Syzygies

That's some serious food porn!

Yup. I remember watching the evening news as a kid; as I recall, Walter Cronkite was driving a car rigged to measure how many times one adjusted the steering wheel. Good drivers make few adjustments, and still guide the car as they intend. He was expressing audience-engaging frustration at his score. Dennis is describing a physical system, to which I'd add, the frontier where the charcoal is burning is another variable. Lump charcoal is easily lit, and this frontier changes easily. Want to bring a too-hot fire back down to 225 F ? Reduce the oxygen, and the "boat will turn" as quickly as the cooker walls can cool off. This can still be surprisingly slowly, but remember, we want all this thermal mass. With the greater density of extruded charcoal, the fire has more memory. Like a tree that keeps sending up shoots years after you cut it down, an oxygen-starved fire can hang in there longer, trying to create convection to get more air. Opening the lid gets it going again. Using a guru with the top damper not closed enough, it can pull the air it needs through the guru with the fan off (that's why the guru has a stepped shutoff slider). For low & slow, I'm used to all this, and my old "other company" K is leaky enough to make this a bit challenging. Nevertheless, with KK extruded I can half-fill my firebox, with much of the space taken up by a two quart dutch oven holding my smoking wood, and I can easily go 24 hours for any cook I can imagine. Part of the charcoal will be left for the next cook. I prefer to start slowly and well in advance with a very localized fire, and creep up to my target temperature without overshooting, then put in the meat. (BBQ competitors going for the deepest red smoke ring prefer to put cold meat into a cold cooker, as the window of ring formation is before the meat reaches 140 F or so.) As an experiment, I tried pizza at 500 F. Steering the KK extruded at this temperature was more sluggish than steering lump. The results nevertheless had a nice clean "wood-fired bread oven" taste. Does it taste neutral, or does it taste like coconut? When we first had our cooker, our oven failed, and we used the cooker for everything, including pies. I can't imagine a pie cooked over mesquite charcoal, which tastes somewhat like lighter fluid. Whatever fire taste coconut extruded charcoal contributed, it works. We think of it as neutral. The "flavor" of this batch of KK extruded is in the same ballpark as my remaining hoard of 2003 K extruded. For planning a low & slow cook, I think of both of them as neutral, and add apple and/or hickory wood (in a sealed dutch oven "smoke pot" with a few tiny holes in the bottom) for the smoke flavor I want. My wife strongly prefers this setup to any alternative; low & slow cooking over ordinary lump and open chunks of wood is out of the question. (We use oak lump for high temp cooks.) So I'd say that she has a sensitive palate, and as far as flavor goes, this batch of KK extruded can do the job.

Dennis and Glenn (jiarby) asked me offline to make various tests, beyond my feedback posted so far. I'm in the middle of a plumbing project (previous owner believed in recycling construction scrap, rotting the wall behind our shower), I'll post what I did as soon as I can. The differences with Doug's (nakedwhiz) numbers can be explained by different methodologies; our conclusions agree. Bottom line, I jumped on the first chance to purchase this charcoal because of my read on Dennis, which is amply confirmed by his post above, and a concern that one never knows, this might be my only chance to buy charcoal of this quality. This batch is quite usable. It exactly fits my needs for controlling flavor, the 22 hour pork butt I made last week was the best I've made so far. It is a deal one won't see again. And we all want to keep Dennis in the charcoal business!

Re: Taste Test #1: Cazuela Salmon on a bed of Basil

Here's another rub, more austere but plays well with other foods: 12-24 assorted dried Mexican chiles 2-3 TB smoked Spanish paprika sea salt, 1% of weight of pork butt 2/3rds as much black pepper Pan-roast and seed chiles, grind with remaining ingredients, slather bone-in pork butt with rub and olive oil till it all sticks, leave 24 hours in fridge (e.g. in a Cambro food storage container) before cook. Cook indirect 21-22 hours at 210-225 F using apple and hickory smoke, e.g. in 9pm, out 7pm the next evening. By morning the internal temperature will be nearly in the 170-180 F range, raising all sorts of fears that the meat will be burnt shoe leather by dinner time. It won't! Your goal is to slow the fire to 200 F, to keep the pork butt in this 170-180 F range as long as possible, melting the fat and collagens and tenderizing the butt. One is more or less "boiling off" the collagens and fat; there are amazing temperature plots on the web showing that the internal temperature will appear stuck, even falling, as the butt dwells in this range. Understanding this is the key to pork butt. Not rocket science, and it works pretty well even by accident, making this a quite forgiving cook. The butt should break out of this range, drifting up toward 190 F as serving time approaches; don't go higher, 185 F is fine. One can coax this along by bringing the fire back up to 225 F. The "authentic" norm for pork butt, achieved at an internal temperature near 200 F, is a way too stringy standard; the butt can be served anytime after it busts out of the 170-180 F range, if it stayed in this range for as long as possible. Now foil and towel in a cooler used as a "warmer", till serving time. Attempts to carve will be futile; it should just fall apart from slight pressure with a spoon. Great with tortillas made from fresh masa, if you live somewhere with decent Mexican markets. Last night, we also served guacamole, garden tomatoes, and pot beans. "Dry" is a function of maximum internal temperature, more than cooking time. A monunental single piece, bone-in, will dry less than boneless pieces. One also wants to be sure to have melted most of the fat; a long cooking time in the 170-180 F range serves this goal.

