mguerra

opportunists My hounds have gone down into the canyon behind the house and drug up old dead half rotten deer. Seems to be their favorite snack, and they don't ever get sick, either. Just doing what any wild pack of dogs would do! Survival behavior.

more info Can you tell us more about her Korean/ California fusion marinades and her all wrong technique? Your best guesses if you don't know for sure. Could be a good jumping off point for some experimentation.

Gnaw on this! One of the best chew toys you can give your dog is an antler. They will consume a rawhide in a few minutes, but chew on an antler for months. When it gets small enough to be a choking hazard, take it away. I cut the prongs off so they can't flip one back into their eye while chewing, you just want one linear piece. You can just walk around and find shed antlers, or ask hunters to give you some. They last forever and your dogs absolutely love 'em! Unfortunately, if you have more than one dog, they will set up one hell of a ruckus trying to take them away from each other. And don't think you can solve that by giving them each their own, doesn't work.

common denominator I have noticed 4 hours at 250 to be the most common recommendation for cooking baby backs. There was a rib show on the Travel Channel yesterday, and most of the cooks were 250 for 4 hours, all over the country.

labor It's the same number of tiles applied in the same places, the only variance is the color. The tile installer has merely to pick a tile from one of two color piles. The layout pattern only had to be done once for all the double color schemes. The extra labor should be pretty minimal.

bones revisited The only problem I have had with the dogs eating bones is that they get up in the middle of the night and puke up the eaten bone mush all over the bedroom floor. One time Biggles went over to the neighbors and made a snack of one of their chickens. The only thing left was two chicken feet and one feather, neatly arranged on the porch. He survived, fatly, bones and all!

Sunbrella Sunbrella, the Johhnyboy cover material, is pretty good product! See: http://www.sunbrella.com/na/marine_exterior.php

done? I also noticed that a chicken cooked to 175 thigh on the KK doesn't quite "seem done". My guess is the KK retains so much moisture in the bird, it seems that way. I'm pretty confident the chicken was safe, but I might just cook mine a little more in future, if only for a slightly less rubbery texture.

sadly I used to, all the time! But... then I got married.

dome temp irrelevant You don't need a specific temperature on your dome thermometer to grill. The dome temp is way up high above where you are cooking. All you really want is your meat finish temp. What you need is just a good hot fire, and you can see that with your eyes. For a good hot fire you want a lot of coals going. One good way to get that is to light two charcoal chimneys full of lump, let them both really get going, and then dump that on top of a basket full of lump. That right there is your hot grilling fire. You are starting a lot of coal at once this way, not waiting for a small amount of fire to grow. A good way to do this is to use an old charcoal grill as your staging area for the two charcoal chimneys. A safe place to hold them while they start up. Now that you have a good hot fire, just decide if you want to sear first, or do a Finney and sear last. Use a thermometer to achieve your done temp. You will find a lot of different methods of grilling on these forums. Here's one example. Sear down close on a hot fire, shut down the KK vents, move the meat up high in the cooker and let it dwell til done temp. Here's another example. Cook a little higher above the fire, slowly, til done temp, then a quick sear down close to the fire. And there's a lot more methods. Try them all and see which you prefer. Be forewarned: if you do the method of shutting down the vents and dwelling, you can get a flashback when you open the cooker. See: http://www.nakedwhiz.com/flash.htm

bone in Lots of people think bone in is the best. I don't care, they pull the same, they both taste great, use either! And I make 'em all the time, so I know! In fact, I've got two bone in right now out there cooking. Cook every Boston Butt you can lay your hands on and you'll see.

braai/ meatloaf/ another grilling wok application After watching the youtube braai video, I decided that would be a good secondary cook while I was cooking a meatloaf. I put the meatloaf in a grilling wok, and threw on a big ring of sausage also. Shut the lid, set the Guru for 300, and let 'er rip. I just pulled off the sausage when I figured it had been in there long enough. It was super! Not exactly an open grill, like the video braai, but good. The meatloaf came off at 160 degrees and is resting in foil now. Well, I opened the foil for a second to get the photo. There's no photos of the sausage because... I ate it. The meatloaf is a combo of turkey, pork and chuck. I'll sample that shortly.

dittos "First time Q'ers will consistently get good to great results the first times they cook on a KK." True. My first cook was a low and slow pork butt, never did it before. Just had read about how to do it on a multitude of BBQ forums. It was perfect. After a few months, you'll forget about the expense and wish you had a KK your entire adult life.

