishful thinking here, but if there were any element of denial in my assessment, I'd be feeling an odd choke in my throat by now, each time I reach for the stuff. I spend a lot of time computer programming, and when I cook my one aim is to get the best food on the table for my friends, so my inner monologue is a slightly crazed rotation through all the views of what to check, what could go wrong, with everything reexamined and no sacred cows. If I were worried about the charcoal, I'd notice by now. Instead, I exhibit an odd preference for the KK extruded over my remaining hoard of classic K extruded. I have no idea why, but it doesn't let me down. 24 hour cooks use only a fraction of the fuel I can load, so the ash issue has had no practical consequences for me. If I had to guess, no coconut extruded is completely neutral, my KK hoard is fresher, and I am worried that my smoking wood is old enough to be past prime. (Lazzari sells huge bags, and I'm due.) So I'm reaching for the KK extruded to compensate. Whatever. We had a freak 70 degree sunny day last saturday, a record for Concord, CA, and a dozen friends over for butt, pot beans, tortillas before I headed to icy New York for a new semester. What a contrast!

Somehow, watching that video, I kept thinking how our snake doesn't always eat both rat fuzzies that we buy her. That charcoal is scaled nicely for an appetizer alternative to driving back to the reptile store.

Chasing links, here's Glenn's full blown treatment: http://www.kamado.com/discus/messages/3/33231.html?1162143829 (I'm the gumbo recipe he links to, "great article about stock". My off-brand ceramic cooker needs a repair, so tonight's chicken went into a chicken pot pie, lard crust from SF Farmers Market lard, home-ground flour. Made a double stock from stock and the new bird. The stock makes the dish.)

I too cut my handles, for the largest size I could close the lid on, true Spanish pans from "Spanish Table". Paella needs the smoke, from closing the lid.

Talk to Glenn (Jiarby). His chili rocks. There may be a recipe at one of his "past life" forums, or I could guess at a reconstruction. But he's the man.

Here's one way to catch them without being shredded: http://www.squirrelinator.com/ Note especially the "Plastic basin for safe transport". They don't warn you that the basin is watertight, in case the destination you have in mind is further away than the nearest park.

Here are a few ways one can vary this, to bring up the Thai notes: Add roasted chili paste (different flavor than "ground chili paste"): http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipes/nahmprikpow.html Add fish sauce. Swap in lime juice for the vinegar. Swap in palm sugar for the sugar.

Yep, a hot cook will always finish cleaning the grates, after a rough scrape. I chose the Billy Bar for its simplicity; I can't make a direct comparison. As farmers (used to) try to rotate crops, I try to separate my low & slow cooks with hot cooks, to clean the grill. If I can't, I find nothing beats a wad of heavy-duty aluminum foil, applied with prejudice after a decent soak in a $6 kiddie plastic wading pool. Bio-degradable soap optional...

+1 Of course, part of the fun here is you can run experiments both ways, and see for yourself. I have a plastic cooler handy, with two large bath towels dedicated to this task, and rolls of heavy duty aluminum foil. Butt, ribs, and brisket go in this to stay warm after cooking. One virtue is that I can then show up at a collaborative dinner half an hour away, take another hour to get to the meat course, and all is well. As a bonus we drive home, leaving dishes in someone else's home. The usual scam where bbq cooks give the impression what they did is actual work. It's a labor of love, but no one complains about this arrangement! I found that any foiling during cooking itself simply made the meat mushier. Try this first for spareribs, where the "3-2-1" approach (foil 2 hours in middle) still has traction. My impression (I'll put this as neutrally as I can) is that if one has bought unremarkable ribs on price, and has a remarkable sauce to apply, and guests who prefer their ribs falling off the bone, then "3-2-1" makes sense. If one wants the meat itself to show with a hint of tooth left (properly cooked pasta rather than mush), then one doesn't foil. Try the experiment both ways, no need to believe us. We want you to find out for yourself, perhaps you'll come up with a better way. For brisket or butt, foiling turns the cook into a braise, might as well be doing it indoors! Not that there's anything wrong with braised beef, it's simply a different dish.

Touch trumps reason Touch seems to function on an independent plane to reason. I'm struck by the parallel here, I was just describing in a different thread how my gurus taught me to touch a pork butt to tell if it was done, rather than depending on temperature. So ashes to ashes, butcher to pit, if one has a sense of touch, it trumps reason. Steak chefs can tell doneness by touch, only the inexperienced need to cut a steak to peek. I once shook Jerry Brown's hand during his presidential bid. He instantly (think: Stephen King's The Dead Zone) sensed I wasn't voting for him, and his hand went limp as his attention turned. I feel most comfortable with tomatoes, after picking them all summer in CA. Back in NY, all the farmers markets have signs scolding consumers not to squeeze ("Tomato = Banana, judge by color") yet with imperceptable pressure I can tell in horror I'm holding yet another tomato that wasn't ready to pick. So, yes, I don't doubt the story Dennis relays.

I remember David and Kim's take on this (from a different era some here will remember): Butt is done when it's done, one feels it, rather than measures it. That said, I usually try to "dwell" at around 170 F as long as I can, and take the butt off the fire before 190 F. I like the fat mostly rendered, and collagens liquified, but I find the standard for pulled pork to be a bit stringy. There's a lot of different muscles in a butt; I like them to separate from each other, without turning to rope strands.

Yeah Glenn (jiarby) posted to a forum two years ago about eating their triple bypass, which he also reproduces at home. (The picture of the one he makes looked better to me.)

Nice marbling! Nice marbling! Ribeye is by far my favorite classic "steak" cut. I also love skirt steak (completely underappreciated) and hanger steak (those who appreciate it lock up the supply, not that easy to find).

I am mildly annoyed, as hard as it is to get my goat online. You paid how much for your cooker, and you're trying to McCain me ("oh, I'm so working class!") by romanticizing cheap ingredients? Believe what you like, but a river in Egypt doesn't make anyone a better cook. I'm sure the judges favor classic style, and have serious pent-up hostility toward "precious" ingredients, but don't doubt for an instant that part of competitive technique is the ingredient selection process.

Spare the rod... That rod reminds me of high school. After skipping homeroom 40 times in a row I got called in, and chose the paddle over three nights detention. The hero of our era was getting a particularly "attentive" paddling for worse misdemeanors. He managed to slide out of the way of the swing at the last instant, and the paddle-wielding vice principal broke his hand on the table.

One of my favorite meat brands is Niman Ranch, except that they've gotten pricey enough to make me shop around. But their opinion on Berkshire pork is interesting: First and foremost, they like their pigs to live outside in the winter, and like dogs, purebreds are at a distinct genetic disadvantage to mutts. So they prefer Berkshire crosses. Alas, with all of these good intentions, their sleep-in-the-cold pork often ends up with simply too much fat to make ideal bbq.