tekobo

We spent a week away with @RokDok, Mrs RokDok and a bunch of other friends to celebrate my husband's sixtieth birthday. Here is the great steak spread that @RokDok conjured up on his trusty Weber kettle (not being able to transport his 32 KK to a cliff top in Cornwall). We also upped our paella game, with the addition of a great big gas burner. Yum!

From what Dennis said, he has to send a whole container full so that is a LOT of cocochar. Depends on if @DennisLinkletter can actually ship the stuff to the UK and if Ilya @Komodo_Kamado_UK wants to stock it. I would be interested in buying some even though I have to admit to having a huge stock pile of the stuff that I normally use, having bought a couple of pallets a couple of years ago.

It was delicious and I have since had thicker hand sliced portions. The difference between super thin slices on a machine and thicker slices cut by hand is like night and day. The former is much more like charcuterie, light in the mouth and a bit more of a snack while you get much more of a chew and, I think, more of the meat flavour with the thicker slices. I like both. To respond to @Tyrus point: Yes, sous vide doesn't give you much sensory fun. And you are limited by the size of the water bath. I am pleased to have been able to keep the KK at such a low temp and might try to simulate other sous vide cooks in the future.

Well, the experiment turned out great. The cook was for a party yesterday hence the delay with getting back to posting. A good time was had by all. Now, down to business. First let us talk about temperatures. My MEATER kept dropping off so I don't have a temperature trace to share with you but I took these three photos within a minute of each other. The two thermometers on the side of the joint in the KK were measuring 73C while the one in the top was measuring 81C. The KK dome thermometer was measuring about 73C too while the grill grate thermometer was showing close to 100C. In some ways, the actual temp of the KK was not critical, what was more critical was getting the meat out when it was close to hitting the 55C target internal temperature. The KK was great, keeping a steady temp for the whole of the approx 3 hour cook. I found this really thin needle temperature probe that my Husband bought years ago for poking into sousvide bags to check the temp of the contents. Here is the reading on the sous vide joint after about 5 hours in the water bath. A check on the KK joint showed a range of temps from 57C at the thinnest end to 52C in the centre. The good news is that the internal temp was consistent across the joint, staying the same as I pulled the needle from the centre to the edge. I rested the joints over night in the fridge and only cut them just before we had to serve them to the guests. Nail biting! Here are the two joints. The right hand one was cooked in the KK. It did have a faint smell of smoke so we did get some smoke into it from the smoke pot, even at that low temperature. And here are the results. KK joint on the right. Sliced up the sous vide joint was consistently pinker (lower pile in the pic below) but I suspect I could have got closer to that result in the KK by going for a slightly lower target temp. Learning? Sous vide is easier. Set and forget the water bath temp and get your meat out when you are ready. KK is more fun and does almost as good a job without having to buy extra equipment. Also have opportunity to introduce smoke when using the KK and I could have used the cold smoke generator to get a more pronounced smoke flavour. All in all I was very happy with the results from both methods and our guests loved this, new to us Brits, Italian method of cutting roast beef.

The Italians make a mean roast beef. They call it Rosbif and it is cooked rare or medium rare, cooled and sliced thinly on a meat slicer. I ran into problems on my last visit to Italy when I asked a friend for his recommendation for the best rosbif in town. He took me to a horse butcher and could not understand why I thought it was funny that the "bif" in rosbif didn't mean beef but just any meat that Italians think is tasty when roasted rare! We are back home in the UK and I want to roast a couple of veal joints for a party tomorrow. Heston Blumenthal has a recipe for slow roasting beef in a 60C degree oven for about 6 hours until it hits 55C internal temperature. I have made it a few times and it gives you an edge to edge consistent pink meat. Today I had two joints and I decided that it would be easier and more energy efficient to achieve the same effect in my sousvide water bath. Here are the two joints. I seared them on a very very hot griddle and managed to avoid greying too much of the meat. Here is the first one seasoned and ready to be vacuum packed and go into the water bath. I decided to try cooking the second joint in the KK, knowing that it would be tough to keep the temp as low as 60C consistently. I used fresh cocoshell briquettes to reduce the chance of any hotspots and I put my cast iron smoker pot over the coals to shield the meat. I thought I would get a little smoke but it turns out there is just not enough heat to get the woodchips going. Here is the KK joint all wired up to the MEATER block. The problem I now have is with connectivity. The good news is that the MEATER seems to be staying connected to the thermometers and so my job is narrowed down to trying to bump up the wifi signal to that corner of the garden. When I last connected up the KK was at 80C so I dialled the top hat down just a little to avoid snuffing out the fire. I will report back tomorrow when I have both joints sliced for the taste test.

