john noble

Re: Lighting Looftlighter the Looflighter is perfectly good. However I use a long pole, weed burner when grilling. Similar concept to the Looflighter, actually, since you are pushing hot air over the coals. Touching the flame over the coals gets it started, but even when the flame is several inches away, the hot rushing air does a great job of accelerating the burn. For low n slow, I use the minion method, which means using the chimney. And for lighting the chimney, I use TrueCue match starters. Anyone else use these? A small pyramid shape of wax and sawdust. and a match tip at the end. you strike it on the box, the tip flares up and you just rest it under the chimney. Super cheap and no petroleum smells.

Re: Full size KK cabinet with Cobalt Blue tile insert HI Dennis. Great cabinet photos. I'd like to order just the tiles. Ones that match my KK. I'm building my own outdoor teak cabinet. I am recycling some old kitchen cabinet doors that are solid teak. Just a simple cabinet, using the existing rectangle door shapes If I can purchase the tiles from you, I'll just set the tiles on the cabinet surface and have my heat proof surface. Let me know if this is doable. It's Dark Metallic Bronze. And if we're doing a shipment anyway, can you ship come coconut coal up to Vancouver, Canada? Thanks

I agree with the comments here, that one can easily do high temp grilling on a KK. But it does take up a lot of charcoal. Yes, I know we can extinguish a fire, but it's not immediate. If we want to heat up the whole KK, that will use up charcoal, and afterward, even with air vents tightly closed, the residual oxygen and thermal energy will burn up some more charcoal. I have found that using a wire column to hold a tiny pile of charcoal will create plenty of heat, due to the chimney effect. Even a weber chimney is too big. I use one of those open cylinder racks designed to hold tall wooden spoons and spatchulas. Ignite the bottom of the pile and place the sear grill just above it. A couple of steaks can be grilled quickly. I'm sure there are other ways. What do the rest of us do?

Re: tight top vent I know what you mean. after removing the food and closing it, I intend to come back and make sure it's tight and extinguished. But I often forget, and then lose a basket of lump as a result.

Ok, so for the first time, I managed to extinguish a cook and find unburned charcoal the next morning. I realize I have not been closing the top vent tight enough. In the past, I would find that the "leftover" charcoal was burned to ashes. Last night I cranked the top vent tightly closed, and success. This morning a huge pile of unused charcoal awaited me.

Hello all. Now in my third happy week of KK ownership. Up here in the rainy pacific northwest, am now very glad I installed an awning above my bbq workspace. But my question is about oils. When starting a cook, I wipe the grill with a paper towel soaked in Canola oil. This used to be called rapeseed oil. Just the seed from a tall grass. Very cheap. Neutral taste. It's the oil used in Pam. I like wiping down the grill before cooking. It makes it a bit cleaner, and seems to help prevent food from sticking. And after the quick wipedown, I use the crumpled paper towel as my fire starter. The oil makes the paper "wick" and makes for a long burn under the charcoal. I know many of us on this listserve start the fire this way. But is canola the best for wiping down the grill before a cook? I know every oil reacts differently to different temperatures. And some may burn off, and some are more likely to go rancid. Some may add flavour, some might not. Anyway. Looking forward to your comments about the best oil for this purpose.

Re: Covering your KK While awaiting the arrival of my KK, I had an awning installed over the area of the deck where the KK would stand. I also ordered one of those excellent covers. Both were made with the exact same Sunbrella colour cloth. If I am going away for a week or two, I'll cover up the KK. But she is under the shade of the Sunbrella awning, and I really like to see that beautiful thing out there. Maybe I'll research a uv blocking wax for the tiles.

Re: Assembling the rotisserie basket Job's products only seem cooler and indie, 'cause he's underground. Ooops, too soon?

Re: Assembling the rotisserie basket Aha. Yes, that's how they slide on. Thanks Dennis. How about someone does a youtube instructional video of them using all aspects of this machine? No, not just anyone, some beautiful balinese ladies. We'd all watch that, and Dennis wouldn't have to write so many emails.

Re: Assembling the rotisserie basket Ok.... but there are two spots where the rod is milled thin, and I have three of the wire holderdownthings. also, the thin milled rod is at the outside ends. trying to imagine how this hooks up. I'll go looking for pics. thanks for the quick response though.

