Safe, Hot Temp Kooking

[Paswesley]

Forum Family:

I need to know when it is safe to do a high temp kook. My KK is very recently acquired. I have used it at 150-255 for 13 hours, and at 350-425 for 9 hours. (It was at 425 for less than an hour.) This is a total of 22 hours. Is this a long enough break-in period? Or, do I need to kook at lower temps for a while longer? If it is too soon to go 700-800 temps, when will it be safe to do so? Also, how long may a temp of 700-800 be maintained, without doing harm to the tiles, or grout, or any other KK component? Please answer soon, if you can. Thanks, Paswesley

[Paswesley]

I forgot to mention, I have the square tiles, not the pebble type. Paswesley

[Fetzervalve]

I'd say let 'er rip. If it's not ready now it won't ever be. I see pizza in your future...

[cruzmisl]

Re: Safe, Hot Temp Kooking

Also' date=' how long may a temp of 700-800 be maintained, without doing harm to the tiles, or grout, or any other KK component? Please answer soon, if you can. Thanks, Paswesley [/quote']

Until you run out of lump.

[Paswesley]

Thanks for the answers, guys!

[Syzygies]

The final word on this should best come from Dennis. Though when I asked, he told me to let it rip.

With a new unit, the ceramic material itself has been cured at higher temps than you'll ever create. It also insulates very well, particularly by comparison to some other brands. However, with a new KK you'll smell the acrylic (?) holding the tiles on if you go high temps. Even this is not harmful so much as disconcerting.

I'm a veteran of suborbital flights from my K7 days (different brand), it seemed a convenient way to heat-soak the walls before pizza or tandoor, and it made for a nice "self-cleaning oven" feature. (I learned this from Jiarby, and we both ended up with serious cracking.) However, there is absolutely no advantage that I can see to overshooting the final cooking temperature on a KK, and some serious disadvantages: The KK is so well insulated that it stays at the highest temp that it reaches, rather too easily.

At what final temp do you want to cook, and why? I've seen the pizza ovens in southern Italy that could probably smelt bronze. I've seen tandoors in India. The KK is a different oven, and temps don't directly translate. I've never seen any improvement in any food by cooking above 600 F, and to my tastes the sweet spot is at most 550 F.

I regularly cook hamburgers at 500 F to 600 F; the technique changes from one end of this range to the other. I cooked a steak once at 900 F or so. The fat looked like it had mostly boiled off. It made me wonder if the remaining fat had transformed into a substance people shouldn't eat. In any case, it didn't taste as good as a steak that saw a 600 F phase, or had been cooked at far lower temps.

So what are you trying to do? Don't overshoot your target cooking temp, but don't fret if you do, and ignore any new tile smells if you insist on being an astronaut.

[Paswesley]

At this point, I don't really have a particular food item in mind. Being just a bit anal about some things, especially my new toys, I want to clean Mable. That enormous cook I did over the weekend (56 pounds of pork butts, 25 pounds of chicken) left Mable fairly messy, and want to crank her a bit to get her clean. I popped the cooking grids and heat deflector into my 75000 Btu gas grill, but it couldn't get truly hot enough to turn all of that black goop into white powder. I have been talking directly to Dennis over the last couple of days, and he told me how to proceed. Thanks

[Syzygies]

Everyone has their favorite cleaning method. I do like to alternate low & slow with 600 F, but I also mechanically scrub the grills. The main grill fits perfectly in a hot water heater pan, plugged with a rubber stopper. Soak then scrub with wadded up aluminum foil. Now a 600 F cook is enough to clean the grill.

[T Rex]

Hey Syzygies, I like your idea. Soooooooo, where do I get one of these and what exactly do I ask for?

Thanks,

T Rex

[cruzmisl]

Speaking of cleaning I tried this stuff http://www.krudkutter.com/originalkrudkutter.asp on the outside of my KK. I had a lot of junk that had settled on my KK over the winter. Lots of low and slows too without a cleaning so there was quite a bit of grease and smoke residue on the outside. I sprayed it on full strenght, wiped it off and it looked like brand new. I may give it a try with my grills and a pressure washer and post my results.

[Syzygies]

Soooooooo' date=' where do I get one of these and what exactly do I ask for?[/quote']

My exact model is widely available; it is the "Oatey 34058 24 Inch Plastic Water Heater Pan".

There's a hole that needs to be plugged for our use, but a rubber stopper works great. For this I went to an Ace Hardware where someone shows me the bins with stoppers in them.

The pan comes with a bit of hardware that encouraged me to fashion a plug using threaded PVC parts from the irrigation aisle. Way too much effort and it didn't work; just toss those parts and get a stopper.

I used to use kiddie wading pools for this, but too much water and too fragile.

[T Rex]

Thanks, found some and cheap as dirt to boot..... I like the idea that I can leave the rack soak over night then blast it with my pressure washer if still required the next day. Also the fact that it is made of plastic is in my mind, a big bonus!

T Rex

[Conodo12]

OK - proceed with CAUTION! - If you insist on burning everything off of your grills as opposed to soaking in cleaner and/or pressure washing you can do the following:

Wrap your entire grill in heavy aluminum foil. Crank the heat to 600 or 650 dome temperature - let it sit for about 20 to 30 mins max.

