Beginners Guide To Kamado Cookers

welcome back to smoked ribs, this is episode four of my series just for

beginners

and today we will discuss

kamado

style

cookers

, how they work, how to set them up and how to get the best results. We'll start right after this, yes I've been following my channel for the last eight and a half years, almost nine, and you've seen me use a variety of

kamado

style stoves, the ceramic stoves, I've used everything from kamado joe classic kamado big joe grill dome, sns and that's what we have here today take a look at this this is all ceramic this is how most of their kamados are built although that being said there are still kamados there are cast iron kamados but They are usually ceramic, which makes them heavy if you look down. here i'll show you the setup almost all ceramic type kamados will have what they call a combustion chamber and that's where you actually build your fire inside this right here and most of them have a bottom grate now they have some aftermarket baskets What they do is even easier, but for all practical purposes, we're not going to get into that today, we're going to get into strictly a basic, simple kamado.

Now, this is the s, so this kamado was different than most other kamado and has the ability. to incorporate your slow and sear into this as well or it can be set up as a standard kamado style cooker now since this is the only pot that will do that we're not even going to discuss the slow and sear and how it works in here I'm going to talk and keep it basic just about kamado stoves, if you were to buy any brand, how would you set it up and how would you cook now, first of all, like I said, this is your combustion chamber, this is where the air comes from.

Up here is the bottom vent, this is where you make the adjustments for the air intake. It's got one back here that has holes drilled into it. You can use it or you can just put them together and adjust the airflow here and at the top. side, let me put my rack back on the top side. Same thing you have here this top vent that you'll dial in your different temperatures so you're probably starting to piece this together if you look at my previous videos we talked about ventilation especially on the kettle grill it had a bottom and top vent and in that video I talked about that almost all of your smokers, well actually all of your smokers have to be able to draw in air generally at the lowest point of air output at the highest point that you smoke naturally. it wants to go up and so does the heat, so that's its natural setup.

This was no different. The beauty of a kamado is its thick ceramic walls. Once you heat it up, it becomes very, very efficient. You can put a load of lump charcoal. And that's what most manufacturers recommend is lump charcoal over charcoal briquettes and I will say it can burn or but mainly I always use lump charcoal. I'll follow it with some tea, so that's what we're going to do today. so I guess the best way to show you is to go ahead and put this into action and turn it on, today is going to be making a pig's butt.

If you are a beginner, a pork butt is a very good option to start with because it is a very forgiving meat and what I mean by forgiving is that there is a lot of fat and marbling within this pork, which means that it is very difficult to dry it out. . I've never been able to dry one, it will be moist and tender and you usually get great results the first time you try one so I would recommend pork tenderloin if you've never done any type of barbecue and that's what we're going to do today, we'll keep it basic , we'll keep it simple, oh. boy look at those big chunks now I'm using Fogo lump charcoal they're super premium and that's why they call it super premium look at the size the sizes of some of these chunks here I mean they're huge and the beauty Compared to that, they will burn for a long time.

Now I also want some smaller pieces and not everyone makes this lump that will be this big. Most people refer to those as their cherry chunks. Okay, that's how they should be. there's a lot to do what we need to do, just spread this out a little bit, they're more manageable pieces right there, just put big layers here on the side, this will burn a lot longer than it needed to, but the beauty of a kamado is so airtight, you can close the bottom vent, close the top folded, it will put out the fire once you are done, let's light it.

I like that this bump starts right in the middle and what it does is it starts to burn. and it burns normally I start with these tumbleweeds this is nothing more than a fire starter you can also find these are paraffin wax cubes that work very well and have another almost cardboard look but like compressed cardboard for lack of better terms and it has some type of soaked flammable substance that they also sell. I've used them in previous videos, but I like to bring my fire starters and keep them centralized in the center here, it's actually just as simple, there's nothing. running on a kamado is as easy as a net or anything else, just a different style of cooking, but the efficiency is what really won me over these years ago.

Now, make sure the bottom vent is fully open. It wants enough air as you pick this thing up and get it going, so we're going to open it all the way up and let them stick and burn. It will take about 10 minutes, at which point I can go ahead and close the lid. and I start dialing in the temperatures, so we're doing pretty well here in the center, we have a little fire set up, so what I want to do is get some wood to smoke nearby, not right on top, because I have to get this. up to the temperature I don't want to burn this wood too quickly, so I'm going to put a little bit here and then I'm going to put a little more here, that's a piece of walnut, a piece of walnut, it's very easy to overcome.

