Exact method for low and slow?

[JimBob67]

This is my second post here---people have been so helpful with my first one (venting problems) I decided to post another question. This is a very good forum!

Yesterday I did my first cook, using Steven Raichlen's recipe for reverse-sear tri-tip. Basically, with a cooker temperature of 225, you bring the meat to an internal temp of 110, then take it off to rest, putting it back over direct heat to finish it. I was really excited to use my new DigiQ unit, but I have to admit that the temperature control done "by hand" is pretty easy.

I filled the basket with lump, and lit a small area in the center with my Looftlighter (yeah, I DO like gadgets!). I started with the bottom opening about halfway open, and the top vent open a couple of turns. When the temp hit about 180, I closed the bottom vent, opened the top maybe a quarter turn from the closed position, and plugged in the fan connected to the DigiQ. I let it sit, DigiQ set to a target temp of 225, and added the meat, probe inserted.

A couple of things----the fan ran for a while, got it to 225, then shut off. I had some temperature over-run to about 250, not too bad. Reading some of the posts here, I will close the vent on the fan a little next time, since I guess even with the fan off, air can get sucked through it.

The second issue is more concerning. The charcoal slowly lit itself, of course, but the smell of the smoke was not that pleasant. Kind of a "suffocating fire" odor if you know what I mean (i had two lumps of oak on top, forgot to mention that).  Really not the kind of smell I associate with using my pellet smoker (Cookshack Fast Eddy, used for over 10 years).  I was wondering---is the incomplete combustion that comes from starting just a small part of the charcoal pile contributing to that? A couple of posts here mention setting the whole pile on fire (I assume with a chimney starter) and dumping that into the unit. The downside of this I could see would be trying to hold the temp down to 225!) but at least the whole pile would be actively burning.   Or, perhaps I should have let the unit have more time to heat up thoroughly (a couple hours? One guy here starts his at bedtime for starting a smoke in the AM!)  ?

As I read what I just typed, I'm not sure how clear I was. The main concern I had was the odor, almost like a pile of leaves that was smoldering. Acrid might be the right term?  By the way, I was using Big Green Egg lump. Dennis sent me some of his cool coconut charcoal, but I'm jealously guarding that for now.

Thanks again !

Jim

[Syzygies]

1 hour ago, JimBob67 said:

Is the incomplete combustion that comes from starting just a small part of the charcoal pile contributing to that?

Ding, ding ding! We have a winner!

Um, yeah. If this is your second post, I can't wait to read #100.

One of my favorite barbecue books is Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook by Robb Walsh. Not for the recipes, though one reads them and gets the idea. Rather, they're anti-recipes, to counterbalance the idea of saucing inedibly cheap ribs with some concoction made from raspberry jam and eleven other processed foods from the aisles of the supermarket where I get lost (one Apollo 11 astronaut "never trained in the LEM"). Texas butchers sold the parts of the animal that didn't fetch a premium, out the back door on butcher paper to area workers, precooked. As in, over fire with salt, pepper, and smoke. I oversimplify, as the other point of this book, actually a history, is that there are no rules. Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto cooks everything 275 F (in a salvaged 1000 gallon propane tank you modified to a cooker using "basic metal-working skills") because they're running a restaurant, and more than one cooker temperature would be impractical. Mulitple stories in Legends describes the morning cook salvaging and rebuilding the fire, because that's how their setup works.

In any case, ceramic cookers are a modern aberration of traditional barbecue technique. Setting aside the expert question of green woods, traditional barbecue was cooked using mature wood embers. One had a second fire, for preparing said embers, to avoid the nasties of initial combustion reaching the food.

Charcoal is an incomplete conversion of wood to a neutral fuel. Not all charcoal is equal. Anything Dennis sells is spectacular; if you're younger than Dennis and can come up with the scratch, consider building a shed to store a lifetime supply of his charcoal. Japanese binchu is the diamond grade generic charcoal, though pricey. One can use it as artist charcoal, and the Japanese cook with binchu indoors. The Lump Charcoal Database is a comprehensive review site, although I don't find it practical: If I'm going to ship charcoal I'll buy from Dennis, and what I can find locally is hit or miss.

One can also make charcoal; I discovered the idea of a "smoke pot" (drill three 1/8" holes in the bottom of a one or two quart cast iron Dutch oven, fill with smoking wood chips or chunks, seal the lid on with floor paste, and nestle into a low & slow fire for clean smoke with no nasties) while experimenting with making my own charcoal. This isn't practical.

I'm now in a regime where I use three classes of charcoal: Extruded coconut (Dennis) for low & slow along with a smoke pot, Coffee lump (Dennis) for somewhat higher temperatures and direct grilling, and hardwood briquets (Lazzari; their warehouse is nearby) for ample fuel for high cooks such as bread and pizza. I could do without the Lazzari charcoal if I could find space to make standardizing on the coffee charcoal practical, and I'm very careful to burn Lazzari charcoal to embers before exposing food to the fire.

