Porkchop

awesome thread, GREAT pics! making me jealous!

that looks awesome david, but no way is that an all natural chicken. after all, it's giving birth to a sweet potato!

while tempted at first to feel sorry for our Swiss brother and the expense of beef, portage, etc. Then I remembered: 1) BEST cheese in the world 2) BEST chocolate in the world 3) BEST bakeries in the world (Germany #2, France a distant #3) 4) the BEST amalgam of German and French cooking traditions and FINALLY good cheese FONDUE! i can just see DJ wandering thru the street of chocolate... cheers, tlinder!!! don't bother with the beef; just buy that good german PORK and get cooking! sausages, good bread, some cheese, good mustard, and a few tall BEERS!!

jack, i'm totally with you on the brat condiments; brown mustard, kraut & grilled onion. i'm not a big fan of boiling before grilling, and i constantly get grief about it from my ex-cheddarhead best friend. my FAVORITE way with fresh brats is indirect around 400. turn often til the casing is GOLDEn browN and crispy. hot dogs, about the same, but since i don't get real hotdogs (with natural casings), it don't matter as much. another big fave of mine from the sausage world is the kielbasa. i do cut some slits in the casing to help it take smoke, and do about the same as the other sausages. to each his own for sure; i've seen just about everybody else do the boil in beer method, and i keep saying i'm gonna try it sometime. i just have a change of heart as i start opening the brats... cursed i guess besides, if the beer isn't good enuf to drink, it's not good enuf to cook with. and, if it's GOOD beer, why am i cooking with it, and not drinking it? its a conundrum...

Well... couple things to consider 1) your pizza example. depending on how long you let the ceramic cooker sit there at temp, there wouldn't be a temp drop. once the walls of the cooker heat up to, say 600-650 (about what i do for pizza), they resist dropping temperature. so you might get a burst of cool air that drops the air temp in the cooker, the inner walls remain around 600, and will heat up that small volume of air, along with the burning lump, very quickly. 2) chicken wings and potatoes. again, "heat soaking the walls" will make sure that the temps dont drop. so, even tho you're blocking the upper grill items from "direct" heat of the coals with the food on the lower grid, the heat radiating from the upper dome will brown the top rather than the grill side of the meat. incidently, that's the neat thing about the OTB; upper dome is at a more uniform height in relation to the grid, so heat radiated from the upper dome will cook the meat evenly. tho, i guess i'll have to wait a little while to find this out. bottom line, if you preheat to the temp you want to cook at, and let the walls "heat soak", you shouldn't have any problem "getting over 300", imo. while the influx of cool air, and the loading of (lots) of cool meat will tend to cause the heat to drop, it would be a temporary situation. the temp should bounce back fairly quickly.

It depends... i do a lot of upper dome cooking, esp. butts. drip pan goes on main grid. cement "pizza stone" on the lower bracket. temp-wise, i have my cooker stabilized before i put food on for an overnite, so i already know what i'm dealing with, and don't futz with the drafts if the temp changes. the dome eventually reads at the right temp. i did notice the occluded main grid did prevent some of the food on the upper grid from browning last nite. but that was direct. on an indirect cook, i haven't experienced much of a variance. but i wouldn't really know, cause i dont take a "grid" temp vs a "dome" temp like alot of the eggers do. just doesn't rank as much a concern for me. i get my dome at around 250 and everything goes about the way i expect...

had the night off from job 2 last night so i decided to load up kong. filled a chimney with cowboy lump, plus another chimney raw in the lumpsaver. got the coals going and took the tinfoil off of the upper stack and opened the lower draft a couple inches. when the cooker reached 250, i threw cherry chips on the coals and i put the following on DIRECT: 6 1/2# burgers made the way my wife likes: hidden valley ranch mexican 5 fresh brats 7 boneless skinless chicken breasts chicken was liberally seasoned with Tony Chacere's cajun rub. funny thing; i've never used pre-mixed rubs before i started coming to this forum. i REALLY liked the TC cajun; a bit salty but with a really nice kick. anyway, chicken breasts and brats on the top grill, burgers on the main. flipped the burgers after like 10 min, and then the chicken and brats. after the second flip on the burgers (they were very close to done), i just put them on top of the food on the top grill, cause the brats and chickens weren't getting the full benefit of the direct heat with the burgers in the way. i've had pretty good success with this style of grilling; that is, before you get all the way up to temp, you throw on smoke wood and let the food absorb smoke while the cooker comes up to grilling temps. i ended up grilling at about 400 direct. the brats were BEEE-utiful; golden brown and crusty, yet juicy and smoky. the burgers also great, well done and juicy (i added rooster sauce along with the HVR powder), and the chicken breasts were juicy and HOT! yummy all! can't wait til i get my KK so's i can stop fiddling with tinfoil when i want to cook. i'm putting off another pulled pork cook til i get larry!

