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This started out when I purchased a 20 lb turkey and put it in the freezer many months ago. I finally decided it was time to do something with it as it was taking up valuable room and coming up on 10 months or so. As my wife asked, what possessed me to buy a 20 lb turkey? I couldn't resist the price, which came to all of $11.60. Not wanting to spatchcock it or roast it whole, I looked into other methods of preparation. A few videos had me convinced it wouldn't be all that difficult turning this into a boneless turkey. I've never attempted doing so before, so I might as well give it a shot. De-boning took about 30 or 40 minutes, but the carcass and leg and thigh bones were out. I took the wings off completely. All the parts went into the stockpot and turned into turkey broth which is in the freezer. One floppy turkey, having lost its fight with my butcher knife - Got out the trusty needlenose pliers and removed all those tendons - The intent is to get all the meat somewhat uniform in thickness, so a few slices here and there and it's ready for seasoning. Seasoning was S&P and Plowboys Yardbird, inside and out. What to stuff it with? A Sausage and Bread Stuffing with some Spinach. Looks tasty already - Now for the fun part. Rolling and tying this beast. Somehow I managed - The Goldens' gets the call today. I put the searing plate in and got the temps stable between 375 - 425. And on it goes - I remembered I had a bag of cranberries in the freezer. You can't have a Turkey dinner without Cranberry Sauce. Since I started making my own, I'll never go back to the canned stuff. Cranberries getting happy - The Turkey Roll looking quite good out on the Goldens' - Done and resting - A slice through the white meat center - Rather than having roasted sweet potatoes I decided to make Baked Sweet Potato Fries. For something different other than steamed or roasted Green Beans, the Green Beans were sauteed with garlic and bacon. Plated. Nothing like a Thanksgiving Dinner on St Patrick's Day - What more could you ask for? Turkey, Stuffing, Cranberry Sauce, Green Beans w/ Garlic & Bacon and Sweet Potato Fries - A slice through the dark meat section of the roll - This was quite the challenge, but well worth it. Removing the bones of a whole turkey was something I'd never done before. But the results turned out excellent and it was nice simply being able to carve the turkey like you would a roast. Thanks for checking out this post and following along with today's Sunday Dinner preparation. Regards, -lunchman

Made bacon for the second time , came out great. Bought a 10lb pork belly from Costco. Three different flavors : maple , Sriracha honey , finally Bookers Bourbon and maple . They were all delicious and had very distinct profiles. Basic 7 day dry cure , 24 hour drying to form a pellicle , and hickory smoke in the Joe at 225 degrees about 2 1/2 hours until bacon hit 150 degrees. The hand slicing was a pain , I'll be looking for a slicer soon. Once you do this , it will be hard to eat store bought bacon again.

Did as I said. The temp crept up to 275 and 290 a few times, but I was able to get it back down. In the end, it was perfect. The fat on it was like candy. It was great. Thanks to those who offered support.