One rig used a second cooker to generate the smoke. Others built very careful fires, and placed large trays on ice between the fire and the cheese. The temperatures for cheese were indeed 100 F, one doesn't want to melt the cheese. For fish, one has more leeway.

Short answer, yes people do this. The BBQ Guru's most basic model, the PitMinder, will go down to 90 F; it has this sort of application in mind. I wouldn't try sticking such low temperatures by hand. Even then, you'll have trouble generating smoke; it takes heat. I'd make some experimental runs with small pieces of cheese you don't care about, before a production batch. These temperatures are potential havens for food poisoning, another issue one needs to straighten out. Smoke and salt alone aren't a sure guarantee one is safe. I'm sure the northwestern native americans who smoked salmon over alder weren't using preservatives (other than salt) or Gurus, but they had generations of very specific experience, some of which involved getting sick. So why focus on 80 to 100 F? This is the sweet spot for some piece of equipment you don't have; you have a ceramic cooker. Figure out what it does best. Perhaps e.g. at 140 F you manage to easily create a quality of smoke you like, with results you find delicious, but a ceramic cooker strains to imitate a different kind of equipment at 100 F.

This was part of Sunday dinner with the neighbors: I bought a 4.2 lb bone-in pork loin, and divided it roughly in half, into very meaty country ribs, and a boneless loin. I made a brine following Paul Bertolli's instructions in "Cooking by Hand", heating carrots, onions, celery, parsley, herbs, spices, salt and sugar in 4 kg of water, then chilling before adding the pork to brine for three days. It is crucial to nail the quantity of salt, and this requires accounting for the water in the pork. Estimating the pork as 70% water (this is too high, because of the bones, but also too low, because of the veggies. Perhaps this cancels!), I got a total of 5335g water, to which I added 2.5% sea salt, or 133 g, and 90 g sugar. This makes for a very light ham, which is how we like it. I cooked the country ribs for 6+ hours at 210 F to 225 F, and cooked the loin for 2+ hours to an internal temperature just over 140 F. I cut the ribs into individual ribs, and thinly sliced the loin. This makes for a very practical and delicious way to serve this meat. It was a hit; this amount of salt was just right for us. Again, the KK extruded coconut charcoal was a pleasure to cook with, imparting a very close to neutral taste, so my smoke pot filled with apple chips could rule the day. This is why I buy this grade of charcoal; I consumed about four pounds net for this burn (starting with 8 lbs, recovering 4 lbs), and that expense was the least of my worries. I was instead trying to nail the meal; I can't afford the French Laundry, and I'd rather eat at home. (The neighbor's dogs were inside to keep them from getting too jealous, and they literally broke a screen to get out, spending the rest of the evening frolicking around us with our dog.)

From Paul Bertolli's "Cooking by Hand", p. 174: I've been using 70%. One should really also guess and subtract the weight of the bones, if any. In practice, I have a spreadsheet with past values that makes the salt calculation for me, and a text file in the same directory with notes, e.g. "less salt next time?". So if the spreadsheet for a given cut (bone-in pork loin) assumes 70% and ignores the weight of the bones, this is self-correcting over time, as we discover that we like 2.5% salt using this formula. In other words, any formula that's roughly right and responds in the right direction to changes is a good thing, if one takes notes. Estimating the water weight of meat as either 50% or 100% is still way ahead of ignoring the water in the meat, which dilutes the salinity of the brine. What I used to do was make up a light brine and throw in the meat, ignoring the proportions of meat and water. One can never get consistent results this way, and getting the salt exactly right is part of nailing the cook. Getting back to this thread, as long as the weight of the water is many times the weight of the salmon, this calculation doesn't really matter. With a ham, the weights could easily be half and half, and this calculation matters a lot.

