Last night, I got the opportunity to fire up the Kamado Joe “Big Joe” for its inaugural run. I have never cooked on a grill this large, especially a ceramic grill of this size. My Weber 22.5″ kettle and my Ugly Drum Smoker are both large capacity grills but the Big Joe was a totally new experience.
I loaded up the fire box with a rather full load of the Kamado Joe lump charcoal and fired it up. The charcoal fired up easily with one of the Kamado Joe Fire Starters and I let the temperature come up slowly to around 250° since my target cooking temperature was going to be 275° for this cook.
I had read in various places that controlling the temperature on the XL sized ceramic kamados was more difficult. Fortunately, I found the exact opposite to be true during this first cook on my Big Joe. Based on my past experience with the various grills and smokers I have, the norm has been that the larger cookers like my Ugly Drum Smoker are easier to control the temps rather than more difficult, and that proved to be true here as well.
Yesterday afternoon, I stopped by Sam's Club to see if they had any decent sized briskets to use as a break-in cook for the Big Joe. I think I found the mother of all briskets in this 19.69 pounder in their meat case! I couldn't imagine a better cut of meat to use for testing out the long cook capability of the Big Joe.
So while the Big Joe was warming up, I prepped this brisket by trimming most of the fat from the fat cap and then rubbing it down with a wet rub. I let the brisket sit uncovered with the wet rub on for about 30 more minutes while I slowly brought the Big Joe up to temperature.
When I got the grill stabilized at 250° I put the brisket on, inserted my meat thermometer probe, closed the lid and slowly brought the temp up to 275°. Once the temp got to 275° it took me about 45 minutes to one hour of occasional vent tweaking to park the temperture where I wanted it. Once the temp stabilized between 270-275° I never touched a vent again. I got to t
his point about 2 hours after I put the brisket on the grill. I used my Maverick ET-732 wireless thermometer system to monitor the meat and oven temps throughout the night. I set the meat temperature alarm for 194° and the oven high/low temps at 240° and 290°. I put the brisket on at 8:35pm and went on about my business. As I watched the temperature in the oven, it never moved outside the 270-275° range during this entire cook. I went to bed about 1:00am and slept until the Maverick alarm went off at about 7:10am alerting me that the meat temp was at 194°. At that time, the oven temp was sitting nicely at 273°.
I let the brisket stay on the grill until it was probe tender, which ended up being about 196-197° with my Maverick PT-100 quick read thermometer. The total cook time was 11 hours and 10 minutes. I pulled it off, foiled it and rested it for several hours… The video of this cook will be available on YouTube later tonight and I will post it here as well.
Satisfaction? 100%. I am very happy with a grill that can hold its temperature steady for that length of time with no help. I have a BBQ Guru DigiQ II DX temperature control system, but I have not used it on a kamado grill yet. While I was watching this cook get started last night, I did order the fan adapter plate so I can connect the temperature controller to the Big Joe and Kamado Joe Classic in the future. Based on this experience, it's not really needed but it does offer some advantages. If a certain level of 'peace of mind' is needed for long overnight cooks or cooks when you are away from home, the temp control systems will give you that. These systems also stabilize your grill temp wherever you want it for you without you having to do hardly any vent tweaking. The bottom vent is completely controlled by the Guru system. The top vent can usually be set at a specific level of 'open' for the entire cook without making adjustments. This give you the ability to get the grill up to temp and just walk away from it until the meat is done.
Anyway…
I'm totally impressed! There will be a LOT of cooking done on this fantastic 'machine' in the future!
Holy Crap! A kamado Joe classic AND a Big Joe?!?!?!?! YOU my friend are a smoking GOD!! Congrats and enjoy!!!
I watched the video and your brisket looked awesome!
Regarding temperature control, I have found the same thing to be true with my Primo Oval XL. I thought it would be harder to control the temperature but it is just the opposite. 90 minutes to lock in the temperature and then you’re good for the remainder of the cook.
Excellent overview both KJs. Your great reviews and work with YouTube are hopefully being rewarded with some promotional products.
Love the thermometer you have, I’m gonna ask for one for christmas! Time to start doing some real grilling.
Can you provide the adaptor part number you ordered from Bbq guru for the Big Joe? I have a cyberq that I want to use.
Thanks
Here’s a link to the page on their website:
http://store.thebbqguru.com/weborderentry/Ceramic%20Style%20Adaptor
This adapter fits both the Big Joe and the Kamado Joe Classic…
I wish I had room in my house to invite enough people to cook such a beautiful piece of meat.
I want to thank you for the effort you put in keeping this blog: I just bought a kamado based on your reviews.
I was hesitant in pulling the trigger and spend so much money on a grill, but after I’ve seen what and how you cook on them, all doubts went away.
This is not the first item I buy after I see it on your blog.
Your reviews are well done and cover most of the products feature: great job John!
As your skills in describing products could be used to promote producers or new products, I’d like to suggest you to have a separate section of your blog for those reviews where producers provide you their products. This could help having a section where many new articles on the market are discussed (IT companies already do this: they send a demo product to bloggers for two weeks to review).
Did you think about this possibility already?
I’m making this suggestion as it seems that you already have some visibility with some companies (I guess kamado joe is one of them) and disclosing that you did not buy the product would help your credibility for the review and call for more readers comments to share their experience.
Happy holidays,
Carlo
Carlo, thanks for the comments. I have thought about this and I might do it in the near future. Some of the products I review are provided to me for that purpose and some of my reviews are of stuff that I have that I just really like. Your estimation about Kamado Joe is correct. They have provided me with these grills, but I approached them about the possibility of doing this and they were very receptive to the idea. I haven’t discussed this information directly in my blog, but I have discussed it with the members of my Kamado Cooking forum at:
http://www.kamadoguru.com
I’m glad to hear that my reviews helped you make your decision on a Kamado grill. Did you buy a Kamado Joe?
Hello John,
I have followed the discussion on kamadoguru. I agree that a forum is better suited for the purpose of illustrating new products and facilitating the discussion with readers.
As I have limited time to follow the forum, I spend my time browsing your blog once in a while and that’s why I was suggesting such a section for the blog pages. I also understand that I may be asking you to divert your time from more productive work (your videos, best I have seen to date!).
As for the kamado: my budget allowed the Akorn at this time.
What convinced me were the review of the defects (and how to fix them) and all the meals you have cooked on it.
The ability to replicate your recipes was a real motivator to upgrade my weber kettle.
The ceramic grills are priced a bit too high for my current savings, but I’m sure I’ll look for one at some point in the (near) future.
The take away of your recent posts is that I am not limited to bge grills and, based on your cooking success using KJoe grills, if they have any defects, they are negligible.
As you keep using KJoe grills, I’ll have a better understanding of their capabilities and be able to query you about details that I have interests into. As with other reviews you have done, you are giving visibility to a brand (or product) that I wasn’t even considering (the akorn, the amaz-n smoker, maverick, KJoe, and some others).
I’m sure that the purpose of your blog is not to publicize products, but while you share your passion, I’m learning how to improve my cooking skills and use appropriately tools that will make my cooking experience even more enjoyable when I finally get to eat my meal.
Again: thanks for your time and dedication in sharing your passion!
Carlo
Hey thanks for al the videos on Kamado cooking. Why are you dumping the Akorn cooker? Did you get one to see how to cook on these things thing moved to the bigger kamados?
I’m not dumping the Akorn :) It’s still here and will still be used for lots of things. Kamado Joe provided me with these grills to use on my YouTube cooking channel.