BalconySmoken

Hi @DennisLinkletter or somebody else who knows the right way to use the smoke accessory,

i ordered one on Monday, it arrived on Friday:how good is that (maybe not so exciting if you live in the US). I searched the forums and couldn’t find any info on tips and tricks for this thing. 

anyway, I set it up how I thought it should work and I don’t think I got it right as it didn’t really smoke! It would start out ok but then go out. Fortunately I was looking for a light smoke and am using some coffee lump so that should be enough for my cook so nothing lost. I’ll post the cook up later when it is done.

so this is what I am looking for:

1) when assembling the unit, does the tube that goes into to the kk have the grill facing up or down inside the chip canister 

2) what’s the lighting technique? Do you light some wood (or charcoal) and drop it in and then top the canister up after? Or do you put wood in and then drop some lit wood or charcoal on TOP?

3) how much wood to start? Do you just TOP up as it goes (ignore uppercase TOP - Apple loves doing this, I have no idea how to stop it)

4) should you let it burn for a bit with the lid off to get it going?

5) on the pump - recommended setting?

6) note I have the newer version of the kk with the port for this thing, that was straight forward to put together but if this is an instruction set it would be great to add it here.

I was running the kk at 225, is the setup different at any other temps.

if somebody can give me some detailed descriptions, I’ll take a photo or video next time I use it and post them here. Thanks in advance: the thing is awesome I just need to know how to use it right!

That looks great! Nice work on the first job! I hope I have such fortune 

I am yet to crack open the rotating chook machine, but after looking at that I think I may need to do it soon. I wonder If cook rice under it I can do a KK chicken rice? Only one way to find out.

bloody ripper mate: keep it up

That looks awesome! Lamb burgers are so under rated and you and the misses have knocked them out of the park.

 
May I suggest a different design?
One of the reasons to foil pouch your chips is to force the initial bitter acrid "gas" that is released from the wood down into the burning charcoal to get burned off and get cleaned up.
When wood is heated the first volatile organic compounds released are gasses.. this is why you have a flame over a log in your fireplace. The hot gas raises up, mixed with the available air, when the fuel air mixture is correct it bursts into flame.  If there is not enough air to burn as a flame it creates a thick grey/white/yellowish vapor/smoke with very large sticky droplets. This is the smoke that burns your eyes (imagine alcohol mist) and sticks to your hair and clothes making you smell like a forest fire.. This is NOT the material you want condensing on your food. It is absolutely bitter and acrid.  My hypothesis is that most back yard chefs mistakenly use this smoke.. I base this on how ridiculously sweet, loaded high fructose corn syrup most commercial BBQ sauces are.  If you mix bitter acrid with ridiculously sweet you get a "tangy BBQ flavor".  Nothing I want to eat..

if you make a pouch and put just 3 or 4 holes dead center and place it facedown in the hottest part of your burning charcoal.. this will force all the gas down into the heat hopefully burning off most of this nasty gas leaving you only with the secondary vapor with has the clean flavor you are looking for..  I roll a doubled up sheet of foil into a cone, fill with wood, fold over the top sealing in the wood, then tear off the bottom of the cone. I then carefully open a hole in the burning charcoal and carefully drop in the cone.. this gets the gas even deeper into the burn zone.

Or you can purchase the KK Hot/Cold smoker which uses an aquarium pump to create vacuum which keeps the wood smoldering.. when smoldering it never gets the wood hot enough to turn the wood alcohol to vapor.. it just burns slowly as it makes contact with the burning area.  Dripped cast iron pots work too..

You are so done when she reads this forum.BTW, what is your wife's email address?

Simple as mate just time your beer .low n slow lasts forever

Outback Kamado Bar and Grill

It's my year lol doing some today .they turned out terrific

Outback Kamado Bar and Grill

Also I forgot to add: security came up to my condo to complain about something (some BS about my dog)  during the smoke but I didn’t let them come completely in. They didn’t suspect a thing and the air was thick with goodness at that point. The condo smokehouse is going to be all right I think

Just now, MacKenzie said:

After seeing your cook my mouth is watering for ribs. Lovely dinner.

Thanks! I haven’t had ribs in so long (18 months at least), it made them extra tasty. I do now have the meat sweats though

So I have finally had the chance to get into the meat I brought back from home. The wife wanted pork ribs so I was able to deliver 

first step is obviously some home made bbq sauce. After I lived in Texas I prefer the “no sauce no forks” policy, but I need to make the boss happy which will hopefully prevent any further sh#t burger incidents 

I made a mesquite smoke burrito

I tried out this wild cherry rub. I dry brined it for a few hours before this.

cooktime was about 4.5 hours at 225 ~ looking pretty good now

paired it with my daughters favourite spuds (mash made with butter, cream, salt and chives) and a token salad with ranch

it was pretty tasty if I do say so myself. Sh#t burger is now a distant memory.

“Gong hei fat choy” everybody

look at the goodness again

I just finished dinner and this has made me hungry again: yum

Those patties don't look so good. I bet it took lots of beers to washdown those burgers!

She doesn't read the forum, does she?

My wife is in the “make your burgers with lots of mix-ins and overhandle the meat” camp as well. Mostly inspired by Food Network recipes from decades past. She enjoys it. We roll with it. For me, the perfect burger is the one I grind myself from a mix of beef cuts (or just chuck), then gently handled. 