So I have the large basket with three of those clamps that look like big chicken feet, to hold the bird in place Having trouble affixing the clamp to the basket. I see that the end of the clamp is open, and clan snap on the basket's bars, but wow it's going to take a big hammer. way more than hand tight. Before I go and bash it, any comments please? thanks

Re: Fully Open Top Damper Cooking Method (experiental) I think mguerra was talking about using a minion method to keep the fire slow. I can see how in just an hour, the top down burn would not have time to get roaring. Eventually though, with both top and bottom vents open, I think things would get pretty hot. I did chicken last night, trying it on the upper grill as suggested. And yes, the radiant heat from above, cooked it so well from both sides that I did not need to turn the chicken. It was spatchcocked and then the halves separated. Skin side up, simple spicing and the skin was brown and crispy just from the ceiling's radiant heat. Nice. And yes, 'with an open top vent, no sooty or smokey flavours in the chicken. I didn't do a minion method though. Blasted it with a weed torch. So I did have to back down the bottom vent a bit.

Re: Hawaiian Luau/Kalua pork How interesting. So that is why people in tropical countries wrap meat in banana leaves. They are preventing the "stall". They didn't have tin foil, but have figured out how to prevent evaporative cooling. Living in Canada, I"m envious of you banana growers. I wonder what we have here that could replace tin foil? A pile of maple leaves? Kelp leaves? The Coast Salish natives up here in the pacific northwest, would cut up fish and other meats into fist sized pieces, wrap them in kelp, and cook many of them in sand pits on the beach, along with buried hot rocks.

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery" There's something amazing that happens whenever yeast meets grain. And it's all about external digestion, perhaps the one thing that separates home sapiens from the rest. We use enzymes to break down hard grains so we can digest them with our single stomachs. We use fermenting yeasts to further break down long carbohydrate chains. We use fungi to break down long cellulose chains in compost heaps to make black soil to nourish our crops. And we use enzymes in meat to break down collagen. In all cases we provide a little bit of heat. The brewer cooking his mash, the baker warming his pans, the farmer keeping his steaming compost under warm cover, and the chef adding just a touch of coal to his fire. And wasn't it the chef who was the source for all our technology? The chef who moved from cooking over an open fire, to enclosing the fire with stones, to accidentally firing the clay lining around the fire so that it lifted out in one piece and magically, held water. To melting glazes to cover the clay, to melting copper for decoration, then melting iron ore, then accidentally mixing charcoal with the iron to create carbon steel. To heating water in the strong steel pots and seeing that the sudden expansion of steam would turn a wheel. And seeing that these spinning wheels, when spinning a magnetic lodestone, would create a magical flow of electricity. And away we go. Cooking meat over a fire. It all comes from there. So yes, I agree with Sysygies. Bad technique in attentive hands is good technique. The person who did brisket "wrong" with high heat and foiling, created something wonderful. When I play piano and hit a wrong note, it's a wrong note. But if I hit it twice and with attention, hey, it's jazz.

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery" I think what is so good about understanding the stall, is that it gives us choices. Now that we understand the underlying process behind the stall, we might choose sometimes to go for maximum bark and to hell with the loss of moisture and juiciness. At other times we may choose to foil and make it as moist and juicy as we can. As Michael says, do it both ways. And then there is the compromise, foiling briefly. I'm interested in the idea of temporarily foiling when the meat hits 160F, to interrupt what would become the evaporative cooling effect, and speed the meat through the stall zone. But then once I'm on the other side of the stall zone, at 170 or 180, to remove the foil. Would this maximize both juiciness and bark? Must find out.

