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Howdy KK Kooks! For your consideration, I present a hickory smoked, reverse seared Prime NY Strip. I've been under the weather lately and haven't done a thing with TheBeast. TheBeast was getting a bit antsy, so I went out to the refrigerator and discovered I had 2 Prime NY Strips. More correctly, SWMBOI asked if I intended on letting "... all that meat go to waste"? She also informed me it was taking up needed space in the refrigerator. It wasn't bothering me one little bit in the refrigerator and after all, it IS my refrigerator! But as we all know, happy, ahhhh, happy life! So not feeling too keen about putting' on the dawg, I lit TheBeast and threw in a piece of hickory for smoke. Here he is, getting up to speed: Here are the Prime Strips just on with nothing but salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Just plain simple. And after 30 minutes at 200F, here they are at 120F when I pulled them. Really gorgeous color on that meat. I opened the bottom vent about 3/4ths of the way open and spun the top hat vent 2 full turns. Temps took off like a rocket sled on rails! Here's what 750 looks like in the belly of TheBeast! Here's 2 minutes later at the first turn: Here's another 2 minutes after that first turn: Pulled at 135 internal temp (SWMBOI Likes her steak on the medium side and again, happy, ahhhh, happy life!) I gotta figure out a new saying for SWMBOI! You can't tell it but the pic because the light was so bad and my camera sucks, but it was SWMBOI Medium. Perfect she told me. Whew! Another bullet dodged! And here, finally, is the means whereby I avoided going face down in my cook. HYDRATION! That Shiner Wild Hare died in the service of a great steak and a grateful CC! Pete The Pink Salt Pig gives this cook 4 hooves up! He fell on his a$$ doing so, but Pete liked this cook! Y'all have a great week!

So today is a nice cool day here in OKC and after Jerri smoked cheese right after Thanksgiving and my ne'er do well Brother gigged me to smoke some cheese for him, I decided to do some smoked Tillamok Medium Cheddar Cheese today in TheBeast. This is my first attempt at smoking cheese in the belly of TheBeast, so we're into unknown territory. So, we shall see what we shall see. Open up both manifold wide open to get plenty of airflow to make certain the A-Maz-N-Tube Smoker performs as designed. Here's a pic of the A-Maz-N-Tube 6" smoker resting on my lower grate in the beast. It's been lit and has been burning for 10 minutes. Blew out the fire as per instructions and it's now smoking away. We're using hickory pellets today for our smoke component. Here is the Tillamok Cheddar cut into slabs for better smoke adsorption. I used a veggie tray since the holes will allow for good smoke contact on all sides of the cheddar slabs. You probably can't tell from the picture, but I have the upper cooking grate to get the cheese high in the dome of TheBeast. The upper cooking grate is sitting on the main grate which is above the lower grate. So we have the lower grate holding the Tube Smoker, the main grate, and the upper cooking grate holding the cheese for smoking. Here's a picture of the top vent. I've opened this more for this smoke than it's ever been open for a cook, even high temp pizza cooks. The reason for this is that Tube Smokers are notorious for not staying lit in kamado cookers. This isn't going to happen to me today! TheBeast's top vent is 3 full turns open at this point! If you look right under the top vent in the lower right hand quadrant you can see the gasket. Here is the cheese after 2 hours on smoke. The cheese doesn't look as if it has adsorbed much smoke, but believe me it has! You should have been in the kitchen 5 minutes after I brought it in .... smelled like a BBQ joint! Go figure! After a trip to the Food Saver, here's what you get ... Note that Pete The Pink Salt Pig approves! Also note that I've put the date I smoked this cheese on the bag. It'll be ready for consumption in 3 weeks, just in time for Xmas hors d'oeuvres! The reason the bag is so dadgummed crinkled is because I got distracted by Skippy, the Sous Chef cat! I"ll let y'all know in 3 weeks how this turns out!