While cooking dinner on my trusty Webber gasser, on a beautiful evening after a busy day, I started thinking about this post. I selected the Weber to cook the evenings dinner, mostly out of convenience as I was tired and hungry and wanted a good but quick dinner for my wife and I. As I prepped dinner and began cooking on the Weber, I started thinking about how I was approaching the cook on the trusty gasser, actually came from how I have learned to cook on my Egg over the years. Temps, methods / techniques, confidence, all pretty much have come from cooking on the Egg and reading posts on KG. How I cook now, is quite a bit different from how I cooked on my first gas grill 40 years ago. The food that comes off my webber these days tastes pretty much like what I cook on the Egg, and while I very much prefer cooking on the Egg, the Weber definitely has it place. If you approach it's use correctly you can turn out just as amazing a dish as you can on your kamado. I started out with some asparagus and heirloom carrots dressed with olive oil garlic, herbs, sea salt and pepper in a little cast iron pan with holes in the bottom I found on the BBQ sale table at True Value. When I started out BBQing I never used pans or any kind of accessory, I also really didn't stagger my cooks based on what I was cooking and everything just went on the grate at the same time. The next component in the evenings dinner was a couple of salmon fillets cut to about 4oz each. They got a quick sear over direct flame until they were nicely marked. When I started out cooking on a grill, pretty much everything came out over cooked and a bit dry. In the case of salmon, the FDA recommends that it should be taken to 140 deg IT. However, an older guy named Andy taught me as he cooked some scallops that 120 deg is perfect for fish and other seafood, so thats what I do now. I made some honey mustard sauce I stole and copied from a restaurant in town. The salmons IT was at about 90 to 100 when I flipped it over, and brushed it with the mustard and honey mixture. I use Guldens spicy brown mustard and mesquite honey. No measuring just mix the two components adding more of one and than the other until you like how it tastes. Any kind of glaze with natural sugars can burn easily so keep an eye on it and don't flip it face down. With heat it will form up harden up a bit to form a tacky crust. I used to just pile stuff on a plate, thinking you taste with your mouth so whats the difference in how it looks. However, after participating in a bunch of challenges on the forum, I have come to understand that a lot of what you taste starts with what you see. I made a little tomato and avocado salad with some slivered red onion, olive oil, balsamic, and multicolored tomatoes to go with the asparagus and heirloom carrots. Arrange it all on the plate like I was setting up for a photo. Dinner is served. In closing thoughts: My experience of cooking on a kamado, needing to understand using fire and air to create hot, warm, and less warm spots on the grill and how food reacts when cooking and all the little pieces of cooking knowledge I have picked up on KG, has made me a much different kind of backyard cook than I used to be. Once you learn how to cook over fire, I think you can turn out a great meal no matter what your cooking on. So don't be to quick to kick that gasser to the curb, it has it's place.

Threw a couple of butts on the Timbo 850 today testing out some pitboss competition blend pellets today. Trying to use up a bottle of meat church honey bacon that I had. out & about all day, nice!

It took longer than I expected, but the results were very good! The Traeger held temp really well. And got back to temp and stable quickly after I opened and closed the grill. I never felt like there were big swings either. I was running the maverick probe at the same time and everything was spot on. Once I calibrated the meat probe both were within a degree or two. Had an opportunity to try out the WiFire, while running some errands this afternoon. I'll have a lot more confidence next time. I did one butt last year on the Akorn and now this one, probably a few lessons yet to be learned And @bosco, each of your grills has their unique size and features, perfectly reasonable to own them all!

Some extra photos behind the scenes outside of what I shared on my Instagram feed https://www.instagram.com/smokingdadbbq/ added my pepper puree to the cream cheese for some extra spice Love vacation but can’t beat the taste of a kamado

Ran the Big Joe at 175c (350f) water pan, spritzed ever 20 min (ish) after the bark had set. No wrap until the rest. Total cook time was 5 hours. I usually run at 150c but wanted to test it at 175c. Bloody beautiful!!

I stumbled on bbq al pastor pork a while back and wanted to give it a try. I bought a 5lb pork butt, sliced it into 1/4” pieces, marinated for 5 hours. Put on a vertical spit with pineapple and smoked with a few cherry chunks I had at 260 degrees for 3 and a half hours. We had a few people over and there were no leftovers so I think it was a win. This was super easy and I’ll definitely be having this more, maybe tweaking the marinade. Looking forward to warmer weather and more bbq.

Enjoying a sunny weekend with my new meater thermometer and a spatchcock chicken. First with both and it was delicious!

Have my first butt prepped for going on the new Traeger very early tomorrow morning. I don't have any experience with this, so knock on wood pellets hope it goes well! Debating about wrapping in foil or paper (have both), will probably wing it as I often do :-) Will post the finished pics tomorrow.

I used to cook full meals on a single kamado all the time. These days I have multiple kamados to choose from and it's usually easier to just fire up 2 or 3 to get the job done....... Except....... Tonight I had a rotisserie chicken cook planned. I was getting ready for the cook and something told me to test the rotisserie motor. Oh Crap!!! The motor clicked on for a second then died. This isn't a big surprise. I left the rotisserie motor installed on my KK from the begining when I first bought it (over a year ago). It sits under a covered porch but I live in GA with crazy summer humidity coupled with air dripping in moisture during fog and rainy days. I figure either the gears or the inner electrical connections rusted up. I guess that's what I get for being lazy and leaving it attached. So how does this relate to this thread? Well I had to scramble for plan B. Spatchcocked chicken with carrots, potatoes, and gravy underneath. A full meal done on the fly with a moments notice cooked in one dish on one kamado. Not an issue you just have stray a bit from the original plan when things go wrong.