It smokes in any kind of pit so you have to be careful, in my experience when using a kamado in combination with a piece of charcoal it is better to use a little less than more because you can't undo it once there is too much smoke. lots of smoke, this should give you a nice little kiss of smoke and that's all I like right now. What I like to do at this point is take my baffle plate and you can turn this baffle plate up or down, it doesn't really matter, but basically it just deflects the direct heat, it makes the heat go to the sides, which gives you It provides two-zone cooking like we've talked about in the past, but instead of two actual zones, you have one zone, but the heat is being diverted through this same zone. thick piece of ceramic here now with our grill we're going to close the lid and what I'm going to do is keep an eye on this dial right here when it gets to about 200 degrees I'm going to start suffocating back into my top vent, I'm going to choke my bottom vent.

The bottom vents probably won't be open more than a quarter of an inch and I'm basing that on that again, with experience on this particular kamado, they may be a little bit different from product to product, but typically your bottom vents don't crack much. . Your top vent may be open about a third to a half, but I'll show you when we get to that, in the meantime, we'll just start building the Heat this up by heating it up. I'm going to go over here right now and prepare this pork butt. I'm going to show you what I'm using.

This is a backyard barbecue. Normally I like to remove excess fat and things like that. I'm even going to worry about that today, but what I'm going to do is spread this with mustard and this mustard is strictly for binder, but I personally think that the acidity of this mustard also helps improve the overall flavor. flavor because it does something I'm telling you I apply it to my ribs I apply it to my pork butts any type of pork like this I'm making low and slow and it always tastes better with the mustard binder so I've always done it done and I'll continue to do it, so we're going to put a thin layer of that here, so let me show you the dressing that I'm using.

This is from the seasoning ps. This is the notorious pork dressing smell. Excellent, I haven't tried it yet but I can see the red pepper flakes in it so I think it will have a little spice plus it looks good, smells amazing. I should have put this in a shaker. but we're going to be okay, a good cover on this, you want to make sure your sides work throughout this port, but just get a good cover on this and don't be shy, this is a very thick piece of meat and this season it's not even going to penetrate the center and that's why a lot of times after grinding it and taking it out, I also like to add more dough to the finished product and I'll do that too in A this one now I like to put the lid down when I'm cooking on a kamado because the Heat is coming from the bottom even though it is going around it and when you get to the top there will be more intense heat trying to penetrate through that baffle plate, not much, but you have extra protection with the layer of grease. , that's another reason why I didn't cut it.

A nice thick layer of fat will protect that meat as soon as this pit comes up to temperature, this will bring you back, okay, I'm running around 225. and I can start with that, I want to get this around 275. Actually, pork is very tolerant of 275 degrees and will really cut down a lot on the time it takes to cook this, so I have my top vent about one eighth. of the way maybe a quarter of the way open and uh I'm on 225 my bottom vent is broken not even a quarter of an inch so let's go ahead and lift this up I'm with the fat cap down.

We're passing right over the deflector plate, okay. I peaked once at the three hour mark. We're five hours in, let's take another look at this, oh yeah man, it's turning into a really nice color, it's nowhere near where we want it. this in and I have decided to move on and not finish. I want to cook this completely like you saw here. I have about 250. I decided to go ahead and let it take its time and go slower. Right now I'm at about 1156 internal temperature, so we have to hit another 50 degrees or so before this is really tender, so let's close this again and let our heat come back up.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and in this video this video mainly shows you how to operate a kamado and what a fantastic job they do now. Is he the best smoker ever? Everything you know is subject to your own opinions. Actually, me personally. like smoked meat it comes out better than anything else but a kamado definitely does a great job with it, it's pretty similar to any charcoal and wood combination smoker but the beauty again of this is the fact that it can hold everything this heat and it's super efficient and another good thing is that you can really crank them up, you can make some exceptional pizzas, I've baked bread and you cook kamado, it's really limitless what you can do on these, they are very versatile, they can go from a smoker to a grill they can be a home type oven they are really functional in many different areas and they stand out for being a good oven I guarantee they are the best smokers my personal opinion no, they are not the job done, you can bet they make a very good work and retain moisture very well.

You have juicy meat without having to put a container of water in here or anything like that. It's been my experience, so I hope this helped you understand how kamados work. The work is very simple, not very different from that of the Weber teapot or any teapot. In fact, I don't do a taste test. This video is not about the food, but rather about the smoker and how to get that food where you want it and I think we covered all the bases. On that, I'll see you in the next episode, which I'm most likely not 100% sure about, but I'm most likely a drum smoker and that's going to be our next video in this series, it's going to be episode 5.

I think we're starting to get started here one by one, so I hope you enjoy this video until the next smoked ribs barbecue.