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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)DW
Posts
11
Comments
1,367
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • You can do pretty great cooking with charcoal and just a Weber kettle. I keep one of those as my back up that I got as a gift my first year in college... 20 years ago lol. But I think the answer is lump charcoal and not briquettes for taste, so that makes heat management for an 8 or 10 hour cook a very hands on experience.

    So I see three big upsides of a ceramic grill, and I could have saved several hundred and got one size smaller without much loss, but I DO like to cook for a crowd.

    First, like you said, this thing is a MONSTER at keeping temperature. I would not be afraid to leave it overnight with a brisket in it. There's a YouTube channel called Smoking Dad BBQ where he did a 50 hour burn at 250F without touching vents or adding charcoal. It's crazy. Of course, this one will hold almost a whole bag.

    Second, there's enough space in it that you can make the fire inefficient if you need to. Why would you want to do that? Well a problem with other charcoal grills is you lose the ability to do low temp smoking in a high quality way. A cold fire burns dirtier. So by putting a lot of "stuff" like heat deflectors and slow roller and whatever between the food and the fire, you can use a hot bed of coals (clean smoke) and still get temperatures as low as about 170F. I make my own jerky and smoke my own jalapenos to make my own chili powder.

    Third, it is truly all season. I can do 800F+ even when it's 0F outside. I could never get my other grills to do that so I was left to wearing over the chimney starter and no pizza.

    The last thing that really pushed me over the edge has nothing to do with food prep and everything to do with longevity. This guy is a giant piece of ceramic with great customer support (I've had 2 minor issues and Kamado Joe has sent replacements free) and basically no moving parts that can fail besides the hinge and the bolt on the control tower. I plan to use this thing for decades to come. I have extra gaskets and stuff like that in case they ever fail. No gas grill I've had has lasted longer than about 5 years.

    If I had unlimited money, I'd also have an offset smoker, but this one grill does pretty much every style of cooking already. I guess that really makes about 5 things... But yeah I like it.

  • I have to agree with you. The one in the main picture was my wife's and I stopped when the crust was very brown on the bottom. The one I made for myself I crisped the toppings but burnt the crust.

    That's really why you gotta put the time in to get the oven hot. Next time I'll start preheating earlier.

  • Kamado Joe Big Joe III. $2600 I think when I got it a few years ago. Fortunately, it comes with basically everything you might want.

    A kamado was on my wish list for 2 years before I sold my gas grill and pulled the trigger. So far no regrets, it has turned out some really great meals in every kind of weather.

    It's a real heavy bastard though.

  • Sauce

    • 6 oz tomato paste
    • 15 oz tomato sauce (or use your own red sauce if you make that too. I do sometimes)
    • 1t sugar
    • 1-2 T oregano
    • .5t garlic powder
    • .5t onion powder
    • .5t garlic salt
    • Pepper to taste

    Dough

    • 2-2.5C bread flour
    • 1C warm water (105F)
    • 1T sugar
    • 1T yeast
    • 1T olive oil
    • 1t salt

    Water, yeast, and sugar in the bowl for 5 mins. Stir in olive oil. Add salt and flour starting with 2C and adding extra as necessary until smooth dough. Let rise 45 min or an hour.

    The dough is also good for making garlic knots or braids if you like (20 mins @ 400F)

    Pizza

    • Dough
    • Sauce
    • Mozzarella cheese (I'm superstitious so I say grate your own. No anti-clumping ingredients that way)
    • Toppings of choice (we did pepperoni, sausage (cooked), jalapeno, and yellow pepper)

    Roll out flat flat crust. Sauce modestly. Cheese generously, add other toppings. For an extra touch, you can melt some butter with minced garlic and brush the crust.

    The grill part will vary for set up, but this was on a pizza stone at ~650F (which is not hot enough, but it worked fine). Wipe the stone with hot water, add pizza on a piece of parchment paper. Rotate around the stone every 40 seconds until crust browns. With a cooler grill this took about 5 min. A real neapolitan style should be done closer to 800F and only takes 30 seconds to 1 minute.

    Practice lol. First pizza is always a little weak, by the 3rd pizza they are better. Cook the kids pizzas first!

    Bonus pic:

  • I feel like "the moistness" ought to be a shitty B-movie world-ending blight.

    "Grandpa was killed by the moistness; he shouldn't have even been in that valley without his power dryers"

  • Yes they mean something different. If you go ask 5 random people what an oligarch is, at least one is likely not to know what it means.

    The "woke" reputation stuff is also a little weird, but there again, the people using it as an insult probably don't have a good working definition.

    It's easy to say "words have meaning" but lots of people, even left leaning ones, don't always know what those meanings are.