Re: Must Read "physicist-cracks-bbq-mystery" Well, this doesn't look like a "quick reply" but here goes. Doesn't it seem that this discussion of "high temp, foiled brisket versus low n slow brisket" is based on a perhaps wrong assumption that the four hour "stall" is a bad thing? I see those that read the scientist's article on water evaporation being the cause of the stall, as feeling "vindicated" that their high temp, foil method was preferable. But it seems that we simply have two methods to create different results. Assuming the research is right, and the stall is caused by an increase in water evaporation or sweating, until the heat being taken away from surface water evaporation, equals the heat being added by the fire below. This balance continues for say four hours during which time water, especially from the surface and perhaps some inches in from the surface, evaporates away. During this time, the surface dries somewhat and the bark is created. When water availability eventually decreases, then sweating decreases, the process of evaporation decreases, and as the heat from the fire remains the same, the heat now dominates again and the temperature of the meat now climbs the next thirty degrees to 190F where we remove the meat. All the discussions of "stall" describe it in nightmarish terms. The carloads of dinner guests arriving, the wife impatiently tapping her feet, the cook tearing out his hair in stress and frustration, adding coals to no avail. But let's look at the "stall" as a good thing. It is the bark building time. Yes, we want the meat to be as juicy as possible, and water content is central to that. But the wonderful thing about brisket is that mix of soft juicy inside meat, with the crispy dark spicy bark. The bark is crucial. Foiling does jump us through the stall certainly, as the foil blocks the evaporative cooling process, but the problem is that the bark is not formed. Foiling recipes deal with this problem by having us unfoiling the joint and putting it back on the grill to form the bark. But during this secondary bark formation process, some water loss is happening anyway. Water loss is the price we pay for the formation of bark. And those terrifying images of the guests arriving while the meat is still at 160F? Well, the answer is to start the cook earlier. This stress can happen even apart from the "stall" if one starts the cook without enough safety room. Foiling is a good rescue technique, when we realize that we're out of time and we have to hurry things along. But apart from that, if we have plenty of time, do we want to foil? So the choice is to foil and have things juicier, but less emphasis on the bark. Or don't foil, accept the "stall" or what we should perhaps call "bark building time" and have slightly less water content, but a thicker, darker, more emphatic bark. In a traditional machine like a weber wsm, with thin metal walls and no insulation, to keep a lively fire and maintain 235F despite heat loss, the air must rush through quickly. This rushing air will rapidly draw moisture out from the meat. It will still take many hours to cook and smoke the meat, and create the bark, so the moisture loss for an unfoiled cook will be pretty significant, will be a rather high price to pay. Not criticizing the wsm by the way, great machine, used it for years. But it seems the KK is the best compromise for non foilers. Its insulation properties mean the fire can burn slow, and therefore air is only trickling past the meat rather than rushing past it. The meat is cooking just as much from hot stone walls radiating heat inward, as from hot air rising past it. Some moisture loss is still happening and bark is still being built, thank goodness, but the moisture loss is modest, is a modest price to pay for that necessary bark. I'm still going to experiment with foil. I'm going to split a brisket in half and do one foiled, the other not. But I think with a KK I am going to view the "stall" as my friend, as a good thing. As the writer said, talking about the foiling method. (Begin quote) "There is a problem with this approach for some cooks: The meat does not have a hard chewy bark on the exterior. Ball says that a hard bark is emblematic of overcooked meat. He wants a dark, flavorful, tender bark. But if you want a hard bark, the solution is to pull the meat out of the foil when it hits 180°F or so, and hit it with higher heat to dry the exterior and darken the rub. Or just skip the foil altogether, do things the old fashioned tried and true way, and just be patient. Either way, the results are superb" (endquote) And I think that's correct. This isn't about saving time. Bbq is not about saving time. We can start our cooks the night before, or the day before, if we want. No, both ways are superb. There is a spectrum here, with maximum moisture content at one end and crispiest, darkest bark at the other. Just like the toaster, how dark do we like to set it? It's personal. For me, personally, a metal walled wsm would probably benefit from foil technique. But our insulated KKs, with their limited moisture losses, leads me to suspect that foiling is less necessary.

Had my KK for five days, done three cooks since. Interested in the ways to use vents for heat control. Older post about this topic And I like Dennis' point in the above postings, about closing the hat until it touches the gasket, then opening just half an inch. That would certainly slow down the fire. When starting up, and waiting for the temp to climb up, both the bottom vent and the hat must be open, certainly. But what vents do we use to halt the progress? Before my KK, my method on my wsm was to have top and bottom vents full open and watch the temp climb. Then, when about 50F below the desired temp, I'd close most of the bottom vents. Top vent stayed fully open. With the bottom vent only allowing a touch of air in, the state of the top vent didn't matter. Whether partly or fully open, the top would only release the tiny amount of air squeezing in from below. The restricted air flow would cool down the roaring fire, the speed of inrushing air would slow down and the machine would stabilize at temp. As long as the machine is air tight, using either the top or bottom vent shouldn't matter. Restricted air flow is restricted air flow. So my question is whether that method carries over to refractory cooking. I"m going out to practice this of course, but comments appreciated.

Happy news, I finally have possession of my new KK. Am in Vancouver, BC, Canada. 23" v2.4 Bronze Metallic. The duty on getting her across the border was a bit harsh, but worth it when we uncrated her yesterday. Just beautiful. Getting many oohs and aahs from friends. Took many hands to haul her down all my winding stone steps. Fed the troops with chicken legs in tequila lime marinade, and bacon wrapped scallops. Pic of the machine is attached, of course. Have a happy thanksgiving, everyone. John Noble

Re: Is the Benzomatic JT850 the best? I also found that my flame would go out. It was because I had a hand torch connected to a one pound propane cylinder. When I turned the torch upside down, or even below ninety degrees, the liquid would flow down and seal the entrance to the torch. So no vapour form fuel was going out to the torch. I solved it by placing a five pound propane ball on the ground and running a six foot flexible rubber hose, from the ball to the hand torch. Now the torch is supplied with propane in vapour form, no matter how I turn the torch around. by the way, today I finally ordered my KK. yay!