Smashed potatoes. Covered some with a sticky mix of balsamic vinegar, crushed pine nuts, olive oil and dried oregano. Tasty.

Thanks @C6Bill Great article and I learned something new. I didn't know about the link with the Komodo mountain. And what great publicity for the new Goldilocks!

I can't read this article in the UK. The site says: Sorry, this feature isn't currently supported in your country You're visiting this site from a location where this feature is not currently available. USA TODAY is always working to expand access to our features. We appreciate your patience. If you are a subscriber or have signed up for one of our newsletters and need assistance, please send us an email or give us a call at +1-800-872-0001. For those of you who can access it, Is there an option to download it from the site and display it here on the forum?

Great job with that pig @jeffshoaf! You are much braver than I would ever be - live fire rotisserie takes some skill. Bravo.

Looks gorgeous. Congratulations! I can't complain about your not going for the bronze tiles. My first KKs were blue pebble and yours looks mighty fine.

Hi there @Saucier. While you are waiting for a current user of the an older 23 to pipe up here are some links to previous posts that might help:

Looking great as usual @Pequod!

Oh @SilverSuzieQue, I like the way you talk. How did the cook go?

This was 5 hours into my 12 hour cook on the KK and is one definition of heat soaking as we are in the middle of a heatwave here in Italy. Ten hours in, the internal temperature started to drift towards 150C so I dialled back the top hat. Temperature settled back down and the pork capocollo was delicious.

I am still amazed by how little fuel a KK uses to do its job. This is my 16KK fire basket after 12 hours of cooking low and slow. A 3kg lump of pig. The capocollo - pig neck and shoulder. Closest US cut is a pork butt.

@David Chang I took your question seriously and devised a test for our Italian friends. I showed them a picture of your proposed cake/bread. They immediately said "columba" followed by "Easter/Pasqua". Test No 1 passed. I then asked if it could be eaten at any time of year. They said "why not, but how?" I explained that you were in Hong Kong and had the means to make it. As a further test I asked if they would eat columba now if I put it in front of them. They said "yes, but it is impossible. It is not Easter." So there you have it. A sample size of two not very catholic Italians wouldn't be offended if you proceed as planned but they remain bound by the rules of seasonal availability that prevail here in Italy.

An Italian would probably whole heartedly agree that there is no point in a panettone lesson before November. Given the lecture on seasonality that I got when I went in search of my favourite panettone in January, I reckon there must be a law that says you cannot eat panettone in a month that does not begin with Dec. Whereas I agree wholeheartedly with your approach. Free the panettone!

Sadly I agree @jonj. My MEATER Block just never worked as well and consistently as you would like. Maybe the latest versions are more reliable but I have learned to work without one. @jdbower I realise that my question was just trying to lead you into the age old debate about whether or not blowers are really worth the hassle and the wires. Your responses highlight the reasons people use them. Where external conditions can vary significantly during a cook and/or when you want to have the assurance that your cook is going as planned, then these systems are a help. I don't have huge variation in either of my locations (sheltered back garden in the UK and sheltered terrace in Italy) and I am happy taking the risk of variations in my temps (usually due to me fiddling with the top hat when I needn't). I have a 14 hour cook just starting, something I have never done in my 16KK, so I may well be singing a different tune by the end of today!

The thought of any KK owner being described as "moderate" made me laugh. A lot.

Hi there Jeff. I always claim that my KK holds temps just fine without any blowers or additional controls but I don't have any proof because I don't generally use a pit probe nor even a MEATER thermometer. If you are up for the experiment I would be curious to see the temperature trace from your pit probe with a chosen set position of your top hat and no blower.

Good panettone is one of my favourite things. Never occurred to me to try to make it. Yours looks great @David Chang

Beautiful baguettes @David Chang. My favourite. What do you do with them with you have them in quantities such as this? Freeze? Gift? Gorge? I vote for gorging.

I am taking it slow, reading the instructions for a change. They recommend a trial run without any jars, just to get used to how pressure canning works. Taking the canner up to pressure and then releasing it went fine but I was shocked to see that the inside of the pan, where it was in contact with water, was black after that first run. The instructions say that there will be discoloration but I was not expecting a ring of black in the bottom of the pan! Having looked online, it appears that aluminium pans do go black when heated and it's nothing to be worried about. Of course, if the internet is wrong and someone thinks this is an issue please tell me. Apart from that I am happy with progress and even happier that I selected a model that is compatible with my induction hob. It makes regulation of temperature and pressure so much easier.

Congratulations @DennisLinkletter! You were right to mobilise us. Well done and I hope this helps to introduce more people to your amazing product. It makes me weep when I see people, including Michelin star chefs, wasting their money on inferior kamados.

What a beauty. Welcome to the KK family @moebutt!