Hi all!
Today's post is about cooking gadgets, high school physics, and working through a long bout of analysis paralysis, (which will hopefully pay off with a long term feeling of buyer's delight.)
As an engineer, it should come as no surprise that I love cooking gadgets. There's just something I love about applying technique and technology to making better food. Plus, I get to eat it too, which is an obvious benefit. In fact, there are two food related facial expressions I make. The first is called "happy food face" which is the delighted and wonderous smile I make when I get to eat something (not made by me) that's surprisingly, exceptionally delicious. The second expression, I call "Roi Choi face," named after Chef Roi Choi, who I saw on the Chef Show on Netflix, also with Jon Favreau. Roi Choi loves cooking, he works incredibly hard, and has perfectionist standards for his food. And when he cooks something that's truly top notch, tastes it, and he knows it, his facial expression shows a mixture of feelings - he's happy to be eating delicious food, satisfied with his hard work, and a little proud of himself, all at the same time.
Anyway... I'm excited to have a new gadget in my backyard cooking arsenal. If you remember high school physics, you hopefully learned about three forms of heat transfer. Conduction, convection, and radiation. I now have cooking tools for all three.
Conduction is heat that's transferred through direct, physical contact. For this, I have a flattop griddle. It's great for making burgers, grilled cheeses, and pretending to be a short order diner cook, which is half the fun.
Convection is heat that's transferred through the movement of a liquid or gas. For this, I have a sous vide for indoor use, and in the outdoor arsenal, I have a pellet smoker. The hot, smoky air and combustion gasses are what cook the food. It makes great fish, chicken, veggies, and low and slow BBQ meats.
But that left me on a quest for the third form of heat - radiation. I wanted direct, very high, high, high heat for getting a good char on veggies or a nice crust on a steak. After a lot of research, I settled on a kamado style grill. It has a ceramic body that helps hold heat and radiate heat back to the food, sortof like a pizza oven. You can set it up for indirect, convective cooking, but I got it because you can cook directly over lump charcoal and at temperatures of up to 900deg F (~480deg C). I also like that you can shut the vents, choke off the airflow, and extinguish the coals, saving them for your next cook.
My first kamado cook I did steaks, charred asparagus, and roasted an eggplant at super high temp.
Roi Choi face.
best regards,
Sam Feller
aka THE Awkward Engineer