AJS390

Pretty much the same here, I had a cheap offset charcoal smoker that I picked up from Walmart for $100. It was OK for what I had spent on it, but I was never too excited with it as it required frequent babysitting and delivered only mediocre results. I was has more than happy with the performance and have been having a great time with my kamado. So far I consider it one of the best things I've ever bought based on the results and the amount of fun I'm having using it.

Not sure what you mean by this, you can get a Joetisserie for the BJ. https://www.kamadojoe.com/products/joetisseriebig-joe

I did trim the fat down on the outside. It was, as you said, the seam between the flat and point that was the issue. I trimmed some of it off beforehand at the end of the seam, but I admit that I didn't put a lot of effort into digging into the seam. After cooking and cutting it turned out that the fat seam was about 2/3 of the thickness of the point. I've cooked many briskets before, this was just the first on the kamado. I know what a good quality brisket looks like, and this was not it. Higher quality meat has higher fat content of intramuscular fat, not simply bigger fat deposits.

Nice! Looks delicious

Also, for a little context, the brisket wasn't even USDA choice much less a Prime brisket. It was just one I was able to get from a friend who works at a nearby meat wholesaler for a steal. So my expectations weren't high, but still a little disappointing.

Yeah, the picks I took were of the flat, it was relatively lean, and turned out much more successfully than the point. The point was the disappointing part, as I said there was almost no meat in it. Looked more like a can of lard than brisket. That's true, and good advice. I should have been more careful in my write-up. I did check the dome temp 40 minutes after putting the meat on, and it was right at 225° at that point. My take was that the air became much more humid and moisture laden by the morning, and thus the fire didn't have the energy to overcome the higher demand of water vapor with the vent settings as I left them. Just my 2 cents, and curious if anyone agreed. Thanks for the responses, and here's a picture of the brisket as I put it on just for fun. It's admittedly not the best as it was dark and I took the picture with phone and flashlight in one hand.

I did my first real low and slow overnight cook a couple of weekends ago on a brisket that I was able to pick up for super cheap (the cheap price was accurate, not a great cut of meat. Had to throw away probably half of it as it was all fat with literally no meat, but that's a different story). I got the kamado fired up around 9pm, held rock solid at 230° for a couple of hours until I put the meat on at 12. Everything looked great, woke up the next morning around 7 to find extremely heavy fog and my fire almost out (air temp outside was only barely cooler than it had been at 12). It had dropped to 180° and was barely hanging in there. I opened the vents up and got it all under control, finished up around 3:30 and let it rest for an hour and a half. The brisket turned out great, despite the low quality, but I was surprised by the drop in temperature through the night. I expect I already answered my own question, but am I correct in assuming that it was the fog having such an impact on the grill temp? Anybody else have that experience? I know a controller would solve that issue, but I just feel that would take the fun out of cooking with my kamado for me. I was just curious to see what others have experienced.

Haha, I just had a similar experience. I am waiting on a new gasket (warranty replacement) for my Classic and hadn't heard anything in over a month. I emailed KJ and they said it was on back order, which isn't surprising but they never bothered to tell me. No big deal, the gasket I have works well enough for now, I was just worried about long term. Then, out of nowhere, I had a box delivered to my house the same day customer service answered my email saying they had no idea when my gasket would be shipped. I opened it up to find two side shelf brackets for some reason, and a packing slip that showed my address but no inventory listed on it. It's the weirdest thing. I have no idea why I would have been sent these brackets, they certainly never came up at all in any of my communications with them.

Looks good! I use the cajun foreplay rub all the time, works really well on pork but good on almost everything. Cajun french fries might have been my favorite.

Looks great!

I definitely have noticed the same thing. I can't find any lump charcoal at any stores around here, and places like Ace that sell online and ship to store all say out of stock too. Can't even find bags of Cowboy or Royal Oak that are usually everywhere!

Haha, I agree in principle since they turned out so well. But it was more than enough for the two of us with just one rack, I can't imagine what we would have done with another two!