I cut off the tops, peeled back the husks, removed the silk... rubbed it down with a compound butter i made from kerry gold, salt, lime zest, lime juice, diced jalapeno peppers, and some grated parmesan.... 300f for an hour or so in applewood smoke...

Folks. This was good. Salted and sous vide in the Anova for 4 hours at 129F. Hot and fast sear in a bubbling butter bath, and lets marvel at that medium rare magic .

Hi all.. I’m an Aussie who is living in Canada with the family for the next few years... My old charcoal cooker in Oz was pretty rusted and in no shape to be shipped to Canada when we moved, so it’s in storage over there. Last spring I went down to the local BBQ store in Calgary to buy a replacement Weber and after drooling over ceramic Kamado’s on the showroom floor, I walked past the Broil King Keg... The two key features of the material/build that opened my wallet were: 1. There was no way a ceramic cooker was gonna survive the trip back to Oz (eventually) 2. External temperature - The sales guy mentioned it and he was spot on - I have had the coals roaring and kids (both under 4) can run around the deck whilst I am cooking with the only risk being that they spill my beer! When I got home, Wifey wasn’t impressed with the increased spend... But oh well! Stumbled across this site when looking for ideas on setting up the BKK for indirect cooking (only thing that stock Keg doesn’t do well) I bought a KJ half griddle last week, but I keep going back to the photos of the D&C setup on ‘SmallBBQr’s keg - think I’ll be back to the local store soon for more parts.. Cheers all - Also looking forward to trialling some recipe ideas from this site and the community!

I am no carpenter so I did not want to try anything to difficult. I am wanting functionality. I still need to do the bottom shelf, hanging hooks and a grab bar. Being an electrician I will also have to add some LED lighting

Amen The Q makes a great addition to cooks at the cabin.

Some internet sleuthing suggested that my cure was complete. We fried some cured-but-not-smoked bacon last night and it was neither too salty nor did we keel over and croak. I smoked (hickory) it all this afternoon. Some of my pieces are way more lean than others. We taste tested a very lean section and it was decidedly in between a bacon flavor and a Canadian bacon flavor. I don’t know what to call it. Nor’Dakotan bacon? It’s good. Unless it makes us sick, it will make for happy bellies at breakfast for a fair bit of time. So I guess the bacon crisis has been upgraded to just a bacon...event.

I decided to roll some dice this week and gamble $350 on one of these cheap Chinese chamber vacuum sealers. The specs on this sealer are very close to the same as the VacMaster VP210 that is priced anywhere between $850 and $1150 depending on where you look and who has it available. I have been vacuum sealing for a long time and this tool is the most used accessory item in my kitchen. I use it for packaging and freezing leftovers as well as portioning larger quantities of various items I buy for future use. These things make a far better vacuum and seal than any of the FoodSaver style devices. They are also a lot cheaper to use in terms of bags as well. I buy generic FoodSaver bags on Amazon and pay $20 for 100' of 11' wide rolls and $16 for 100' of 8" wide rolls. That works out to $0.20 and $0.16 per 12" bag. I can get 8x10, 8x12, and 10x13 bags for the chamber sealer for $0.08 each or less depending on the quantity. I'm not gonna get rich saving money on bags but they are just a lot cheaper. I'm gonna make a video demo/review of this sometime in the next week or so. There are no detailed demo/review videos in english on this unit on YouTube that I can find. It's model number is dz-260 c and you can find some video content on YouTube but nothing as detailed as we would like to see when trying to make a purchase decision on something like this. The only thing I won't be able to do with this is seal large cuts of meat like full racks of ribs or brisket flats and butts... I can't do full racks of pork spares or whole brisket flats anyway and boston butts are usually too large when whole to put in a foodsaver bag. I'll have more info on this soon... Do any of you have chamber sealers? If so, which models do you have and how do you like them?