One could use coffee lump for everything; extruded coconut is not the only class of charcoal that can burn cleanly "like a fuse" with raw charcoal in proximity to the active fire, yet no off flavors. Binchu also fits this bill, so one can keep exploring. I'll keep using my hoard of extruded coconut (some predates Dennis) because I have it, but if I won a pallet of coffee charcoal in a contest I'd probably not look further in that case either.

But yes, the wrong charcoal doesn't smolder well for low & slow, and that's the Achilles heel of ceramic low & slow cooking. Dennis makes by far the best ceramic cooker, but he can't eliminate the problem. So instead he also makes charcoal.

[JimBob67]

Wow! I've re-read your reply several times, and each time I come up with another valuable "nugget"! Thanks very much for your time that you put into this.

I am now scheming on how to keep my wife from discovering how much I am prepared to pay for charcoal. (The price of the KK was bad enough!)

I have a couple thoughts---at BBQ University, using Royal Oak lump, Steven always had a few chimney starters with burning charcoal going, to be added as needed to the cookers. Now I understand why.  So, next cook I'm going to try maybe half a basket's worth of fully-burning charcoal, and will add more only if it is burning completely. Only problem I can see, by throttling back on the air flow to keep the temperature  of the unit down to 250 or so, one will create a condition encouraging incomplete combustion. Same ultimate result of "bad smoke"?

Dennis was nice enough to include two boxes of the extruded and two boxes of the coffee charcoal, so i will give them a try. If they work as well as I think they will, I may have to order some! Can always tell the wife I won a contest.

Again, many thanks for your thorough and patient response!

Jim

[Syzygies]

15 minutes ago, JimBob67 said:

one will create a condition encouraging incomplete combustion. Same ultimate result of "bad smoke"?

Incomplete combustion is bad with raw fuel, not so bad with beautiful embers. Try it! This is an empirical question, and I certainly lurched at my share of mirage windmills my first years doing this.

The practical problems are finding a protocol that isn't too much trouble, and avoiding a runaway fire. If you get the KK too hot you're not easily going back.

[JimBob67]

I have a large Cowboy Cauldron that can easily be used to start the chimney, and from the looks of it if the KK is throttled down it won't need to be replenished often, if at all. I'll at least try this before taking out a second mortgage for the coconut stuff. Now that I'm retired and on the fixed-income scene and all.

Re-read your first note again. I agree, the sauce is totally secondary.  I've been cooking low and slow shoulders for 40+ years, and people always ask me for my "secret BBQ sauce" recipe. I hate to tell them that I use bottled sauce with maybe a couple of very minor tweaks. I think if you cook the meat properly, you could probably piss on it and still have a wonderful outcome.

[CeramicChef]

@JimBob67 - I use a MAPP torch exclusively to light my fires.  I think that a chimney is a rather blunt instrument under any rubric. It just gets too much charcoal lit.  Given the efficiency of the KK and the way in which the KK uses air, less is more.  Unlike any other kamado of which I know, all air in the KK flows from the bottom bent directly through the lump pile and out the top vent.  Because of that single fact, i.e. all air flows through the basket, the KK requires much less air flow to maintain a fire than other kamados.  This translates to much moister cooks.  I think you'll find in a big hurry that your KK is more efficient than any other kamado you may have used.

For low-n-slow cooks, i.e. 225-275,  I typically light a single spot right in the middle of the lump pile.  for cooks in the neighborhood of 300-400, I'll light 2 spots equidistant across the basket, i.e. about 1/3 of the way from the left wall and 2/3 of the way from the left wall.  For cooks in the 400-500 I generallY light 3 spots in the lump pile, again equidistant from eachpther.  For big  sears, I'll light 4 or more spots in the lump pile.

I use KK Coconut Charcoal only on my low-n-slow cooks.  As @Syzygies mentions in his post above, the Coconut char is simply superior to anything else on the planet for those types of cooks.  I have also been known to use it when baking breads and desserts. For all other cooks I use FOGO.  It has a very light, faint aroma of oak when it is lit.  FOGO has great size distribution and just works incredibly well in my KKs.  

When it comes to Temp Controllers, the guy you want to talk to is @5698k.  He's forgotten more about these types of cooks than I'm ever going to figure out.  He is the man.

We're always glad to help new KKers ramp up as quickly as they'd like.  Welcome!  If you have any more questions, post away.  There is always someone here who can help you.

[JimBob67]

Thanks a lot! Really appreciate the help I have gotten here in my very first day on the forum!

Jim

[egmiii]

Welcome and congrats on your new toy! 

