Syzygies

This advice is optimized for tandoori cooking, which is a reason by itself to buy a KK.

The Skewer Hack vertical rack recommended by tony b arrived, and it is a true 0.25" so the Trompo King Four Spike System fits like they were designed to go together.

To be clear, I am most excited about this rig for cooking tandoori in the KK. I can see a whole chicken working on the center spike other ways such as Jamaican jerk. We're likely to try Al Pastor a few times, though we love Carnitas. At the moment, cooking tandoori is something I want to do every chance I can. As various of us have discovered, Ranjit Rai's Tandoor- The Great Indian Barbecue is the definitive tandoor cookbook, written for an Indian audience rather than dumbing down for a western electric oven. It is expensive but worth it, particularly if one has an obsession with whole spices. I will soon start a thread dedicated to this book.

The paella pan shown is 38cm, which is 15" rim to rim. The Trompo King drip pan is only 13" wide. Without other heat shielding such as the KK double bottom drip pan, that's not wide enough to protect the outsides of a cook from burning. I believe that the Trompo King Four Spike System was designed after the fact.

Carbon steel paella pans are less expensive than enamel or stainless steel. If money doesn't matter, buy stainless. If one sees grace in saving money, buy carbon steel and accept that in this application the drip pan is going to develop character. One can find many 38cm paella pans on Amazon. I give an alternate source.

Trompo King - Four Spike System - Smokeware

Amazon.com - Skewer Hack Removable Vertical Rack for Home Cooking Tacos Al Pastor, Shawarma, Kebab, Brazilian Churrasco, Doner, Gyros - All Stainless Steel Durable - Easy to Use for the Oven, Barbecue Grill or BBQ - Garden & Outdoor

15" Carbon Steel Paella Pan (38 cm) | La Paella

Tandoor- The Great Indian Barbecue- Rai, Ranjit

4 hours ago, tekobo said:

Why does one need a grate at all in the TrompoKing pan?

Did I say one needs a grate? One doesn't need a grate!

(I've come to my senses.)

16 minutes ago, tony b said:

I don't have a precise measuring tool, but simple eye ball and tape measure said it's pretty damn close to 1/4" (~6 mm) - best guess 0.25" +0"/-0.0156". As we used to say at back in the day "close enough for Government work."

I ordered one to "take one for the team." I'll probably prefer it to the Trompo King drip pan; I have an unused 38cm (15") paella pan that will be perfect. Better coverage, more uniform tandoori cooks.

H&W Brazilian Gojo Barbecue Barbecue String
29cm/11.4in long, 0.7cm/0.28in diameter stainless steel tandem rod

Skewer Hack Removable Vertical Rack (tony b)
rod 10in length and 0.25in diameter

SEAR'D Vertical Spit Skewer BBQ Stand
8" and 12" Skewers - 3/8" Diameter

Trompo King - Four Spike System
1/4" hole (measured, matched spike measurement)

Were I starting over (and I always start over), I'd just buy the Trompo King Four Spike System, and the Skewer Hack Removable Vertical Rack, and find my own way for how to handle the heat shield / drip pan.

Issues to consider are cleanup, and heat deflection. One could lay heavy duty foil on the KK double drip pan, or line a terracotta plant saucer, or source a pan slightly larger than the Trompo King pan. Paella pans for example come in many sizes, and once one has made a thorough mess of a cheap carbon steel paella pan dedicated to this purpose, one will learn to relax about cleanup.

This is all predicated on the Skewer Hack actually measuring 1/4". Using a dial caliper, I measured true 1/4" for both the Trompo King spike and hole, close enough to make me wonder how it slides so smoothly. Any deviation will affect the fit. The alternative vertical skewers are the wrong size.

I've described my first Trompo King tandoori chicken cook here.

I love indirect on vertical spikes, however one manages that configuration. I had been using my Solo Stove for quick grilling a lot of the time, because it works so well with so little effort, but now I can see the KK staying hot all summer as I work through every tandoori recipe I can find.

Planning my next tandoori cook (I'll slip an extra shrimp on the barby for you), I noticed Ranjit Rai's recommendation to use a piece of potato as a skewer spacer. That's a better way to lift tandoori cooks up the skewer a bit. One less grate to clean, and this would work with any of the skewer alternatives in this thread.

I bought a Trompo King and Trompo King - Four Spike System after a tip from the Trompo King on sale for Cinco de Mayo thread. I'm returning their grate. As noted in the thread, there are various alternatives, particularly if one owns the KK double bottom drip pan.