Wilbur's post of his Portobello Burgers reminded that I didn't post a recent burger feed that I did. While mine is nowhere as impressive as his, it still was pretty dadgummed good. This took place a few Saturday's ago while watching American College Football. So here is that burger cook ... I'm not wanting to do a grand cook just for my fat rat backside, so I decided Simple Is Best. Just a couple of grilled hamburgers on The Beast will do just fine! I found a new brand of Miller named "FORTUNE" and decided to give it a try for hydration purposes. The bottle is black and could be hard to see against The Beast, but it's a pretty good tasting beer. I prefer Miller Lite, but this is a good start. Here is the total extent of the seasonings I'll be using on this cook ... salt, pepper, and essentially garlic. Sometimes Simple Is Best. Finally, here are the hamburger steaks resting until The Beast is heat soaked and ready for the cook. I love a plain old every day ordinary classic hamburger. Mustard, dill pickle, a thin slice of onion, and some good cheddar cheese. Wait, I guess that cheese makes it a cheese burger! Ok KKers, here's the rest of Simple Is Best, but with an undocumented but true twist! So The Beast gets up to temp and on the burgers go! Here's another view to show you how small half-pound burgers look on The Beast ... Things are doing well. Run inside to get the fixin's ready ... As I said, simple is best and this is one very prosaic cook. It doesn't get any simpler or prosaic than French's Yellow Mustard. I grew up on it and I love it! Time to flip the burgers. I'm wearing my welder's gauntlet because it is dadgummed HOT in the belly of The Beast! The feast is ready and I'm so hungry my stomach thinks my throat's been cut. Let's get these bad boys assembled and on a plate! And as we're ready to sit down with a cold beer and a balanced plate of grilled goodness ... My dadgummed doorbell ring! Blast it all anyway! I open the door and it's my dear middle brother who lives just around the corner, not 125 yards away. "HEY, whatcha eating'?" he asks. "I thought I smelled you cooking! When do WE eat?" "We?, I asked. "Hey, what kinda beer you got there?" he asked as he walked on by to the table. Oh well, once the camel's nose is under the tent, he's gonna eat and drink. And so fellow Gurus, a sumptuous feast was had by yours truly and his feckless brother, now fast asleep on the sofa! And what did the fearless Sous Chef Skippy do during all this commotion? Where was he? Sitting on his cat tree watching the whole thing go down! And so they lived happily ever after. The End!

Hi KKers! Last Friday evening I did PaPa Murphy's in the belly of TheBeast! Quick and simply and delicious. Here's the set-up ... baking stone (YEAH! That thing is HEAVY!) on the extended cooking grate over the main grate. No diffuser. Dome temp at 425F per PaPa Murphy's direction. I normally do pizza at higher temps, but PaPa Murphy's dough is literally engineered for 425F since most home overs don't get above 500F. Here are a couple of pics of the unbaked pies with a few extras from the refrigerator here at ChezChef: The first pie is thin crust the second is regular crust. Both pies were augmented with jalapeño andouille and spicy litallian sausage cooked on TheBeast and some more low moisture cheese. Here are pics of the two pies after their being cooked: The frist pie got too close to the edge of the KK baking stone and I was a minute or so late in pulling it, hence the burned edge. I wasn't about to let that happen on the second pie! Both crusts were crispy and the pies were delicious. For store-bought pizza, this was the best I've had in some time. Quick and easy peasy! The beverage of the evening was a relatively new ale from Shiner ... The Wild Hare. Very good tasting and I heartily recommend it!