My Ranger portable grill has very few bells & whistles and imparts a great smoke flavor on my cooks. I was able to capture the thin blue on a recent beef short rib cook & thought it looked pretty cool

This thing arrived today... I wasn't expecting to get it so quickly. The pump oil I have ordered won't be here until tomorrow and the bags I ordered won't be here until Saturday.... Here's some first looks at it...

i add chorizo to mine also. Lends a great flavor and makes it more filling.

Here is the rest of the dough done in more naan shape. Just finished . Used cast iron instead of pizza stone.

I found an over seas supplier from Auplex for a Kamado rotisserie unit simililar to Joe Tisserie. Diameters are as follow: outside 61cm (24in) inside 52 Cm (20.47 in) I’m waiting on final prices and will post when received. Also looking at reduced shipping rates for purchasing in bulk. Just wondering if there’s any Canadians that may also be interested. Note. From what I can see the motor is battery operated. Cheers WayneR Pickering Ontario Canada

I just started building my table. I have to cut my hole and came up with this to cut my hole. I used composite decking for my table top ( I got it on clearance at Home Depot for 16.00 for all of it. Total I will have just under 100.00 into the project

Yeah, there were quite a few "what have I gotten myself into?" moments as I was preparing it. Also quite a few "I gotta get me a better set of knives" thoughts. It did force me to sharpen the ones I have this morning. It turned out as well as I expected and I'll probably tackle it again. But 20 pounds, down to whatever the final yield was (I should have weighed it) is still a lot of turkey. A few weeks ago Mrs lunchman came home with two more since they were marked down. Thankfully they're only 10 pounds or so. It'll be a while before I make turkey again. Sometimes I just find I need to challenge myself, whether it be in cooking or woodworking, and this was one of those times. I'd recommend that folks give this or a boneless chicken a try. The results can be quite good. -Dom

I almost always cook St Louis style, this is how I cook them so they turn out just how I like them: clean pull off the bone with just a little chew. Akorn temp at 275 (measured at the grate) Smoke for 3 hours Wrap for 45 minutes Unwrap and back on for another 20-45 minutes Fort the last 20-45 minutes I like the temp 320+ as I like it to caramelize the ribs a bit. How long they stay after unwrapping depends on how done they are already, how much time I left before dinner, how hot the cooker is, etc.

And the results, pretty tasty. Also served with a corn, garbanzo, celery and olive salad.

You can never have enough grills. The 575 got me into the new D2 for a relatively good price. It’s too early to say but I think that it may be worth the upgrade. Recovery was incredible to watch today..... maybe a D2 1300 is in my future!!

This arrived today at work, so freaking happy! More pics to come later. Scott

Sounds like whoever you spoke with just wasn’t up to speed on the new shipments. The Classic III Is starting to show up at dealers - literally - just now. The photo below is from Atlanta Grill Company. If you want the Classic III your best bet is to call the seller and see if you can change your order. And welcome to Kamado Guru!

I have prepped my dough, and I am currently heating my kamado up to 575 with pizza set up for naan baking. I used poolish style pre-ferment. I instead of have left over pre-ferment,I scaled up final dough recipe based on total weight of pre-ferment. For dough I used Greek whole milk yogurt. To pre-ferment add the Oil, yogurt, yeast and salt, mixed and rested to all active dry yeast to hydrate in mixture, then after resting I added fresh ground whole wheat flour one cup at a time until I add my calculate weight needed. Dough currently proofing, later I will be putting into 100 g balls and I will used my tortilla press to save some time. I will add more pictures once I have baked some. i just added the baked ones, taste is kind on nutty which I think is from the hard red spring gain that I milled for fresh whole wheat flour, Will have to try making more the naan shape, but I am happy with taste for first try,

I’m happy to hear you didn’t keel over and croak, but there are thousands of hogs out there that were rooting against you

I got me a nice piece of Steel Head Trout. I actually like it better than salmon. It's not as tall as salmon so it doesn't have the thin belly meat. Gave it a nice lemon Pesto topping. Cooked it in my 19" KK on the upper grate in my new Grandma pan. It was a gorgeous piece of fish. Below that on the main grate was some baked potatoes and homemade stuffed scallops. Slid right off the pan and onto the serving platter without a care in the world. I really like Lloyd Pans.

