tony b

Agree on the no need to precook the fresh pasta for this dish. It would likely turn to mush. Nice looking pasta there, MacKenzie! I generally make my own for fettuccine, tagliatelle and bowtie. Never had success with my angel hair cutter. I will still buy pasta for other shapes (generally tubular ones). I've never used my food processor or KitchenAid to make my pasta dough; by hand only. It's fun mushing the eggs and flour together. Brings out the lost kid in me!

Woo, Hoo! Thanks, Dennis! You da Man!

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Susan. I also will try spraying it with cooking spray. I like the spray coconut oil from Trader Joe's.

Kudo on the homemade chips. Sorry, but I have to go there - broccoli on nachos, really???

OK, so it was more of a soup than a stew, oh well! Still tasty though!!!

Serious food porn, dude!

OK, you've convinced me that I should use the damned thing more often, now that you've shown me the way to do pilaf in it! Not sure whether to thank you or curse you, Susan??

So it is written, so shall it be forever more!

Gotta take sides on this one. I'm in the CC camp - no ketchup on eggs - EVER! Will have salsa in a breakfast burrito, but that's as close as I get. I rarely eat ketchup on ANYTHING, including fries (I'm a mayo/curry sauce/malt vinegar/etc. kind of guy). Only thing that ketchup is good for (IMHO) is to make cocktail sauce for shrimp. OK, maybe Thousand Island dressing (which I also only eat on a pattie melt or a reuben).

Hell, I've never even steamed veggies in mine (has insert), let alone anything as funky as Mac & Cheese!

While the bowl in my rice cooker does come out, it's just plain aluminum; hence, the PITA to clean. However, I bet if I sprayed it with some oil it might help with the cleanup.

Crazy good!

Ckreef, you said, "It stayed on for a little over 8 hours which wrecked the texture." but didn't say how? What was wrong with it - mushy, chewy, too dry???

Too funny, ckreef! Better not post that one on the Guru Forum - yikes! I have a cheap rice cooker, too. A small Sanyo. The only time that I use it is when I have a lot of rice to cook. I hesitate to use it because it's a PITA to clean and you can't do pilaf in it, as it doesn't get the oil hot enough. YMMV.

Yeah, but I can cook a mean pot of rice in a 1 qt Calphalon pot w/lid. Just sayin' !!! I have Emeril's book "Cooking with Power" and there's a whole chapter on doing cooks (similar to your amazing Mac&Cheese) in a "multi-cooker" - a glorified rice cooker. I bought it for the pressure cooker chapter. http://www.amazon.com/Emerils-Cooking-Power-Delicious-Starring/dp/0061742988/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429142491&sr=1-5&keywords=power+cooking+cookbook

I think that I'll pass on this "fun." For 2 and 1/2 Franklins, it should grow the rice in addition to cooking it!

Great food porn, as usual!

French's Fried Onions Cheddar Flavored??? Never seen them. Will have to look from them during my run to the market today.

Just wanted to cross-reference my review of the Cookina BBQ Mat in this Forum area. http://komodokamado.com/forum/topic/5252-grill-mat/?p=49512

Chaos theory - just because you lay the asparagus perpendicular to the grates doesn't mean that one or two don't find their way into the fire when flipping or taking them off - at least in my experience. I did the asparagus on the mat mainly as a test to see if I could get the supposed "grill marks" with a dry cook. Nada! (Oh, and because it had been sitting in my veggie bin in the fridge since going to the market last Wednesday and needed to be cooked!)

Been wondering what to do with my last piece of lamb - Shepard's Pie! Thanks for the suggestion Wilburpan!

Received my Cookina mat yesterday in time to use it to make dinner. First, I went out to measure the mat on the grill. It is bigger than the main grill on the 23†OTB. I decided to cut it to fit the upper grill. I cut it vertically to fit between the handles. The bigger piece works well on the main grill in the horizontal direction. Fits between the handles and doesn’t cover up the opening lid in the front. The smaller piece will work well on either grill for smaller pieces of food. The mat cut easily with scissors. One note of caution after reading the directions: like many “non-stick†cooking appliances, it says to avoid using metal utensils, like spatulas, as you might scratch the coating. The test cook was chicken breast and thighs, marinated in Big Bob Gibson’s White Sauce (one of the few commercials that I use, because it reminds me of Cornell chicken). Wanted to have a “sauced†cook to see how the mat performed. Pre-heated the KK to 350F, direct, cherry wood, upper grill. When the KK got to about 250F, I put the big piece of the mat on the upper grill to preheat for about 20 minutes. Then on went the chicken. Here’s a shot about 30 minutes into the cook. You can see the juices starting to pool up. About 45 minutes in, flipped over the chicken. As you can see, no grill marks, and more juices puddling. I put the smaller piece of mat onto the main grill to begin preheating. At a little over an hour in, put the asparagus on the mat on the main grill. The asparagus is dry (I’ll dress it with some lemon juice, EVOO and herbs de Provence after it comes off). Also, raised the temperature to 400F and flipped the chicken again to crisp up the skin. After about another 15 minutes, pulled the chicken and asparagus off. Note – some browning of the asparagus, but no “grill marks.†Off the grill. Asparagus has some char and the chicken is nicely browned, despite sitting in the juices. However, the skin wasn’t very crispy. This might have been due to only exposing it to the 400F temperature for only about 15 minutes. As advertised, it did clean up really easily with just some warm soapy water and the scruffy that came with it. However, I did make a bit of a mess on my deck taking the mat off the grill, as the juices were still runny - the KK wasn’t “cold†(still around 200F) when I wanted to take the mats off and put the cover back on the KK. Conclusion: It’s an OK product to have in your BBQ “tool box.†It has definite applications, especially marinated or sauced foods or small foods that could fall between the grates, like the asparagus. Will likely try it with a piece of fish, which can often stick to the grates. But, the claim of “grill marks†IMHO, is just some hype, based upon the asparagus cook. Don’t see myself cooking any dry rubbed steaks or chops on it for that reason either!

Failures are inevitable and keep us on our toes and not complacent!

You could always order a second charcoal basket to swap back and forth between "oven mode" and "bbq mode." A lot of us do that with our basket splitters. Make things so much easier to do the old switcherooni.