Gnomatic

This is an excellent recipe and method. My family has been using an almost identical recipe as this as long as I can remember. I add a little wine in with mine but just tweak to your liking. The key is to marinate if you can, and baste often while grilling. If I have time I'll even inject a bit of marinade/sauce into the thighs before grilling. It's always a hit, give it a shot.

I ordered the Meater Block during the original Kickstarter campaign. Their original estimates on when backers could expect to get their probes were very optimistic shall we say. I knew they'd never meet those rosy estimates when I ordered my block. My expectations for this have been low from the beginning. So I have not been put off by the delays. I love the concept and am willing to take a flyer on this one. I hope they made all the necessary fixes. I'd rather they take their time and get it right.

That's the best idea yet.

@HalfSmoke Agreed, and not to mention no need to drill into my KK.

That looks excellent. I'm definitely a vinegar-based BBQ sauce kind of guy. @ckreef How close in flavor is white balsamic vinegar to regular balsamic?

This is very surprising. I have a 23" and on the few occasions I've stuck the Guru's 10CFM fan on there, I have to use the damper on the fan to block the airflow about 75%. Even then I can still get my grill pretty hot with the Guru if I want. I know you have a 32" but 25CFM seems like it'd be overkill.

I wonder how putting the grates in the dishwasher would work if PBW was used as the detergent. Might give it a go sometime. Really though, my grill is over a year old and I may have tried to clean them once. 99% of the time though, if the grates have a loot of crud on them, I just crank the heat and burn most of it off, the rest scrapes off easy.

While the idea of drilling a hole in my KK is about enough to give me the cold sweats, doing this mod would free up the Guru port so the cold smoker could be used in tandem with the guru. I'm thinking a setup like this could kick out some killer jerky, smoked and dried with precision.

I'd like to try this method myself, with the dry brine etc.

Well, I've mostly used the deflector stone on my low and slow cooks. I usually omit the lower grate unless I want to collect the drippings. I guess I don't find using the lower grate and wrapping it in foil dramatically easier than just sticking the stone in there, then putting the main grate on. But to each their own there is no wrong answer.

Oh.My.Goodness ...

Man does that look good!

Spun the bird at 325F - 350F for a little less than two hours. The bird had GREAT flavor, at least the meat. As good as any I've done. The skin was not crispy unfortunately, but I suspected that would be the case since it barely had any time to dry after be pulled out of the brine. I'll definitely do again. On a side note, I think I finally got the hang of the roti cradle. The turkey kept spinning the entire cook, and the cradle didn't unscrew itself and wasn't jammed in the cooker when it was time to pull. Thanks @tony b and everyone else who's given me advice on this.

I intended to dry brine this bird, but even after three days of refrigerator camp, this bird was still mostly frozen. So last night I called an audible, and submerged it in a wet brine so it finished thawing. Once seasoned, I injected w/ garlic butter and stuffed it in the roti cradle. So far so good ...

Chicken looks great! The roti cradle takes a bit to master, you're not alone. I did some test runs yesterday with a sack of taters, using the one piece motor shaft that spins the grill socket. It went much better this time. Got a few tweaks to make and do another tator spin and see if its ready for prime time ....

I'm interested

That's exactly the problem I had when I first tried the roti! So I might reverse the spin on my motor so the left side shaft would be the side that might unscrew, since it should be less prone to develop the problem from the jump .... but I probably will still use the Loctite to ensure the basket doesn't unscrew and jam itself in the cooker like before.

@DennisLinkletter one cradle shaft will want to unscrew itself, regardless of the direction of spin. Loctite will still be required one way or the other. I've been studying mine over the last day. @tony b please feel free to chime in on this. Right now I have my motor set to clockwise rotation, looking into the socket. Both shafts on the cradle are reverse threaded. A clockwise spin from the motor's perspective will *tighten* the left side cradle shaft, but will want to *loosen* the right side cradle shaft. Reverse the spin on the motor, and its the right side cradle shaft that gets tightened, while the left side cradle shaft will then be prone to unscrew itself. Pick your poison. The one piece square/hex motor shaft solves the issue of the *motor* shaft potentially unscrewing itself, but one of the cradle shafts will be still be prone to unscrewing. Its just the nature of the beast.

Thanks for the clarification, guys. Need to have my ducks in a row shall we say before I spin the bird next week.

Ok, I need some assistance setting this up. My grill is a 23" and I have the square socket. The fist pic is my roti motor with the adjustable shaft and spring.(is the spring supposed to go over the threaded end of this shaft before inserting into the socket on the motor?) The new square/hex roti shaft is lower in the photo. I'm trying to figure out where it goes. Do I just replace the adjustable shaft and spring with the new square/hex roti shaft? If so do I keep the spring? The second photo below is my cradle setup, with the round shaft screwed into the left side, and the square shaft screwed into the right side. I'm pretty sure square/hex shaft is meant for the outside of the grill with the motor, but I left it in the pic. The thing is, if the new shaft goes where I think it does, it will prevent the outside motor shaft from unscrewing itself, which is an improvement. However, depending on what way the motor spins, the right side or left side shaft sill has great potential to unscrew itself. This is where my problems with my cradle arose. I guess Loctite/Flexbar is the only solution for the inside shafts?

I thought Red was the high heat Loctite version. Even so its only rated to 450F. That's probably fine though as I can't imagine doing a roti cook higher than that. The Flexbar stuff can handle much higher temps.

@DennisLinkletter I can reverse the motor if needed. I'll try the new shaft and see what happens. With the shafts that came with my cradle, one side would eventually unscrew itself, or the other depending which direction I had the motor spinning. Hopefully the shaft helps. You recommended the Flexbar stuff to me a while back but I haven't tried the roti cradle since. Now I have the new shaft. I'm hoping to roti a Turkey for Thanksgiving and will try to do a couple test runs before next Thursday.

@DennisLinkletter or anyone else: I just got the square/hex roti shaft. Is it still recommended to use the Flexbar 15015 thread locker with this to avoid the basket unscrewing itself or can I just skip the Flexbar stuff now?

Looks great. I concur you can get some real nice sear marks even if grilling on the mane grate. Let the 3/8" stainless get heated up and the will sear.

That looks AMAZING!