Hi KKers! Yesterday was the BIG Thanksgiving Feast at my church. I volunteered to help cook some turkeys. In fact, I signed up to do 6, was told to expect to do more, but was only given 2 due to so many others wanting to cook the birds. OK, no big deal. I went out and bought a CyberQ WiFi unit to help with the cook seeing as I thought I had so many birds to cook. Well, the cook ended up being no big deal, but I think I screwed myself. More on that at the end. Early Saturday morning was cold and wet! I'm not a cold weather guy and I"m certainly never going to like being both cold and wet, so I was looking to spend as little time outside as possible. The CyberQ helped me stay dry and roast toasty. This WiFi feature is simply wonderful! Bluetooth has some inherent limitation that are easily overcome by WiFi. Here's a photo of the CyberQ all plugged in and ready to do its work in a hostile environment: Here's the PitViper fan ready to do it's thing in the rain: Neither until is waterproof so I had to figure something out. I Buddy of mine has drilled holes in Tupper Ware that he runs his cords through, but I didn't have that luxury. SOOOOO .... I made do. I had to anchor down the little storage bin covering the Cyber! unit with anything I could find ... these Oklahoma winds were nasty that day. The PitViper fan I covered with aluminum foil wrapped around the neck of the fitting that goes into The Beast. I secured it with a two twist ties tied together. Talk about Red-Neck engineering! But it worked and that's the important thing. Two 20# turkeys fit on the main grate with lots of room to spare: Now normally, I'd truss the legs and wings, but I was given strict instructions not to. The ladies who run this event told me not to put smoke on the bird, not to truss, no dressing, no oil on the skin for crispness, and cook until the pop-up thermometers popped up. I wasn't about to argue, so no smoke (except I did put on a little maple!), and I cooked the bird the bird until the pop-ups popped up. BTW - know what both pop-ups were set to? 175F! How do I know .... because the thermometers showed that temp on the CyberQ! In any event, here's a pic of the birds right after the CyberQ registered 155F, the temp I'd normally pull this cook. You can see the pop-ups on both birds in the back right hand quadrant: We did this cook at 350 and the CyberQ kept it nailed on that temp! Total time in the belly of TheBeast was 2:45: The finished birds ... notice the popped up thermometers ... 175F according to the CyberQ. I was instructed to cook until the pop-ups popped up and that's what this far rat did: Not too bad but could have been soon much better. BUT ... I'm not running that show, I just work here, drive a truck, and sweep the warehouse! Here the birds are foiled right before I took them to the church. Notice on the far right the bird tried to escape --- he didn't get far! To the church he went. The car smelled incredible for the trip! So all in all I'll give this cook a 3.5 Star Rating out of 5. Now for the I'm screwed part. I take those birds into the church kitchen and everyone starts oohing and aahing. How did you get that color on those birds. I said cooked 'em on my Komodo Kamado! The head of the Knights of Columbus perked up and came walking over to me and said, I never knew you had a kamado, like a BGE! I said, I have a kamado, but its MUCH better, IMNSHO, than the BGE. He said, so how come you're not signed up to cook for our brisket feed!? Now I've been a Knight for a LONG time and I never knew we had a brisket feed! The head Knight said, Well now you know and you just signed up! How big is your kamado? I told him it was large enough to fit 4 turkeys like the ones he was looking at. He said --- You're my new head bbq chef and walked away. We cook and sell over 75 briskets. I'm screwed! No good deed goes unpunished! I knew I should have listened to the Nuns!

Well KKers, it snowed in OKC yesterday, about 2.5" from what I hear. Windy as all get out and dadgummed cold. However, The Beast seemed right at home here in OKC and on the patio. Y'all stay warm and have a great week! Oh hey! Dennis, The Beast wanted in yesterday afternoon. I had to tell him NO! I told him that he had a coat on the way from overseas. Any word?

Good Saturday Morning, KKers! Yesterday I did a turkey for a little get together here at Chez Chef. This was my first time using the CyberQ WiFi controller. I brined the turkey overnight and cooked it to an internal of about 155F. I injected a mixture of butter, garlic, thyme, rosemary, and a tad bit of maple syrup. Here's the guest of honor for the dinner party, Tom. Tom, meet the Gurus! Here are the contents of Tom's giblet pack and various other pieces/parts. From left to right we have the heart (i'm always amazed at how small the heart in any animal is relative to the body!), neck, (now from top to bottom), the plastic thing that keep the legs trussed up, trimmed fat & Pope's nose, and the single most useless invention of the late 20th century, the pop-up thermometer, continuing left to right we have the liver and finally the gizzard. All gone. I HATE giblet gravy and I HATE giblet dressing. Here's Tom joining the Polar Bear Club by taking a swim in some brine I made up especially for him ... salt, sugar, peppercorns, crushed cranberries, citrus peel, thyme, and rosemary. Tom all dried off after his overnight swim and about to be injected with the butter injection mentioned above. Two views of Tom all greased up, trussed up, and ready for his cook. Here's a pic of Tom with his new best plate friends ... roasted rosemary potatoes and roasted brussels sprouts that will be soon swimming in a nice mustard sauce. Here's the money shot! "Pete the Pink Pig" will ALWAYS have a place of honor at my table. Not shown is the Apple Cider based Cole Slaw that people rave about. I'll post that recipe in the recipe section. Finally, a shot of the surviving nit of desert ... a Blackberry Wine Cake. All in all a nice cook and a nice send off for Tom. Not one single tidbit left over for sammies during today's football action. Y'all have a great weekend!