Egad! this is what happens when i'm away for a day or so? talk of neutering and slights against my expertise?? oy! back to the comparison question: i've cooked on the BGE, XL BGE, the #7 mexi-K, many steelies. have seen and considered the Primo Oval. As an overall answer, i made my order for an OTB June 30th. there was an eta of 8/2, but it may have been held up in customs. my last communique from dennis was a day before his trip, and he's on the case. far as i'm concerned, you're "out the door" costs for an XL BGE with the accessories that are really necessary will be very comparable to OTB. while i don't have an exact breakdown, i did crunch the numbers when i was considering things, and ended up saying to myself, "another 100 bucks, and we're talking KK money". i like the BGE; darn good cooker. proven over the years in quality and cs. but, for the extras and re-engineering that dennis has done, i'd go with the KK. just that fine adjuster knob on the draft door and the double gasketing would be enough for me. my 2cents...

Hope you have a good time at the reunion. Tell your mom thanks for the vinegar recipe! my new favorite on the pulled pork!

here's some links: http://www.komodokamado.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2&highlight=tiles http://www.komodokamado.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=496&highlight=tiles http://www.komodokamado.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35&highlight=vacuum+kiln hth

ya'll are just jealous you ain't this PURTY!

lack of hair is not a problem...

that was a long time ago. needed money for college...

no. i think Deej likes "beefcake". totally different...

gotta love this! http://redspot.blogbugs.org/18600/Meat-Cake.html

time for me to ask a question. after seeing a nice post on the BGE forum concerning direct rib cooks, i'm finally moved to adding this technique to my repetoire. i am by nature a lazy cook. i guess that's why the ceramics appeal to me so much. i've always done ribs indirect, no flip, no baste, no foil. i won't use foil on the ribs, as that seems anti-bbq; steaming/braising ribs. so, them that do direct; do you turn ribs? how often? how bout basting? anything i don't know to ask that you'd like to share? fyi, the post on the BGE forum is http://www.biggreenegg.com/wwwboard/messages/289800.shtml

call me what you will; i've spent time south of M-D. Columbus, GA, Winston-Salem & Charlotte, NC, and my dad lives down in Hopkins, SC (around Columbia). i know waffle house, krystals, krispy kreme, and PO' FOLKS (oh man, do i miss that). don't make fried pig guts taste any better... but it did teach me that the most noble way to serve fish is FRIED with hushpuppies and sweet chow!

nah, you're ruined... everybody's got something like that. something that they just can't stomach. mines calves liver. ech. just internal organs in general, really. too many good things in the world to eat, imo. 'course, chicken livers are pretty good... ever done rumaki? chicken liver and waterchestnut wrapped in bacon. good off the grill!

ditto that on the dirty rice. not a fan of chix livers, but good as a seasoning or in small amounts. also makes good spread for crackers!

Additional thought... yknow, that guru port could be used to connect some flexible conduit from say, a smokey joe or a couple ceramic pots (ala AB) with a hotplate and some chips/sawdust. open that upper draft on the KK all the way to get a nice draw, and you've got fast moving smoke that gets cooled by its trip thru the conduit. you could even put a big steel bowl of ice in the bottom of the kk if that wasn't cool enough as is. could be a nice jerky setup too!

I've never cold-smoked, BUT... regarding creosote and VOC's, i would think that if you gave the smoke opportunity to cool before it reached the food (ie, run it over/past something cold, or thru some conduit of some kind), that those things would condense out of the smoke before it reached your food. like distilling wood alcohol or something. other input? am i way off here?

I'm the wrong one to ask, buuuuut... i like this new color coming out. it is a matte finish. personally, i am a fan of the black volcanic!

whilst i don't normally get involved with such "frou-frou" cuisine, i believe the following story is both funny and rightly expresses the spirit of "foodie-ism" rampant today. what would you do if bbq were made illegal?? http://www.sanfranmag.com/home/view_story/1154/

well, THIS TIME i got it in a bottle. didn't notice it, but who knows what it would taste without it, all things being equal. i'll have to come up with it fresh sometime. i did taste the rooster sauce tho! always a good addition to ground beef.