I tend to agree with CentralTex here. You may be pulling it off the grill to early or not resting it long enough. Most of my butts go to 205 F before I feel they are where I need it to be. Then it gets wrapped in aluminum foil twice, two towels, and into a cooler that I preheated with hot water. It typically stays in there for 3-4 hours. *That 205 temp varies depending on the but. I want it so I’m nervous it’s going to fall apart pulling it off the grill

I have a KJCII. I’ll say up front that most all of my cooking on it has been less of the “whole meal on the grill” variety and more of the “I cook something outside while momma cooks something inside and we’ll put it all together on the table” variety. But I have done the former a couple times. It’s cramped (I cook for 5: wife and I plus 3 kids from 8-14). Couple quick pics. Full chicken w corn on the cob and a few side shrimp skewers. The bird is sitting on a cast iron skillet full of diced red skin potatoes. This is easily the most food I’ve crammed on the grill so far. Skillet of fajita veggies flanked by 6x chix breast. And about 30x wings on the extender with 5x potato/onion/butter foil packs underneath. My biggest issue with cooking a whole meal on a grill this size is whether I need two cooking zones. If I do, it’s probably too cramped. If I can get away w cooking at one temp, then it’s much more doable.

Pretty much, if you plan it out, you can cook almost anything you can cook in your kitchen oven on your kamado. You can cook a large cut of meat and then as you shut down the grill use the residual heat to bake pies, breads, etc. You can stagger when things go on the grill to allow you to cook multiple side dishes along with the main dish. Chicken and Ribs is an easy thing to start with. Soup, Prime Rib, potatoes, veggies, is pretty easy as well. The more you cook the more you figure out how to set up and stage cooks. One thing is to remember anything thing you cook above something else will drip fat down on to what's below. Sometimes, that is to your flavor advantage, and sometimes you wont want that to happen. I will occasionally disregard healthy fat content, and cook a pan of potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, etc beneath a spatchcocked chicken and let the chicken drip into the pan. It's not considered healthy but It is how my grand mother cooked and we enjoy the amazing flavor and richness. The more you cook, the more you learn. Happy Cooking.

And I will volunteer with the first reply: 1. What Kamado cooker you are using? Big Joe 2. What temperature controller do you have? Fireboard + Pit Viper fan 3. What are your vent and fan settings on your Kamado? (Pictures when available) Pit Viper fan vent fully open. For top vent on the BG, see picture 4. Where do you place your ambient probe for temperature control? (Pictures when available) Not too close to the edges, not too close to the food 5. At what point on your cook you let the controller to take over During this cook, I put the food into the grate, and then started the control right away (it was not the best idea since it overshot) 6. Please share the graph from your temperature control with eventual fan output 7. What do you love about your controller? Bluetooth, good dashboards, customization 8. What would you improve about your controller? More robust PID control 9. Anything else you want to share This was my first cook with the Fireboard and the food turned out great. Some improvements I would make: a) Improve the connection of the fireboard to avoid signal loss. Note that the Drive did not log during the last part of the cook (wifi booster ordered) b) Revise the time when I start controlling temperature and how to avoid overshooting (I was rather impatient and for sure I needed to stabilize temperature a bit more) 10. And last but not least, share pictures of your cook

Yes. And the sweet thing about John's chart is that you can convert that table salt volume to weight and then use an equal weight of another kind of salt. That chart is the best cooking tool I've acquired in the few years I've been cooking.

Thank you for the suggestions Keeper. I recently got some ceramic risers and now put the deflector at the grills, ceramic risers on top and then then the pizza stone. Last weekend I tried new recipes from a cookbook called Gjelina, from a restaurant in Venice Beach, CA. I received it as a gift from my wife's cousin. The toppings were next level phenomenal. I made a Pomodoro (tomato sauce + tomato confit + mozarella). Anchovy and roasted red pepper and the last one was Spinach + Mozarella + Feta + garlic confit. The tomato confit and garlic confit add so much flavor. The dough from the cookbook was a bit disappointing. Just by looking at the proportions I thought it was too much water, but decided to go with it because it called for a 500deg cook, 10 minute cook. So we had thin crackers with awesome toppings ;). I have had great success with the recipe from Roberta's in the NYT website. I get a nice rise, easy to handle, does not stick to the peel, etc. My next attempt will be the Roberta's dough with the awesome toppings.

who uses staples on butcher paper???? I also love the misdirection from the simple question regarding aluminum to red herrings (other concerns that were not the focus of @pmillen's original topic.)

