wilburpan Posted October 13, 2014 Report Posted October 13, 2014 Yesterday I cooked my second meal on my KK 23â€. It wasn’t anything fancy, just Chicago style hot dogs.The main thing that has impressed me so far in terms of using my KK 23†for direct grilling is how fast the grill comes up to temperature. I’ve been starting the fire using one of those propane weed burners. It only takes 15 seconds to get the top chunks going. With the bottom vent about 1/2 open and the top vent open 3 turns or so, the thermometer hit 500ºF in only 10 minutes or so. That’s about how long it took my old gas grill to heat up for direct grilling.Yesterday I cooked the initial batch of hot dogs, and shut down the vents. 20 minutes later, I needed to cook an additional one, and saw that the internal temperature was down to about 350ºF. I opened up the vents again, and was back to 500ºF in about 5 minutes.My conclusion: what I really have is a charcoal grill that’s as efficient as a gas grill. For me, that’s pretty impressive, and that’s without trying low-and-slow cooking (so far). 1
dstr8 Posted October 13, 2014 Report Posted October 13, 2014 Same discovery here...and NOT missing all those trips to get propane tanks filled!
DennisLinkletter Posted October 13, 2014 Report Posted October 13, 2014 The more freely the exhaust exits the chimney, the more vacuum is created. Unlike other charcoal grills there is no gap between the body and firebox or holes in the firebox that lets air bypass the charcoal. All air that leaves the grill creates forced airflow thru the charcoal. This is why the KK gets going so quickly..Air will always take the path of least resistance.. i.e. the gap and holes first. I designed the KK to be a high performance tool.. creating these passages for airflow to go around the charcoal is like putting a rev limiter on a sports car.. That being said, you need to be responsible because if yo take a call and walk away you can actually get hot enough to make the bottom of the 1/4" 304 stainless basket sag and droop a bit.. Wonder what kind of heat that takes! 1
tony b Posted October 13, 2014 Report Posted October 13, 2014 Wilburnpan, be careful doing that - shutting down the grill from fairly high temperature and then opening it back up. You can get nasty backdrafts and can singe off some arm hair (or worse)! I can speak from firsthand knowledge about this. I was cooking steaks at high temp on a friend's BGE, closed down the vents to let the steaks roast to finish, opened up the lid too fast and WHOOOSH! I jumped back in time to not get singed, but I was lucky! Here's some info from the Naked Whiz website, including a video. http://www.nakedwhiz.com/flash.htm
wilburpan Posted October 13, 2014 Author Report Posted October 13, 2014 Thanks for the reminder. I’m all over the burping the lid thing.
tony b Posted October 14, 2014 Report Posted October 14, 2014 Yeah, need to school the newbies, as most other grills (e.g., kettles) won't do this, so folks don't have any experience and can get burned if not careful. It's because the KK is so airtight when fully closed up.