I haven't had my kamado for very long, but I decided to give this month's challenge a go as I figured it was manageable even for a newbie. So, without further excuses, here's my 5 ingredient cook (haha, which ended up being only a 4 ingredient cook as I understand the rules, but it was too late to make any additions at that point): Baby Back Ribs & Cornbread. I filled up my KJC II with charcoal, lit it up, and got set up for indirect with both heat deflectors in at the lowest level and my grill grates on top. I let the grill come up to 375°. First up was the cornbread. In order to stay within the ingredient limit I used a boxed cornbread mix which called for butter, milk, and eggs. I mixed the ingredients together and poured into 3 small cast iron skillets that I had let come to temperature on the grill. I was also pretty generous with the butter that I used to grease the pans as I prefer a very buttery cornbread. These then went into the grill and cooked for about 25 minutes, until the edges looked crisp and the tops were turning golden brown. Then I set them aside to cool, closed down the vents on the grill, and started prepping the ribs. As you know, it takes a while for the grill to drop temps, but I wasn't planning to go super low for these ribs and was just shooting for 300° - 325°. At this point I also added some apple chunks for smoking the ribs. I prepped my ribs, rubbed them down with some Urban Accents Kansas City Classic Rub that I had received as a gift (I love this stuff, great blend of sweet and heat), and let them sit for about 20 minutes as the grill cooled down some. When it got down to 325°, I threw the ribs on and left them to cook for the next 2.5 hours (1.5 hours uncovered, 1 hour wrapped in foil with some water added). After 2.5 hours the grill had finally cooled down to about 290°, and the ribs had a great bark and were perfectly tender when probing with the thermometer. This is where I had planned on using my fifth ingredient, Sweet Baby Ray's Sweet 'n Spicy Barbecue Sauce, but my wife agreed that they looked too good to pass up already. I was perfectly happy with that as I much prefer dry rub ribs and don't really care for barbecue sauce. With the ribs looking done (they bent nearly in half when picked up), I unwrapped the ribs and put them back on the grill to crisp up just slightly while I warmed the cornbread. I covered the cast iron skillets with foil so the bread didn't take on the smoke and put them back on the grill with the ribs for 10 minutes. I sliced up the ribs and served with a skillet of cornbread (the bread actually would just flip right out of the pan but it looks much cooler for each person to get their own skillet ). Everything turned out wonderfully. This was my first attempt at making either ribs or cornbread on the kamado, and things couldn't have gone better. The cornbread was amazing, moist and buttery but still crisp on the outside, and the ribs were just as good. Perfect amount of smoke flavor, solid bark, and still juicy and tender on the inside. They were done just like I had planned, pull off the bone tender but still solid enough for some good bite-through. I cooked the ribs a little hotter than normal since I didn't want to wait forever for the grill to come back down to temp, but things still went pretty smoothly. My wife loved the results too, maybe I'll be able to convince her that things would have gone even better with two kamados, one running low for the ribs and one high for the cornbread... I'm not too good at pictures so calling it a "money" shot would be a pretty big stretch, but I did actually remember to take some pics this time. To be honest though, I almost completely forgot to take a picture of the end result, so it was a little rushed. No worries on my part, it was fun just to participate! My final list of ingredients: Baby Back Ribs, Krusteaz Honey Cornbread & Muffin Mix, Milk, Egg, Sweet Baby Ray's Sweet 'n Spicy Barbecue Sauce. I also used butter and barbecue rub that didn't count toward the total.

I cooked mine at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes, then opened up the lid to kick up the flames to crisp up the skin further for another 20 minutes. I was running on a pretty empty charcoal basket at that point though, as I was trying to use it all up completely before trying some new charcoal on the next cook, so the times probably are pretty generous. I really overshot the temp, probably finished up with an internal temp of 215 or 220 (it was already at 208 when I checked it before crisping the skin), but they were not overdone by any means. Still wonderfully juicy and perfectly crisp. Probably could have had them done sooner, but hard to complain with the results.