Ever since getting my KK last October I've been on a mission to get a clean burning fire as quick as possible. I'd consider anything under an hour success, but 45 minutes would be nice. 

I typically use Royal Oak ($7.88 a bag, can't go wrong) but have used Coffee Char as well. Both produced equal amounts of the white smoke for the first hour. I think the white smoke is more from the chunks of cherry wood embedded in the basket, but I have also noticed a fair amount from a full basket of fresh straight charcoal as well.

Here are two things I've discovered that helped tremendously:

1) Top off your charcoal basket before every cook. The fire is way more consistent, and you only burn off the volatiles from a small amount of fresh charcoal. The stuff underneath tends to burn very clean on the second cook.

2) Using a CyberQ, I set the top damper to 1/8 open or less, and the fan damper to 1/3 open. I start the CyberQ right after lighting the charcoal. This has shaved at least 30 minutes off my wait time.

My next experiment was to ignite a small amount of lump in the charcoal chimney and dump it on top of a nearly full basket. Thankfully the tips above have produced results satisfactory enough to make the involvement of another piece of equipment less than appealing.

[bosco]

I light RO red and wait until the dirty smoke is gone and all is well.  Great advice above but in all honesty I have never had an issue with RO

as for settings, I turn the top open a 1/4 turn max and the bottom just a sliver and let it rise slowly. I find this gets me to 225 all day long 

[tinyfish]

When using a temp control unit, you open the top damper just a crack until you feel air push out. You want the fan to push with some resistance.

For low and slow I start with a full charcoal basket and use a fire starter in the centre. I let the KK come up to temp and heat soak without the fan. After heat soaking for at least an hour or more, I would then use the fan

 

[Aussie Ora]

Keep this tips coming people's Awesome after reading nearly every post on this site lol I have gained so much knowledge of this thing before I have even received it should be able to hit the ground running when Ora gets here

Outback Kamado Bar and Grill♨

[tony b]

I bet so. We can't wait for those pictures!

[JimBob67]

Thanks to all of you for the tips! I couldn't get onto the forum site yesterday, so sorry I couldn't respond.  I will be doing an overnight smoke Sunday into Monday, the Fourth, and I think that I have a plan.  I will use Dennis' extruded coconut stuff, or perhaps Big Green Egg (can't find Royal Oak lumps around here yet). I will throw away my Cowboy charcoal, which seems to have a "bad smoke" problem, at least in my hands.

Instead of just dumping the stuff into my charcoal basket, I will sort through the bag and build a pile, starting with the large lumps at the bottom.  Then (and this I keep going back and forth on) I will start a small fire in my charcoal chimney, wait for it to be really going, then dump it on the unlit charcoal in the basket. The tips on just opening the top enough to feel hot air coming out, and partially shutting the damper on the fan on my CyberQ will be very helpful!

Oh, this will be a nice shoulder, and photos will be forthcoming. I am somewhat of a legend in my family for shoulders smoked overnight in my pellet (Cookshack) smoker, so hope I can live up to the hype!

Again, thanks to ALL for their help and encouragement!

Jim

[MacKenzie]

JimBob, you will have no trouble living up to the hype.

[CeramicChef]

@JimBob67 - here's to a great low-n-slow this weekend!  On this inaugural overnight, use the Coco Char and see how truly wonderful all things KK can be!

[JimBob67]

I plan on using the CoCo Char!

After that, do you have any ideas on how to convince my wife that I need a thousand bucks' worth of charcoal that is delivered on a pallet?

Jim

[CeramicChef]

If your wife is anything like both of my Exes, her closet contains all kinds of shoes, handbags, etc. and I'm betting she never asked you if she could buy one of them.  Taken together, their value outstrips the value of the coco char you want to buy.  Let's get some perspective here, okay?

Bear in mind that this advice is coming from a man who is 20+ years single and twice divorced! For me, a long term relationship is a 3 day weekend!

[tony b]

Slam dunk, dude! This will be the best pork shoulder they've ever eaten. No doubt!

Post in the Charcoal Share area to see if anyone is close by to share a pallet. 

[JimBob67]

1 hour ago, CeramicChef said:

If your wife is anything like both of my Exes, her closet contains all kinds of shoes, handbags, etc. and I'm betting she never asked you if she could buy one of them.  Taken together, their value outstrips the value of the coco char you want to buy.  Let's get some perspective here, okay?

Bear in mind that this advice is coming from a man who is 20+ years single and twice divorced! For me, a long term relationship is a 3 day weekend!

HA! Good point. Plus, she really likes what I cook.

 

[CeramicChef]

See, if you think long enough, a solution is always readily apparent.  But remember, solutions ALWAYS have a price.  And that price just might be snuggling up to your KK!