As promised, my first cook was tandoori chicken from Ranjit Rai (recipe above in this thread). We were thrilled how it came out, and plan to make many similar experiments using the Trompo King.

Tandoor: The Great Indian Barbecue by Ranjit Rai

I like having five spikes, and a small drip pan I can carry already loaded from the kitchen to the KK. The Trompo King drip pan is however a bit small for this purpose. As Ranjit Rai notes, 482 F is a typical tandoori chicken cooking temperature. Using the KK double bottom drip pan on my lower grates, and the Trompo King on my main grates, I was able to easily reach and hold 480 F to 500 F for hours, for a completely indirect 30 minute cook. This is much longer than Indian timings, though my chicken pieces are larger, and there's essentially no radiant heat in this setup. One might want one's tandoori chicken to come out a bit more beat up from the fire? Approaches I've taken in the past risk too much fire crisping the outside of the chicken, before it cooks through. Using the Trompo King was the least stressful tandoori cook I've ever experienced. There was plenty of taste of the fire, and one could dial up the abuse factor by cooking at a higher temperature. As always, temperature readings in any fire-based cooker are relative to the design and configuration.

The KK is far more nimble than a traditional tandoor at changing temperature. One might ideally want to cook at a somewhat lower temperature until the chicken cooks through to the bone, then let the temperature climb at the end for exterior abuse. I'm thinking start at 450 F, end at 550 F.

Big picture, one wants to somehow cook tandoori dishes free-standing vertical, and indirect.

If one has the equipment, the recipe is most easily prepared by grinding the dry spices in a Vita-Prep dry ingredient bowl, then grating the ginger and garlic on a medium Microplane, then blending everything together with the oil, salt, and yogurt in the same Vita-Prep bowl. Now vacuum pack the marinade together with the chicken. One could easily get by with less marinate this way, but like any brine process that could affect the equilibrium. Just don't stress over exact marinade to meat proportions. The marinade ingredients are not expensive.

Cleanup is a different issue at 500 F, not the target temperature for the Trompo King design. One should oil the drip pan, or line it with foil, or resign oneself to long soaks as part of cleanup.

My Trompo King arrived, and I'm looking forward to a first cook, three Tandoori chicken legs.

I'm happy to have ordered their Four Spike System, and nice that it comes apart in pairs. I'll usually use it as shown.

Also nice that it comes with two center spikes. The longer spike is too tall for the main grill on my 23" KK, but would work on the lower grate. The spikes are shipped taped to the tray, and the adhesive comes off easily with isopropyl alcohol.

I'm considering returning their TK Grate, shown in my first picture. Most aftermarket grates are likely to work better, such as the closer mesh, wider grate shown in my second picture. Their grate was clearly sourced as one could also do separately. Had they designed the grate specifically for the Trompo King, it's highly unlikely that they would have been dumb enough to specify an odd number of grates, making it impossible to center. For general use their grate is not wide enough, or closely spaced enough, to do its job.

[The moderators have configured our forum to mark any post as edited after revision, with no five minute grease period for catching spelling errers. I've come to accept their looking out for us, we shouldn't spend all our time an the forum, so I'm not fixing this post wonce I submit it, not matter how much work it might stand to benefit from revizing.]

Wow, both authors wear their glasses better than I'd be able to pull off. 😎

I'm normally profoundly suspicious of the current trend that one needs a successful blog or other social media presence to get a cookbook published. These are generally not the people I want to learn from. However, Gourdet got his start working with Jean-Georges Vongerichten, whose NYC Asian fusion restaurants are spectacular.

The Joule sous vide website features some recipes of Gourdet's, for those who like to get a read on an author before buying a book:

Three Asian Grilling Classics Reimagined, With Gregory Gourdet

The Char Siu pork tenderloin, sous vide, looks like he's ahead of me on something I've been trying to figure out. I'll try it. I'll probably finish over the Solo Stove.

6 hours ago, tony b said:

 

I primarily just use aluminum foil on the lower grate.

For many, many years I'd buy a 16" unglazed terra cotta planter saucer from Home Depot, and double-line it with heavy duty aluminum foil. "For many years" as in, many of those years it would crack and I'd buy another. Still a cheap but effective solution...

Yes, I've had my eye on that. Thanks for the heads up! I jumped. One can stack the welcome discount code "WELCOME2SW" on top of the sale.