I just completed a meal that I now need to pretend I enjoyed thoroughly; we have all been there I am sure. The KK has its limits: I have discovered this tonight (I didn’t expect it to perform anything here;this is all my fault and I should have predicted this). The expression sh#t burger must have come from a similar origin.

you can cook or you can’t; my Wife falls into the second category but likes to try. I got caught off guard this morning when she offered to make burgers and I would grill them for her: I think I was suffering heat exhaustion or something as this is one of her “special” recipes I try to avoid like a handgrenade dipped in aids.

anyway: I thought I would share:

recipe: who knows what the hell she put in Aside from really expensive ground beef and pork.i am pretty sure there was some flour or some crap, they looked like chicken before they went on the grill.

the buns were hand crafted by her in the oven: I have no photos of these as they turned out like soggy cardboard (I am not sure how that is even possible).

the worst thing about all of this is that she made enough I have to grill tomorrow again. 

Don’t fall into this trap: I am in a lose lose situation but it is a good reminder to keep her out of the kitchen and away from my grill. 

the beers were bloody awesome though 

Looks terrific mate .nicley done interesting drop

Outback Kamado Bar and Grill

Wondering, how close do you have to live to get on the good neighbor list?

Nice steak dinner, but enquiring minds like ours would like to know - how did you score the Heretic beer???

We had dinner with the neighbours down at the pool. I cooked up the steaks made from the off cut of the fillet I brought home. This grill ceases to amaze me

In my house the dogs are family and if there's a slice left, a piece a brisket [ within  reason ] or any munchable keeper it's going their way. You know they are always on patrol, a lethal weapon...I rest my case. They like pizza too, and extend added coverage once the aroma enters the house.

 
What are you talking about - that's breakfast of champions. 
 
If it was only good enough for doggie dessert you should have filed it in the circular file to begin with. 
 
 

I love cheesecake! When I was living in Austin I was given a generous slice of a blueberry smoked cheesecake from a friends smokehouse restaurant in Blanco. So I thought I would give something a crack. I had a heap of raspberries in the freezer that I needed to get rid of (somebody has filled the freezer with meat!).

I used this recipe (times 2): https://letsdishrecipes.com/2018/06/white-chocolate-raspberry-swirl-cheesecake.html

for the grill setup:I used the temperature as described in the recipe, I made a foil pouch of applewood chips, and put a pan of water on the heat deflector. Cakes were on the top grate.

all was going well until my foil pouch had some sort of critical failure: a heap of smoke came out all at once and not the gentlesmoke I was aiming for.after the cook I discovered the foil had disintegrated so all the chips must have lit up rather than smouldered. 

The cake tasted sensational, although it was a little bitter on the top which I assume was from the smoke explosion. Luckily it wasn’t overly bitter- I just would have preferred a softer smoker flavour. Next time I will double down on the foil!

so tips for Singaporean’s and other non American residents:

half and half is just half milk and half cooking cream (the runny stuff - not thick or whipping cream, just plane old cream. And don’t go light - you aren’t making cake to loose weight; go for a run)

if in Singapore, buy all your stuff at Phoon Huat or other as it is heaps cheaper than the supermarket for the ingredients (I use the one at Holland village)

That looks fantastic! Glad you had a great Australia Day (I am not sure what we are even supposed to call it anymore - when did aussies become so PC!). Food looks amazing - I will attempt that next year. Did you do anything for the hottest 100?

i was stuck in Sydney working and I think I had a Sanga for dinner - I didn’t even get any lamb! I did have a great room at the Shangri-La overlooking circular quay though so got to see the fireworks from bed. 

It was movie night last night with girls and we normally get delivery which is normally pizza - screw that now I have the ability to make them better at home I say!

so this is my first attempt. I took some digging around on how to set things up as there was tidbits everywhere. Here is my summary for future learners like me - chime in anybody who thinks there is a better way or if i cocked something up 

• basket was pretty much full with extruded coconut lump (from Dennis) - lit it in a couple of spots with my soldering torch
• no deflector
• top rack with the steak seerer on Top. Not I used it with the high arms so it was as as high as it could go
• pizza stone on top of that
• Closed the lid
• bottom vent open all up, TOP vent open 3 turns
• when I hit 450 I changed the top vent two turns
• at 500 I changed the top to 1.5 turns
• then I fine tuned the bottom and TOP a little more to settle around 550~600. I was impatient! From memory the to-mvent was about 1.25 turns and the bottom big vent was aboun 3/4 open
• pizza base was home made using a normal recipe: I read somewhere that you neeeded to use less water in Singapore but I didn’t do that, if anything I accidentally put a but too much in I was not really being very accurate. So the different dough for Singapore is a load of BS in my opinion (I baked a lot at home before moving here - I did not see any difference in gluten when holding it up to the light and it certainly cooked and rolled out well)
• i prepared the pizza on one of those fibre glass anti stick mats you can get 
• transferred to a floured pizza peel
• cooked for around 7-10 minutes
• let it cool for about 3 minutes before slicing

i think that’s it. My Daughter who is 8 is a fussy eater and doesn’t generally eat very much. This is her pizza below which she almost completed and then complained that she had no room for the last slice but wanted to eat it: winner on this one. Jazzy my dog thoroughly enjoyed the fact Maeve didn’t eat all her pizza...

i only have photos of her pizza and a dark photo of the last one (forgot to check the photo and didn’t realise there was no flash) : I got distracted eating!

Freezer is still full of meat!

Argh Customs in Bali would have a conniption if I tried to bring that in..
You need a chest freezer my friend..
Look forward to you cooking that up..