fbov

I find my Maverick probes become unreliable when exposed to heat above their operating temperature. I never use them for pizza, past a "starting to get hot" alarm. Frank

Tried many ways; best results using a big pile of charcoal and lighting it at the top (Volcano method). Fastest results use a chimney starter, to get a bunch of fuel completely burning, then dump it at the peak of the volcano. I get sweet smoke before I'm up to temperature. That's important because the smoke from a young fire is not sweet; it's one of the few cases where I ruined the meat. USe your nose.... And, yes, method 2 is the only one with snowball's chance. Overheating is hard to recover. HAve fun, Frank

Depending what you cook, you might want to reconsider. I use foil lasagna pans; lower sides than quarter sheet pans. Frank

It's one of the things you learn to use...

Pork is very forgiving. Kamados aren't very temperature sensitive. Hard to go wrong. If you did a side-by-side comparison, you might notice differences, but minor ones. Lower and longer might get darker, but "to foil or not to foil" makes a bigger difference than 50F of cooking temperature, IMHO. Have fun, Frank

The only downside to John's mix is that its ~2/3 salt. Oddly enough, my favorite pork rub is more like 1/8 salt... but 1/4 pepper so it's out. (I'm not salt-adverse; but this one is low.) For low-salt options, look for "red-eye" recipes with coffee and cider-based recipes. Both are marinades/soaks, not rubs, but they also work. Here's a red-eye. I don't like coffee, so I've not tried it. 2c strong coffee 2c cider vinegar 1c chopped onion 1/2 c dark molasses Let us know how it goes, Frank

... but you can expect it to taste good, regardless. Be brave, there's very little downside. And great upside to the remote reading thermometer you've heard mentioned. Get a good one; I'm cheap, so I wasted my money on cheap ones for years... then found not all "premium" brands are equal. Thermoworks has never disappointed for any products. Pops are on sale! https://www.thermoworks.com/ HAve fun, Frank

Another case of "one gets hot, the other doesn't." The only thing I can suggest is putting larger, irregular pieces on a very clean fire grate, followed by a large amount of fairly small fuel (no dust) above it. One keeps airflow open as the fire burns, the other burns quick and hot. Flames out the top aren't always a problem. Have fun, Frank

Honestly, that's a very common result. You didn't make "mistakes," so much as you executed one of many "paths to brisket success." It may not have been exactly the path you planned... but the meat doesn't care!! Barbecue is a minor miracle. HAve fun, Frank

You can also put the deflector on the star rack, so it sits higher allowing the fire to breath. I use it for pizza cooks. Frank

Good move! Soapstone isn't designed for the 900F a good pizza stone should tolerate. In fact, that's the one thing I've learned; it's not magical. You can burn food very easily... but you also need a hot fire to get a good sear. If you have a KJ, you have two options with grease; off the edge in the middle into the fire (flares up) of off the side onto the metal retaining ring (stone is the size of a grill grate not a deflector). Have fun! Frank

Amen, sir!

If you're thinking of this as an investment, look at your needs vs. what each provides. The biggest difference is capacity. Do you need the added capacity of the higher dome? How many people do you want to cook for? I wanted to replace an offset smoker, so I needed the BJ grill area, but not the PJ's headroom. The higher dome wouldn't have made a difference to me. SS top vent doesn't work better, but is paint won't peel. The slo roller is available as a retrofit, so that's not a deal breaker either. It's also spiffier looking, but in my mind, it comes down to incremental capacity at a price. HAve fun, Frank

"Less optimal heat retention" is one way of saying "leaky." And that's not a bad thing. We've used pellets for home heating for the last ~20 year. Pellets and wood stoves are opposite approaches to wood heating. One uses lots of air and meters the pellet fuel. The other loads a stove with fuel, then meters the air. The problem with the latter approach is pollution. Metering air results in partial combustion products up the flue, which has driven a lot of mountain communities to outlaw wood-burning stoves. A Kamado is a wood-burning stove; it meters air. You cook with the partial combustion products. A pellet Kamado will meter fuel. I'm curious where they go from there. Pellets will need stick-burner levels of "leakage" to work properly. Will they perhaps duplicate the stick-burner result more closely? Have fun, Frank

Funny that no one's mentioned the dreaded white smoke... I've found that starting a fire can take 20 to 90 minutes. It's rarely about achieving temperature, usually about the quality of the smoke. A propane "match" has been most used; takes 15 sec. to light a spot. I'm still working on the first bag of wax-based fire starters. However, my last three cooks I've used a chimney with far superior results to the other methods. Sweet smoke in 20 min. I haven't said anything because I want a longer string of successes before talking about it. Here's what I think is happening. The dreaded white smoke is produce by wood burning at low temperature. It's hot enough to outgas volatile vapors that ignite and burn, but not hot enough to burn them completely. As the wood heats, so does the fire and eventually, white smoke goes away. This is known as a "mature" fire. A chimney lighter, left for a few minutes, gets to the mature stage before you dump it. I get best results using the "volcano" fire lay, making the chimney the peak. As new wood starts to burn, any white smoke is burned up passing through the mature fire. By the time I've installed grate/deflectors and closed the dome, the smoke is clear. Cooking temperature depends only on how much air you give it from here. The only downside is sparking when you dump the chimney. I get sparks from some fuels, but not others, so if it's a problem, choose fuels and lighting methods accordingly. Have fun, Frank