I like the idea of this rig as a general smaller drip pan, blocking less airflow than the KK double drip pan. While we love tacos, and we'll put this to the signature use (pineapples and all) my first experiments will also revolve around Indian tandoor. The vertical orientation is even "correct", and this will allow hotter temperatures without directly burning the meat.

2 hours ago, Troble said:

The one element that I am missing in my personal repetoiire is that I don't yet make my own kick ass BBQ sauce. It's one of my goals for 2021 to learn how to create my own "signature" BBQ sauce.

Yes. Like @Troble said. I gave my electric guitar to a student because I couldn't reproduce the sounds in my head. I can't reproduce the BBQ sauce I can taste in my head, either.

On one hand I get lost in the middle, prepared foods, aisles of the supermarket, and I don't aspire to a gift for grabbing bottles and mixing them. I've long harbored the prejudice that sauce hides inferior meat, and the most spectacular meat is best appreciated with salt, pepper, and smoke. I'm still there for ribs; for butt and brisket I stop at the local Mexican grocer to buy an assortment of dried chiles, and make up a rub.

I do like Chinese and Japanese barbecue sauces, and we've been experimenting with Char Siu Bao and Ramen, where barbecue meats could find a shining role. This will be a summer exploration.

Until we were canceled by the pandemic, I've cooked a barbecue lunch each summer for Laurie's Greek church. Four pork butts or so, cole slaw, several pounds of Rancho Gordo beans as a pot beans side. We serve barbecue sandwiches that need to appeal to a diverse crowd (when the Eritreans contribute to a pot luck I always finish the red sauce left on their platter with whatever injera bread is left), so a mainstream sauce is mandatory. My favorites (in this category) are from Smoke & Spice. The attached PDF is my wall sheet for big batches of their Bour-BQ-Sauce for the church lunches. It's scaled to bourbon bottle sizes.

At many commercial BBQ places, including in KC, the sauce (with much more bite than the above recipe) was my favorite thing.

Bour-BQ-Sauce.pdf

On 4/27/2021 at 6:40 PM, Syzygies said:

Barbecue means different things to different people. If you're looking for a lone guy who'll show us a trick or two, he'll be roadside sixty miles out of town. The most famous KC bbq [Joe's] (when I was there long ago) is a local chain that keeps McDonalds at bay. Different purposes, but good grub.

So, honestly, how good is commercial KC barbecue?

The best barbecue I've tasted in my life, including any made by myself or friends, or tasted at a competition, was a brisket in Elgin, Texas. I flew some back to New York, and friends who could afford to do so started ordering it shipped. (It was of course best fresh, on the spot.) The Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook is one of the most inspirational cookbooks on my barbecue bookshelf, more for thought patterns than recipes, and suggests this quality is widespread in Texas. Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto has the best actionable advice of my books; I've never been there but I suspect the line is worth the wait. In my experience, a random town such as College Station doesn't come close to these standards, and yet Texas achieves standards that leaves the rest of the country behind.

I nearly became a professor at Duke, and during several visits I intensively explored the barbecue scene. I drove several hours to what was supposed to be the best barbecue in the state. Blocks away, I asked a wizened old guy sitting on the corner for directions. "Why would you want to go so far, when [pointing on the same block] is better?" I should have taken his advice. Commercially available North Carolina pulled pork was uniformly so bad that it taught me to abandon the apparent ropey standard in favor of a slightly less cooked but juicier version that can't hold for as many hours.

I'm not trying to dis commercial KC barbecue, I just fear that people most familiar with good home-cooked barbecue will be disappointed. The quality of barbecue that KC places can deliver at affordable scale is impressive. Working class locals appreciate this tradition, and these places can keep other kinds of popular restaurants at bay. Nevertheless, with the wrong expectations one will be disappointed.

When I visited India for a month, I went with the wrong expectations. At a Hyderabad conference, I was essentially a well-cared-for hostage, with few opportunities to try restaurants. (Mumbai is another story.) While no culinary moment blew me away, I came over a month's time to appreciate the rhythm of Indian food, something no cookbook can convey. KC barbecue is a part of life in KC, even if no culinary moment will blow you away. Go in with those expectations, hoping to come to understand the rhythm.

I would be thrilled to stand corrected, here.

I have met far more naturally talented cooks than I have become. I've worked hard for modest reward. At a far more talented scale, Bruce Springsteen should be a far better musician given the work he has put in. Also from my experience in research mathematics, I've come to understand and accept that life is like this.