SteelHead is farmed here off the south coast. I prefer it to Atlantic salmon farmed salmon. I often do mine over apple or alder wood smoke. Sometimes I just brine it and smoke it. Your pesto idea would be a great addition to my cook. Thanks for the idea CK.

Just walk in with a "Hang em all and let God sort em out" tee shirt and you won't have to worry about being called upon.

Shakshuka is basically eggs poached in a tomato sauce. I doubt you could ever find 2 identical recipes on the web. Shakshuka is more a general concept not a specific recipe. If you want to try it just find a recipe that sounds right for your tastes and go with it. I found one to try then added some steak to it because steak and eggs just work together. I previously did a high heat, fast sear on a few large chunks of NY strip steak. Got the outside seared a little bit but kept the inside rare since it will get some more cooking time in the end. The basic ingredients. I wanted to roast the garlic and tomatoes. I fired the Oval Jr up and let it get heat soaked at 500*. Here they are prepped for roasting. 40 minutes later I pulled the tomatoes. I kept the garlic on for an additional 15 minutes. I should have pulled it when I pulled the tomatoes. @shuley this next section is for you and a few other Guru's who had that Ah Ha! Light bulb goes off in your head moment - you know the thread I'm talking about. So the Oval Jr has a raging fire and is sitting at 500*. What I now need is a small fire at 350*. Most people's brain tells then to close the vents down to a sliver and open the dome to let some heat out but that procedure doesn't really work to good. By closing both vents to a sliver it will get you a smaller fire but you are keeping all the heat trapped in the kamado. By opening the dome you are letting heat out but you're also letting oxygen in which keeps feeding the fire. Let me suggest an alternative. Bottom vent at just a sliver. What you would need for a 350* fire or a bit less. Keep the dome shut the entire time but fully open the top vent. The open top vent allows the heat to escape and the sliver of the bottom vent will shut the coals down but keeping enough oxygen for your new target temperature. Now just be patient. Go inside like I did and prep the rest of the meal. One hour later I went from a raging 500* fire to a small 360* fire. Close enough time to move on. I started by softening some onions for a while with a bit of olive oil. I added the spices and the pastes and cooked that for a few minutes. Added the peppers and softened them for a while. I then added the chopped up roasted tomatoes and garlic along with a few other raw tomatoes. I cooked that down for a while until I had a md thick sauce. I then added the steak. I used a spoon to make some wells in the sauce and added the eggs. I covered it and back on. After a few minutes I added some blue cheese. A couple more minutes and this is what you get. Looks like a mess but it sure taste good. You do want to pull it a minute or two early. By the time you get it inside and serve it those eggs will keep cooking a bit more. It's a sort of long cook but a fun and tasty one none the less. Give it a try one day.

Been feeling the urge to make Pizza pretty strong over the last few weeks. While browsing BBQ goodies on line, I saw this little fire accelerator. Made by a company called FiAir. Just a simple little battery powered fan that blows a gentle but quite consistent air current. I lit two fire cubes in a full load of lump, let them take, and then closed the lid. I pointed the FiAir fan at the fully open bottom vent with the top vent fully open as well. This little gizmo actually worked and raised my temp to 550 in about 20 min. Not as efficient or quick as the old hair dryers I have used before, but also did not blow as much ash up on to my stone as the stronger wattage hair dryer does. I will keep playing with it. It cost 20 something on Amazon. Mushroom, Goat Cheese, and Prosciutto. Cherry Tomatoes, Basil, Tomatoe Paste, and Oregano. You will never catch me cooking a Pie without at least one IPA, heres today featured brew. This is "Fall Of Troy" from Belching Beaver out of Ocean Side Cali. Truly delicious stuff. First time I tried it, but I was confident because I have never had a beer from Belching Beaver I did not truly enjoy. Fall of Troy was reportedly a mistake during brewing, however the finished beer was so popular in the tasting room that it gained entry into to the Belching Beaver Hall of Shame.

I don't really understand what just happened but, it looks fantastic

The wife says there's a wide range of other things I've been doing wrong...