high temp brisket I've been reviewing the brisket threads over on the Weber Smoky Mountain forum. They are really promoting high heat cooks, claiming great results. They cook the brisket at 325 to 350 degrees to about 160 degrees internal, then foil it and cook til tender. They don't finish by temp, but by probing til tender. They get their briskets done quick this way, 4 hours plus or minus, based on size. Anybody here try this? I'm going to try it.

name it I named mine the "Bronze Behemoth" but the wife calls it the "Gold Monster". Monster because for a few days it scared one of the dogs.

multi-tasker You can also use one as a small charcoal basket for quick grilling; and it sits up higher and closer to the grill if you set it on top of the charcoal basket handles.

lava rock deflector Here's how it came to be. Before I got the KK, I was trying to figure a way to do a low and slow in my metal grill. I needed some kind of heat deflector between the fire and the meat. I did not know about fire bricks at the time. One idea was to cut the bottom out of a cast iron skillet, to have a cast iron disc. Seemed like a neat idea, but too much elbow grease. Wandering through the Home Depot BBQ dept, I happened to spy the lava rocks. There's a good heat deflector! But how to contain them?Right next to the rocks was the grilling wok, bingo! Idea born. And cheap, too. There is not a lot of vertical space in these metal grills. But, the Meco Swinger has an adjustable height grill. So I lowered the grill down to the minimum, put the lava rock heat deflector on the grill, and then laid another grill on top of that. Lo and behold the lid could shut, and not contact the meat. I had me a little mini smoker! Only problem turned out to be the fuel capacity. You can't get twelve plus hours of charcoal in one of these. But, it makes a dandy four hour rib cooker!! Anyway I was just playing around trying to maximize my cooking options while I waited to get up the nerve to drop the cash on a KK. The photo shows the wok minus the lava rocks, just to illustrate the set up. When the KK showed up, I just kept using it. So for those of you who don't yet have a ceramic cooker, here's a stop gap tool to help your cooks.

pack of coonies ("buddies") When I build a fire, I set that contraption aside, of course. You should see the coonhound mayhem that ensues! They're sprawled all over the porch, chewing on lava rocks, if I don't set it out of reach. Hilarious.

good transmission range The Oregon Scientific AW-131 will work like a champ for your application. Transmits far, you can set the high temp alarm to any value. It is a solid "night thermometer"; or "inside thermometer" when you are awake. You won't need a Maverick dual probe if you get a Guru or a Stoker. Haven't used my Maverick since I got the Guru and the Stoker. Just the AW-131.

Nasty Oh yeah, it's disgusting! But it works. It looked really cool virgin. The lava rocks are so cheap, I can just pitch the nasties and reload, if I get too repulsed. I have the stock KK heat deflector, and the stainless drip tray. Neither has ever seen the inside of the cooker.

never clean I never clean my heat deflector. Here it is after six months of continuous use. A grilling wok filled with lava rocks, sitting on the charcoal basket. All the goo just slowly works its' way through the lava rocks and burns up, I guess.

picnic observations I don't often cook a picnic, but they seem just as good to me as a Boston Butt. The first one, I tried to take off that skin, which was a PIA. Now I just cook it with the skin on, and it comes off WAY easier after you've cooked it! Go to any BBQ forum and you will find endless mental masturbation concerning whether to cook fat/ skin side up or down. As long as you are cooking indirect, it does not matter. If, for some crazy reason you did a low and slow direct, there is probably merit to cooking fat side down. But why would anyone do that? There is a school of thought that promotes fat side up to allow "basting". That's a crock of s---. First off, you don't need any "basting" in a KK. And second, the melting fat just drips off the surface of the meat. NO WAY can that juice penetrate the cellular structure of the muscle fibers of the meat.

idea You might want to keep that thermometer. When you get your Guru, you can count on it to regulate your fire. It also has all the alarms you need if you are within earshot of the cooker. The only extra thermometer you might need is the one you have. Why? If you have a cook going that might get done during the night while you are sleeping. All you need is a "meat done" alarm. The Guru WILL keep the fire at the right temp, so you don't need any bedside alarms for high or low temp. And even if you did, the Guru has those, which you can enable or disable, if your bed is within earshot of your cooker. And after a while, you probably won't be starting any cooks that could finish in the night. But it's nice to have that "night thermometer" at your bedside just for peace of mind. Plus, you can use it for your indoor oven cooking.

What?! OK, you are going to have to expound on "hauled my Komodo up four flights of stairs"!!! That might be a record. Details, please.

disorder OCD? No, we call it NHTIOD around here.