In cooking, it is most effective to find ways to replace talent with reproducible technique. Sous vide is widely despised because it does this so effectively. I am known on this forum for the smoke pot, and the bread steam generator, two devices that reduce talent to technique. Many friends have told me that my barbecue is the best they've tasted in their lives. I'm certain that my barbecue is typical of much of our collective barbecue on this forum, and in a different league than most commercially available barbecue. This is because Dennis has made the ultimate contribution to reducing talent to technique: A Komodo Kamado really works.

Barbecue means different things to different people. If you're looking for a lone guy who'll show us a trick or two, he'll be roadside sixty miles out of town. The most famous KC bbq (when I was there long ago) is a local chain that keeps McDonalds at bay. Different purposes, but good grub.

Edit: Joe's, in Troble's post below, is where I believe I ate.

On 4/25/2021 at 5:03 PM, Poochie said:

"Take what you want Boudreaux."

I still can't believe they didn't go for a roll.

I have a good friend who grew up in Alberta, perhaps a bit north of you.

He said the hardest thing about the bears was that they wouldn't leave through the wall they used for entering.

Penguin: "Naw, it's just ice cream."

On 4/22/2021 at 12:53 PM, BOC said:

Agree with Tony B on this one. I find myself buying more expensive charcoal now just because I have a KK and want to cook the best I possibly can with it. It’s a lot easier to justify a couple dollars here or there to aim for excellence when you have already purchased the luxury cooker.

Exactly. And charcoal is like wine, you can taste the difference, into price stratospheres you'd rather not know about.

(I'm the one who devised the smoke pot and let my wife taste the difference. At least that mod isn't costing me money!)

On 4/1/2021 at 12:51 PM, Jadeite said:

I am super interested in grabbing the Rotisserie as well..

I gave away my rotisserie, it was too much work to clean. I like tending a spatchcocked chicken on the regular grill grates just as much.

Then I bought an electric pressure washer for prepping our ipe deck before oiling. That's the lazy way to clean any BBQ grill, it would make short work of a rotisserie.

I've been watching Adam Liaw's Ramen School videos. He mentions that ramen shops often warm chashu over a charcoal fire, but who does that for two bowls? I took this as a personal challenge, remembering how quickly I can set up my Solo Stove.

Curious how the third party solution compares with the adaptor sold by Thermoworks?

Billows Mounting Kits

I can see an opportunity here: Sell an adaptor that includes a BBQ Guru style airflow restrictor:

As far as I can tell, there is no way to restrict the flow on the Billows itself. Review sites don't discuss this.

Because the Billows is higher CFM than any BBQ Guru fan, this is less of an issue: One can further restrict the airflow at the damper, and the Billows will manage to push air through when it wants, with less convection when it doesn't want.

Nevertheless, many of us actually use our BBQ Guru fan airflow restrictors, to control passive convection. Only someone who routinely depended on this using BBQ Guru products, and has never missed it after switching to a Billows, can convince me the Billows doesn't need one. "Huh? I had no idea my machine had this switch on it, and I never missed it" is a self-evident statement that's not exactly a testimonial.

Porter Road (forum thread)

Porter Road (online butcher)

On 4/19/2021 at 5:07 PM, Basher said:

A good Tyre guy will be able to plug that, even though it’s close to the wall and tread.

The last time I didn't specify / seek a tire specialist, the gas station mechanic plugged a Z-rated tire on my old sports car (a 2000 VW GTI VR6, obscure but it gets offers every time it's in the shop). That wrecks the speed rating, not that I was particularly exploring it. Nevertheless, no one should plug a tire, it's not worth the risk unless you're plugging the tire yourself to get home from further away than you trust the spare, and planning to discard the tire as soon as you can. I agree with replacing the tire here.

17 hours ago, BARDSLJR said:

Sorry about those cemetery photos from Glasgow... I don’t know how they snuck in there....

Yup, I was wondering if not everyone survived the meal!

3 hours ago, tony b said:

You just didn't know it. It's naturally occurring in a lot of foods, like mushrooms, aged parmesan cheese and soy sauce - can you say "umami?" 

Yup. For example, Japanese Kombu seaweed.

I love a good Pinot Noir wine, and I understand there's alcohol in there. Still, I avoided parties in college where they poured grain alcohol into punch.

MSG is cheating. Just because everything is sex doesn't mean you can't include a bit of romance.

Again Focaccia di Recco. The secret is to nail the dough consistency so it rolls paper thin without sticking to the board. And to find the right cheese, a local problem.