casebeag

Had 35 loins of albacore (after gifting and sashimi all week) to can yesterday, so was relegated to the backyard all day. Lots of work, but now I just need a crapload of water and I should be prepared for the end of the world? So.... I pulled out beef ribs from a 1/4 steer that I bought earlier this year. Gave 'em a standard pepper/paprika/cayenne/chili powder/brown sugar rub the night before. Cooked them at 230 degrees using the 3-2-1 method. They were just wonderful. Amazing crust, with moist meat. Got carried away, and forgot to take 'after' photos. Took a shot after the first 3 hour segment.

Re: help me decide! You can do what I did - spend months deciding, order the Autumn Nebula, and have the wrong color shipped (Olive pebble), and fall in love with it. Lesson learned - all the colors are probably beautiful in their own way, and once you have the damn thing in your backyard and taste the food it makes, you'll care less about the color.

Re: Smoked salmon/BBQ guru Caught it here in the Monterey bay trolling. Conventional gear. It's been a great year thus far. Slu - won't ever know how much charcoal the smoke used because I cranked it up to 600 after i took the smoked fish off to cook a fresh piece of salmon caught saturday for dinner! Had it with kale - thank you.

Wanted to share my first cook with the guru. Used it today to smoke salmon and was very pleased with the results. Smoked a 12 pound king salmon today that I caught earlier this week. Fortunately, the guru arrived the same day I caught the salmon - fortuitous timing. Thank you to 'tucker' who offered advice on configuring the guru purchase. I used a full basked of Apple charcoal with a couple coco rods thrown in. Also scattered some Alder chips throughout the charcoal to 'fire' whenever the portion of charcoal they were sitting on lit. Got it all going with 5 or 6 pieces of Kingsford briquettes, brought it up to about 100 degrees, then closed the bottom to 'credit card' slits. Once it hit 140, I closed the bottom up, and closed the top hat to 'just cracked'. Set the guru to 165 at first, then raised to 170 and basically didn't have to touch anything until mid afternoon when the sun was directly on the KK, and then I just closed the top hat a little more. Smoked for a total of 10 hours. Had a nice amount of smoke throughout the entire cook, and the salmon seems to have come out great - I don't eat it until I've cooled it in the fridge overnight. Was nice to not have to constantly check on a cook at this low of a temp. I ordered the 'christmas tree' holder for the pit temp probe, but it hadn't arrived yet. As you can see in the pics, the fish was nice enough to use one of it's fins to hold the probe for me - worked very well. n68487 n68488 n68489

Re: Cooking salmon I've been fortunate enough to have fresh salmon for many meals recently. Our season here in the Monterey bay is off to a great start and we've gotten limits on a couple occasions. When it's this fresh, I simply use olive oil, salt and pepper. I've been cooking it skin down on the lower grate (not the sear grate) at about 500 - 550 degrees, direct. I don't flip it, just pull it when it 'seems' done. The skin acts as a mini heat deflector. Best thing in the world.

Re: Easter - What's Cookin? Tucker, Here's the website for Real Montana Charcoal. Slu gets the credit for introducing me to it - we recently split a pallet. Plum, apple, cherry, etc. All excellent so far. http://realmontanacharcoal.net/

n67184 n67185 Re: Easter - What's Cookin? Did a nice big tenderloin from Costco for the extended family. Provencial salt for 24 hours, then olive oil and cracked pepper. Cooked at 270 to internal temp of 129 over plum charcoal, removed and covered with foil. Took it to 450 and did a load of asparagus, then up to 600 for a piece of salmon caught that morning for one of the guests, and then a reverse sear on the filet. Came out absolutely perfect.

Re: Estimated cook time - sirloin tip roast Great advice, as usual. Thanks.

Going to do a sirloin tip roast tomorrow on the KK - thinking about 250 degrees up to internal temp of 140. The roast weights 3.75 lbs. I can find lots of estimates on cooking times at 300 degrees and above, but nothing under. What would you guys guess for a time estimate?

Re: Too many Colors to choose from........ That's the color I picked...but what I got was the olive pebble...and it too is great.

Re: Beef and Venison jerky I guess I didn't look into the effects of copper poisoning before I used the grounding wire. I've checked the toilet, and haven't crapped out any pennies yet... I do have an old (90 yr old) friend who made his living fabricating metal parts, and plan on having him make me a more solid set-up for this. Slu - look for your set after we get this figured out.

Stole the idea of the copper grounding wire shamelessly from Firemonkey. Did a test run last weekend to prove to myself that I could keep low temp with lots of air for long time. No problem. n68407 Not the perfect cuts for beef jerky, but it's what I had left from a freind's steer. Venison from local Big Sur buck shot in the fall. Different brine for each. Used Alton Brown's recipe for the beef and preferred it over the sweeter brine/marinade that we used on the Venison. Kept the KK at 150 degrees for 8 hours, wide open bottom vent, and a 1.5 turns on the top hat. Used maple for smoke. Need to do WAY more next time. n68408 n68409

Re: Smoked salmon Slu, It was a 4 day process, but I'd do it every week if I could. I've set aside a nice piece of it for you guys. Hope to see you soon to hand it over. By the way, after we took off the fish, we cranked up the temp and cooked an apple crisp. That is gone...there is none left to share.