You will be left with a grill with very little residue remaining on the grates and lots of white powder. Give her a hose down AFTER it cools down a bit and you will be set.

CAUTION - I have seen grates heavier than Dennis' warp under these conditions. It will work but proceed at your own risk. I do not endorse this method and would not do it myself. That being said, I know many that would rather replace their grates from time to time using this method to get their grills clean rather than scrubbing. For me, I think the stuff left over from the last cook gets mostly knocked away with the Grillfloss. Anything left over after the floss is simply a flavor enhancement!

[mguerra]

eco friendly grill cleaner

I put my grills down on the porch after they cool off. The 5 coondogs clean them right good. I figure that clean up, plus the heat from the next cook is sufficient. My wife and myself are in robust health and suffer no ill effects from this method.

[T Rex]

I think I might of come up with a good idea for cleaning the grills but I thought that I would run this past the Forum members before trying it....

We have a self cleaning gas range and I was wondering if anyone has tried putting the grills in the oven on self clean to do the job?

T Rex

[Paswesley]

Hey, T-Rex. I have given some thought to that method. Of course, the high heat (around 800 degrees in our oven) will render to powder all debris that is on the grill. It will darken the steel, but that is probably of no consequence. Of greater consequence will be what happens at the molecular level. I cannot speak to this, because I lack the expertise. 800 degrees may not be hot enough to change the alignment of the molecules in the grill's steel. The heat may cause the steel to become brittle. Yet, it may not. The coal basket, for example, is regularly subjected to much higher temps than 800 degrees. Apparently, the continual heatings and coolings don't seem to hurt the steel of the coal basket. Is the steel of the coal basket the same formulation as the steel of the grills? It stands to reason that the steel of the coal basket has a different chemical formulation than the steel of the cooking grills. I think that the real answer to this question lies with the chemical make-up of the steel that is used in the grills. That is a question that Dennis may answer, if he thinks he should share that info. I have ordered a Grillfloss, and I will not be subjecting my grills to heats above 650 unless I get a definitive answer on the effect of very hi temps on the grill steel.

[cruzmisl]

I sear steaks at temps >650 so I wouldn't worry about it at all.

I use grill floss then follow up with a wire brush and then wipe with a paper towel sprayed with PAM and I'm good to go. Thorough cleaning of the grills is an infrequent occurence (for me anyway).

[DennisLinkletter]

I don't recommend using your KK as a high temp grill cleaner

Is the steel of the coal basket the same formulation as the steel of the grills? It stands to reason that the steel of the coal basket has a different chemical formulation than the steel of the cooking grills.

The stainless in the basket is the same 304 used in the grills.. When we were testing with high heat runs the stainless in the bottom of the baskets would distort and sag a bit.. Could not tell you what temps..

Especially as your gasket is food grade silicone I don't recommend you regularly using your KK as a high temp grill cleaner..

I have a customer that ran his on his first cook without realizing that the latch had two positions and toasted it enough that the silicone that attaches it failed and it was distorted..

For quick sears bouncing up to 800º is fine but I'd stick to 700º for max long time running because continual extreme expansion is not good for your KK.

Surprisingly stainless steel scrubbers work great too.. My grills are always pre-oiled I use Firemonkey's rolled and tied up towel in a small tupperware full of oil trick.. I give them a simple scrub from the top with a stainless steel scrubber. I can get almost everything.. I don't usually worry about what's on the very bottom of the grills.. as my food does not touch it and I'm sure it gets sanitized every cook..

[Paswesley]

Thanks for clearing things up, Dennis. I have a question.

Dennis Wrote:

For quick sears bouncing up to 800º is fine but I'd stick to 700º for max long time running because continual extreme expansion is not good for your KK.

When I ran Mable up to 560 (I stopped because I began to smell acrylic, and I understand that we must allow this to evaporate slowly, rather than bubble out.), I let her stay there for about twenty minutes, and then I closed the draft completely. I wanted to put out the fire and let the heat sink slowly cool. I turned down the cap to just touching the gasket, and then opened it one eighth turn. I was afraid that the cap would seize shut once the KK cooled down, so I opened it that one eighth turn. Well, the KK stayed right at 560 for the next 7 hours, and did not cool down until the coal basket was empty. The draft door was tightly closed. The lid was locked. That solid steel door to the back right of the draft door was tightly shut. The temp probe opening was sealed with the rubber grommet. Do you think that I have an air leak somewhere? Should I have closed the cap until the gasket touched the cap? What if it gets stuck again? I don't mean to whine. I just want to do this right and not hurt my investment. Thanks, Anton

[Paswesley]

BTW: Just to be clear. I was not speaking, in my earlier post, about cleaning the grills at 800 in the KK. I was following up on T-Rex's suggestion that a regular household (kitchen) oven could be used to clean the grills. It was in the context of using my kitchen oven's self clean cycle that I made the comments about the steel possibly becoming brittle and so forth. I just don't want to be misunderstood.