I'm a big fan of brining salmon in a simple "light brine" consisting of 1/2 cup sea salt, 1/4 cup sugar per gallon water, for four hours or so. This can be "phoned in" with minimal effort on a busy day. For longer brines with more monumental pieces of meat, one does best to actually calculate the water weight of the meat, combined with the weight of the brine water, and weigh the salt to aim for an equilibrium percentage. Paul Bertolli likes 3% as a minimum for house-cured ham; we were very happy with 2.5% recently. For a quick salmon soak, with the weight of the water dominating the weight of the meat, one can ignore all this, and instead dial in one's definition of a light brine. This assumes that there's lots more water than fish, but Cambros work great for this, and sea salt and sugar is cheap.

Re: Dry Aged vs Wet Aged

We make a dough by starting with a sponge: 1/4 cup water 70-90F 1/4 cup rye flour 2 tsp SAF instant yeast then later add 300g winter red & soft wheat berries (1:1), freshly ground, bran sieved out 1 TB milk 2 TB olive oil (dough varies as one varies this) 1/2 tsp salt 5/8 cup water 70-90F adding white flour as kneaded, roll onto parchment paper for 2nd rise Meanwhile, we save our tomato crop by skinning, lightly salting, partially dehydrating till "gooshy", vacuum-packing and freezing; this gets us through the year. The cooks I admire such as Tom Colicchio all have precious versions of such a tomato conserve (my wife calls Thomas Keller my "zombie master") but this is far easier, and works 20 lbs at a time. We make a sauce from 1/2 cup "gooshy" tomatoes, minced 3 TB olive oil 1 TB rinsed salt-preserved capers (Aeolian or Pantelleria) minced olives, anchovies marjoram and smear this on the uncooked pizza dough before modestly dressing with cheese and an ingredient such as zucchini from the garden. The cheese is usually either stracchino, crescenza, teleme, or some local California variant, and grated pecorino romano. We'd consider partly baking the crust first, but with a light topping I can't imagine it mattering, and the complexity would interfere with our wine drinking. I like to bring out both pies, ready to bake, and relax. The pizza of my dreams is from Sicilian islands, but the above is how our ingredients and equipment work best together.

This is spot-on what we've found works best. Further notes: We get away with a wetter dough by rolling each pizza onto parchment paper (then cut to fit) for the last rise. Then remove the parchment paper a few minutes into the cook, and swap the pizza onto a not-preheated pizza screen to finish. The crust breathes, and doesn't burn. I've spent years trying to be a purist, before stumbling by experiment onto the above combination. It seems the ideal adaptation to this kind of oven.

Re: White sticker placement.. They weren't consistent on this. Some are on other sides, and they're never in the same position. There's an effect with the unremarkable name of "seeing" in astronomy, where one needs to look for thirty seconds to error-correct atmospheric effects, to see stars in the most detail. The brain likes this kind of work, it's very involving. The white labels being all over the place, one manages to take in your beautiful label in many stages, in a similar process.

Our first taste test of the new Komodo Kamado extruded charcoal was wild king salmon, brined for a few hours in a light brine of 1/2 cup sea salt, 1/4 cup sugar per gallon water, then set on a bed of supermarket basil in a Spanish cazuela. (We grow half wine barrels of Genovese basil for pesto; using supermarket basil would make the pesto taste like lawn clippings, but it is perfect for this application.) I filled a two quart cast iron dutch oven with apple chips, then sealed it with flour paste; there are three 1/8" holes drilled into the bottom. I set this on a modest quantity of Komodo Kamado extruded coconut lump (KKoko), most of which was left after the cook. I am quite familiar with the "classic" 2003 Kamado extruded lump; I still have ten boxes left. The KKoko looks pretty much exactly the same, perhaps not quite so regular, but I don't need anyone pressing diamonds on my behalf, I'm just concerned how food tastes. I also have a sample of "recent" Kamado extruded, which looks quite different, but I haven't had a chance to test it. (My source was about to throw it out, so I don't have high hopes...) The KKoko was a serious challenge to light! I don't view this as a shortcoming, rather, we're in "be careful what you wish for" territory with any charcoal this pure, compressed, and free from binders. I trust I will rise to the occasion. My bro' Jiarby uses a Rambo-style flame thrower to light his extruded, I doubt that this stuff will make him blink. It's called a "weed killer" or something, and is illegal in California (we've been seriously smogged in by fires this summer, no joke), but I can see its virtues. An electric starter might also work great; I'll try that next. The salmon "spalls" while cooking. The appearance-oriented have devised methods for pat-drying and air-drying the brined salmon to minimize this; we just close our eyes, loving how the salmon tastes. Our concern, using this "canary in the mineshaft" test? Are there any off flavors in the KKoko? I have a friend who wins competitive wine tastings, who could tell my Kamado extruded came from coconut, but not objectionably so. On the other hand, many of us feel that Mesquite lump tastes like an oil refinery fire. We're looking for an approximation to neutrality, so the smoke we add is the smoke we taste. Yes! We tasted the apple smoke we added, nothing more. PASS. Damn, wild king salmon is good. Wish it wasn't priced like a half tank of gas! Next test will be a long low & slow, perhap butt, to see if the difficulty lighting turns into fires going out unexpectedly. We seriously doubt it, and I'm thrilled to have nabbed 20 boxes of this stuff.

