Red River Smoke

I think the Big Joe stuff will be too big and the Classic too small, they say it's a 24 inch grill, but that's outside the ceramic, KJ measures on the inside. I know it would be expensive to cross the border, but the Ceramic Grill store stuff is really excellent in my opinion, I have the adjustable rig and I really like it.

I haven't tried to roast one in the grill yet, but we do them in the oven all the time. Brown some cubed chicken breast with salt and a good amount of black pepper and throw a jar of alfredo sauce in the pan with the cooked chicken. Makes a quick and delicious weeknight supper. We like marinara style sauce less with spaghetti squash.

@txcpa $114.90 and I just noticed they included a soapstone shot glass and whiskey cubes.

Scott, your link isn't working, but I wish I would have seen this a couple of weeks ago.

I'm not sure why that one picture shows up twice. Oh well.

Review my experience so far with my new stone. I have been looking for a soapstone in the 16" range since last summer, but not terribly serious about it. With the nicer weather coming I decided to order one from M Teixeira because they list a 16" stone and the one review said it was 3/4" thick. There are a few places selling 13 inch stones, but I wanted this for double duty, pizza and to make smash burgers on, so I wanted a little more real estate when I'm cooking for more than two people at a time. I even called a couple of counter top makers looking for a sink cut out or something I could hack up myself but they didn't want to deal with me if I wasn't a contractor. Maybe I should have been a little more persistent. M Teixeira are easy to find online, they have a decent website and ordering was fairly easy. The next day I got an email saying that it had been sent, and the day after that I checked the tracking details. The label was printed, but it didn't ship for a whole week, so I called and was told that it would ship that day. I promptly got an email saying they had to cut a stone for me and I recieved it two days later. They were apologetic about the delay. The new stone out of the box, nice light gray color. Instructions say to season it like cast iron, so here it is with a coat of oil before it goes into a 350 degree kamado. Wait a minute! Wasn't this supposed to be 3/4 inch??!? Well, it never says that in the description on the website. You can order a 13 or 16 inch stone and it just describes it as thick, a review which I'm assuming is real says the one they got was 3/4 inch thick. I didn't pay enough attention and I just assumed. So I sent an email to the company and got a response from R Teixeira saying that sometimes they cut them from 1/2 inch tile stock, he assured me that it would be durable (I still feel that it won't heat sync as well as a thicker stone) and if it failed to let them know and they would stand behind it. I will choose to believe them until I have reason not to. I plan to make some pizza on it Sunday night, but in the meantime I made some smash burgers last night, it was fairly non stick and it cooked the burgers well running the grill at about 500 degrees. I need to invest in a couple of good flat spatulas now, I had a little trouble getting them to flatten out as much as I wanted, but still tasty! I'm a little disappointed it took as long as it did to ship and that it wasn't as thick as I had in my head, but customer service has been very good when I reached out. I would not call it cheap, but it's not that much more than the KJ half stone so if it holds up over time I will cautiously recommend this stone to someone that has similar wants as mine.

We like Pig's ### BBQ sauce at our house, not too sweet, nice pepper notes.

Interesting, I want to try this now.

Cool idea!

My Akorn would do the same thing as the PB does. I'd usually just get a fire going with the bottom wide open and shut the lid, after a couple of minutes it'll slide right open.

@pmillen yes, the bacon does crisp up, but you have to watch it at that point, it can go from done to burnt is a heartbeat! Nice neighborhood, I'm south of the Meadows GC, in the "new" part of town,

Agreed, I think we've all got a bag or a batch that can be anecdotally off, smell or heat or whatever, but they all seem to cook the same to me.

I posted this on the Facebook page a couple of weeks ago and someone asked for the recipe, better late than never I guess. If you have a recipe of your own for traditional chili that you like and want to try this method, just separate the meat and spices from the rest, make the meatball and cook accordingly. This one is a pretty big hit, even with my wife who claims she doesn’t like smoke that much. An enameled Dutch oven is recommended, but if you have a well-seasoned cast iron or other heavy pot that is ok to go in the kamado, that would be fine. One other side note, I won't say the Oktoberfest was the best pairing, but it's what I had. Normally I like a Negra Modelo or Sol with chili. Over the top Chili (Giant meatball chili) 2 lbs. Ground beef (we like 90/10 you can go less lean if you like) 1 lb Hot Italian bulk sausage 1 tube of Chorizo (I get the Supremo from Costco, think it’s about 8 oz.) 3 T Chili powder 2 t cumin 1 T Garlic powder 1 T Onion powder ½ t Black pepper 1 large onion, diced 3 bell peppers chopped (I like to use red, yellow and orange) 1 Jalapeno chopped 3 or more garlic cloves, diced 2 14oz. can diced tomatoes (I had frozen diced cherries that I used this time) 1 14 oz. can tomato sauce (I had homemade this time) 2 cans of Rotel 2 cans of chili beans 12-20 oz of beer or broth (cheap beer, I usually have some High Life around for just such an occasion, Modelo works, I imagine an IPA would too) 12oz or so of frozen corn It’s all to taste, if you want it heated up can add more jalapenos, rotel, chili powder, cayenne whatever. Bring grill to 275-300 F with heat diffuser in place with some kind of spacer for the Dutch oven to sit on, I use ½” copper elbows. I usually just have 1 or 2 chunks of wood in my lump for this, that ground meat will take on smoke flavor pretty easily. Sauté onion and peppers in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil until starting to soften in Dutch oven over medium heat on stovetop, add rest of veggies and cans except for the corn and transfer to kamado uncovered. Mix all of the ground meats together in medium mixing bowl with all of the dry spices, try to get a fairly even blend, form into a giant meatball and place on wire rack that will fit over the dutch oven in the kamado. (I use a bowl that will pretty much be the right size for the ball, so I just kind of plop it onto the wire rack.) Put meatball directly over DO on grill and bring to an internal temp of 150 F, (should be a couple of hours) remove meatball and chop into bite size chunks, add meat back to DO with the corn. I usually decide to add more liquid at this point and will generally have a pounder of cheap beer to throw in, I imagine chicken broth would work nicely too. Cook an additional 1-2 hours or you could eat it now, bring back to the stove and skim any fat off the top, add any spice you think it needs. Fits pretty perfectly in my 6 qt. DO.

Agreed, for an omelette it would be nice to have a less sharp corner to get under it a little easier, but once seasoned it makes for a really slick cooking surface.

We have been needed a new omelette pan for a while, (favorite weekend breakfast are chorizo and cheese omelettes with guac and salsa) the finish on my hard anodized pan that I like to use is getting thin and with all the talk of cast iron on here I started looking down that road. We have a glass top stove, and I know you can use cast on that, but I had recently got a carbon steel wok and really enjoy that, so I thought that might have the benefits of cast, but lose some of the weight. Ordered the Matfer Bourgeat 10 1/4" black steel pan from Amazon http://a.co/d/efh3tAs and seasoned it up last week. I did a good soap and water scrub then wiped down with oil and then upside down on the gasser that was running close to 500 F, probably a little hot, after an hour I scrubbed it down again, reseasoned with oil and back on the grill for another hour at around 400 F. Came out pretty dark, but slippery, my first omelette stuck a little, but I think I let it go too long before I flipped, the second day it worked flawlessly! This should really be a forever pan and it can and may go into the kamado with a steak or something.