Experiments with Kamado Cooking

As has often happened with the desk project, a short “intermission” project in the workshop has intervened in progress.

My wonderful family got me a great combination birthday/father’s day gift…  A ceramic grill/smoker from Primo Grills and Smokers.    I have long enjoyed grilling, and as my wife says “The ceramic cooker should allow for many hours of your obsessive experimentation”….she knows me well.

From their website  “Ceramic Cooking has been practiced in Asian countries for over 3,000 years. It remains a popular cooking method. Ceramic allows food to cook evenly with minimal moisture loss.“    The image below is credited from the Primo website explaining how these cookers work.

This is also known as a “Kamado” cooker and I have been wanting to try one out for awhile.    The better known “Big Green Egg” brand ceramic cooker is of the same type as the Primo.  My wife chose the Primo for its larger size, and I think that she made a very good choice (she knows that bigger is usually better in my book!).  Both the Primo and “the Egg” get excellent reviews on-line and I do not think that she could have made a bad choice.

I have found the website “The Naked Whiz” , that provides a great deal of information on the Ceramic Cookers.   The Naked Whiz also provides an interesting review of lump hardwood charcoals. These seem to be hard to find in Pittsburgh, and will require some research.

Unfortunately,  due to demand this time of year and limited distribution, my Primo has still not arrived (they are made in small batches in the US).    But that’s OK, because it will give me time to build a work-stand/cart for the grill prior to its arrival.   Its always great when your hobbies can collide in this manner!

The grills come designed to be free-standing, but it seems that almost all owners either build or buy a stand to raise the grill to a convenient  height, and to allow for work surfaces  (again, see “the Whiz”).  The pre-made stand that Primo sells is made from Cypress, and I briefly considered building one out of Cypress also…..but  I decided to go with less-expensive and easier to find treated-lumber structural components with Trex-brand manufactured decking material as the work surfaces.

I know…..normally I would go with all wood also, but in this case I am being practical…strange but true.

I bought the material yesterday, and will begin construction shortly and post photos.  Once I start work on this, I expect to be able to finish the cart in one long afternoon.  An easy project.