KKoko landing! Unloading at other end: In front of my K lump, under my garage "work bench": Feed me! I'm hungry! (Even the competition has a taste for KKoko!)

Thanks, that was fun to watch. I've been trying to get my nerve up to make Thai "sour sausage", which I've been taught in Thai cooking classes (Kasma Loha-unchit), and loved eating in Thailand. Unlike salumi, they're a "rather fast" ferment, unnerving to our intuitions.

I was able to get raw shanks from my favorite butcher by ordering them. Rather than going the above route, I made a dry-cure ham out of them, and smoked them, "replicating" the smoked ham shanks one can buy, but under my control. Great for bean dishes, gumbo, ... Definitely worth the trouble, as is any house-cured ham. Making ham is much easier than curing salumi...

I have a K. Looser tolerances than a KK when new, and looser still now. I also generally use a BBQGuru for low cooks. I close the damper to the point where the majority of the smoke leaves the sides rather than the top. I then use the "blue" (good stuff) masking tape to seal the more egregious side leaks. I've been meaning to fix this by forming a new gasket, but I've been busy. That said, I don't see an either/or in this discussion, there's a continuum. Doing one's best to seal the top and sides so the only air source is the damper, makes for one extreme. Shading more in this direction is also interesting, beginners may "pull" too much with the top damper too far open. Of late I use a variation on this for pizza. I set up a fire that naturally peaks at 700 F, then stop down the top damper part way to control it to 500 F, while the stone heats. I used to reason that my favorite pizza places in southern Italy cooked at near smelting temperatures, ergo I should cook at at least 600 F at home. Not so, the stretch from 500 F to 600 F is very sensitive for ceramic-cooked pizza. The sweet spot is where it is, different for each recipe and oven. One discovers, rather than reasons.

Go Glenn! I'm part of the SF share, or it would have been road trip time.

Bait-and-switch I went through many seriously ill-conceived experiments proving the inadequacy of existing equipment, followed by laying out plans for a monstrous Italian pizza oven in the middle of our yard. My sincerity was not in doubt because even I was fooled. Then we visited some ceramic cookers and tasted the results. The price of a ceramic cooker would have been dwarfed by the negative effect on neighborhood property values if I had attempted to build an Italian pizza oven in our yard. Believe me, she was relieved to order something so attractive and small.

This information is also helpful for those of us meeting pallets by car. For example, I'm picking up 20 boxes, 22 lbs each, in SF with my VW GTI (think half-assed station wagen with torque). The 440 lbs is less than three passengers, no problem. 20 * (15 * 9 * 9) / (12 * 12 * 12) = 14 cubic feet ...so I'll also be fine on volume, the stuff will easily fit in one trip.

Sour Oranges Anyone with access to east coast Hispanic markets should be on the lookout for "sour oranges" (big orange fruit, ugly skin like Kaffir limes). A key ingredient throughout the Caribbean, it is far more sour than typical oranges, and replaces the "orange, lemon, lime" in original recipe. I know it as a classic marinade ingredient; I'd guess that it's the authentic ingredient for this pork, but I'm not Cuban. In the late '80s, "Key Lime Pie" was at peak hype in NYC restaurants, but various factors made authentic Key Limes virtually unavailable, so everyone cheated and used ordinary limes. Meanwhile, the Francophile food culture overlooked the sour oranges readily available in Hispanic markets throughout the city, which makes a fantastic orange pie by the same recipe.