Ok...did my first smoked salmon today. One of the major reasons I invested in the KK was the fact that I am fortunate enough to live in a place where I'm able to catch plenty of salmon each year, and I love to have it smoked. Today I smoked my first batch, which happened to be silver salmon that I caught in August last year in Alaska. I used the brine recipe on the Naked Whiz' site. Brined for 24 hours, air dried in fridge for 24 hours, and then did a 10 hour smoke today. I used ECC, and got up at 3:30am to get the fire going. I didn't let it have enough oxygen to start because I was afraid of overshooting my goal of 180 degrees. Didn't get the fish on until 7:30, and dome temp was about 120 at that point. The huge cold bolus of the grills and the fish brought the temp down to about 85 and it took a while to get up to 180, which is where I kept it until 5:30pm. Used Alder in foil for the smoke. I easily could have kept the temp down in the 140-150 range if I wanted. Bottom line - best smoked salmon I've ever had. We had friends over tonight, one of which is a salmon biologist and connoisseur of smoked salmon, and he felt that it was the best he's had. Could have been the wine talking though??? I'm absolutely thrilled with the ability of the KK as a smoker. n68386 n68385

Planning on doing my first salmon smoke this weekend. The fish is in the brine now. I'm using the recipe/algorithm from the Naked Whiz site. I did a test temperature run with some residual ECC last night (lit it with a couple kingsford briquettes from a chimney) and kept the temp at about 195 through the night. I'm aiming for 180...seems like I'm almost going to have to have the top hat completely closed with the smallest slit in the bottom air dial to get this. 195 wouldn't be the end of the world if that's where it ends up on Saturday. My question is about the wood. I'll use Alder chips. How would you recommend I add these to the coal? Would you soak them first? Just scatter them about the coal at the beginning of the cook? Thanks.

Re: A little help I was using Lazzari lump charcoal. Sorry for the confusion: By 'both vents open', I meant that the top hat was 'unscrewed' to the wide open position and the wheel on the bottom was fully open. I did not slide the door/s out at the bottom. Appreciate the feedback...I've got a good idea as to how to approach it differently next time.

I've had my new KK for a couple weeks. Lots of good local help from slu. I've done some good low and slows. Tonight, I tried salmon. I cooked it on the lower grate, skin down, like I would have done with my old Weber (bless it's soul). I filled the bucket with lump charcoal and lit it with a paraffin cube. I was impressed how quickly I got it up to 550 with both vents wide open. The problem: By the time I got it up to temp, most of the charcoal was still barely even lit. Each time I opened the grill to check the fish (only a couple, but still), it was like fireworks coming up from the basket. Also, the smoke from the charcoal was still thick enough that it imparted more smoky taste to the fish than I was used to from the Kingsford charcoal that I used to use. So: Do I just start with less charcoal in the basket? Do I really need to wait for all that charcoal to burn it's smoke off before I put the fish on? That could take a while. Overall, I was so glad to see it come to temp as fast, faster really, than the old grill. Was wondering about the KK's ability to do the quick cook. Gonna have to change some things though, to make it more user friendly. Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

Re: Rocket Fired it on Friday. Yesterday cooked a single rack of spare ribs with two different rubs. I filled the basket with a bag of hickory shag charcoal. Cooked yesterday for 5 hours, then shut it down. Pretty amazing how much charcoal is left this morning. IMG_0222.jpg[/attachment:amssludr] IMG_0223.jpg[/attachment:amssludr]

Re: Teasing Casebeag I swung by his place this morning after crabbing to drop a couple Dungeness crabs off as a thanks for his help. Looked around for any remnants of those beautiful ribs...all I could find was the odd scrap stuck to the grill. As per what seems to be usual with Slu, still left with more than I arrived with. Did my first set of ribs today with good result...bigger plans for tomorrow. Matt

Well, she (my 4 year old) really named it 'Rocket Ship' based on it's looks, but we've just been calling it 'Rocket'. A surprise within a surprise: We gladly greeted the delivery truck yesterday after a long wait for our KK. We had decided on the 'Dark Autumn Nebula' tile color, and waited for the most recent shipment which was slated to have one this color. The truck arrived, and as the liftgate dropped, it was clear that the tiles looked like pebbles, not square tiles. Uh oh. Long story short...Dennis had sent the Olive pebble instead of the nebula. We liked the look of it, and...there it was in our driveway, and we had help on the way to get it into the backyard. Spoke with Dennis to ensure that somebody somewhere was not waiting for this particular KK, and decided to keep it. I had been in contact with 'slu' who lives about 30 minutes from here since joining the forum months ago. He's been incredibly helpful with advice. You can't believe how generous he was with his time and energy yesterday. He basically showed up with a truck full of wood and tools...anything we might have needed to get the KK down the 4 or 5 stairs into it's final resting place in the backyard. I hadn't even ever met him in person before yesterday. Great guy. Rocket's home now...he's at 400 degrees as we speak. Just shaking off the cobwebs. Tomorrow Rocket's going to make ribs.

Re: Kamado covers Just ordered one last week. Sounded like he was otherwise occupied for the holidays, and wouldn't be able to deliver until mid January...which was fine with me. Hopefully for him, he's somewhere remote for the holidays.

Re: Another KK in Frisco McSmoke, We've got twins. I've got an autmn nebula 23" wammer jammer headed to Santa Cruz as we speak. They're probably sitting in their wooden cages looking at each other right now. It'll be my first Kamado... Congrats to us. Matt

Re: First Burn of KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal Keep up the research and reporting Slu. I've got 100 pounds of the ECC coming with my KK. Glad you're close by in the event i need a personal consultation.

Re: KK as a smoker? Great reply. Thank you for this...and enjoy. Also got great advice from Slu today. Great forum. Matt

Newbie here. Been a faithful charcoal Weber guy for many years. Have a good friend who has a KK up in Seattle (I'm in California), and he won't stop bragging about it. Question: I'm fortunate to have lots of salmon/albacore as I avidly fish here in the Monterey Bay. I currently use a friends 'little chief' for a smoker, but would like to have my own. How is the KK as a smoker? Thanks in advance, Matt