Dan the Man the "BIG RED" Kamado Kooker

For Christmas this last year, Dan the Man received a few gifts cards for Mernards from our boys. For those of you who do not have a Mernards where you live, it is like a Home Depot or Lowes. Danny has been sitting on those gift cards all this time waiting for the summer grills to come in stock so he could use them to help purchase a new grill. Danny has been wanting a new grill, a charcoal grill, for a year or so now. We currently have a gas grill that never seems to work right.

He originally did research on charcoal grills several years ago and ran across one called the "Big Green Egg" or some such thing. He has been obsessed with getting one since. The only thing holding him back is that they cost around $800 and while Danny can easily dish that kind of money out for some piece of machinery or equipment for the ranch/farm... he has a hard time spending that amount on something that falls in the "household" category.

Well, he finally found a "knock-off" version of the "Big Green Egg" at Mernards! Oh happy day! It's called the "Big Red" Kamado Kooker of which Dan the Man is the new owner of. It is about the third of the cost of the egg one. I like it, because it is red and matches perfectly with the Cleary building. Green would not have looked so good!

"BIG RED"
Kamado Kooker

(I just noticed his grilling "tools". What is my garden spade doing hanging from there?)

Oh my gosh, can I just tell you he has been like a little boy at Christmas with his new hot wheels race track that he simply can not get enough of! He has turned into an OBSESSED GRILLING MACHINE! Hee, hee! I'm not complaining, I've actually have enjoyed someone sharing the daily cooking chore with me! I am in charge of making sure there is something thawed out for him to grill each night (unless we are having left overs) and he does all the research on the internet as to the best way to prepare it. Sometimes this can take hours or even days!

We started out easy with hamburgers. Then moved to steaks and chickens.

At one of the winter farmer's markets I bought a chicken roasting pan that Jennie Salters of Chalk Butte Pottery made for me. Dan the Man just HAD to roast a chicken using it in his grill. I succumbed to the notion, but told him specifically, it could not get any hotter than 350 degrees or it could crack. He promised me, that it would not. I told him if it did, he would owe me another one.

Beautiful Open A Bar 2 Ranch Pastured Poulty
(Seasoned with Famous Dave's Country Roast Chicken Seasoning)
5.5 lb Roaster waiting to be roasted in my beautiful
chicken roasting pan, hand-made, just for me...
which by the way I hadn't even got to use yet.


Potatoes with a little olive oil and seasonings ready to roast.




Dan the Man, the chicken and my chicken roasting pan...




Dan the Man carefully setting everything in the grill.

He roasted the chicken for about 2 hours at 350 degrees. One of the nice things about these grills, is that it is extremely easy to keep the heat regulated in.

The finished chicken!

The finished potatoes.

The chicken turned out great! Very moist and juicy. The potatoes... well... since Dan the Man didn't know that he should probably turn them half way through cooking they were pretty brown... well, actually they were BLACK on the bottom half. And perhaps 2 hours was too long for them. And my pan, you are probably asking yourself... CRACKED! Boo, hoo. I am so sad. Guess Dan the Man owes his Country Chicken Girl a brand new chicken roasting pan from Chalk Butte Pottery! Oh Jennie....

Yesterday, he made a huge leap and smoked two 11 lb. chickens! That's not a typo, by the way, the 11 lb. chickens... Some of you know the story about the BIG chickens!!! Those of you who don't... in a nut shell, we had our commercial freezer konk-out on us last year in the middle of chicken production and ended up growing some pretty big chickens, as in 10-13 lb. chickens which we coined as our "churkeys"... chickens as big as turkeys! So these two chickens were from that whole episode.

Anyway, Dan the Man smoked them for 5 hours at 230 degrees and used apple wood chips. Oh my! He might be on to something. Perhaps Open A Bar 2 Ranch will soon be offering smoked chickens! Dan the Man's Smoked Chicken!

I'm just wondering how long this "grilling fascination" will last until it becomes "work" instead of "fun"! When that happens, the grill will end up being my duty!

RECIPE: Grilled Famous Dave's Country Roast Chicken

I've been on a serious chickn' grillin' kick lately because we have been working such long hours and grilling chicken is so easy, doesn't heat up the house and doesn't take much prep time or baby sitting while it is grilling. It's so easy to butterfly the chicken, throw it on the grill, flip it after 15 minutes and come back when it is done!

The star of the production!

Ingredients

One roasting chicken (I can not endorse any other chicken besides an all-natural pastured poultry from Open A Bar 2 Ranch, all others are junk!)

Famous Dave's Country Roast Chicken Seasoning (I got mine at Wal-mart)


Directions

1. Heat your grill while you are prepping the chicken. (Don't ask me why there are two steps that are numbered 1. I don't care and I don't want to take the time to figure out the html code either. Just deal with it.)
   

1. Butterfly your chicken. What you still don't know how? Are you serious that you haven't tried it yet, even though I have given you several recipes now that involve butterflying a chicken? What is the point of reading these recipes if you are not going to try them??? Just joking, I love you and am glad you are reading the recipes even if you don't try them. Here's a secret, I have been known to sit on the couch and watch exercise shows on tv and not do the exercising! LOL Isn't that kind of the same thing? Oh and all the cooking shows I've watched and have never made the dishes they did!
   
2. Here's the link for you slackers who still don't know how! How to Butterfly a Chicken
   
3. Oil your grill. Take a paper towel, dip it in oil with tongs and rub it on your grates. There, that was easy! Oh, do not, I repeat DO NOT spray cooking spray on the grates when you have a flame. If you do, I can promise you, you'll never do that again! And you'll be missing your eyebrows for a few months.
   
4. Place the lovely Open A Bar 2 Ranch pastured all-natural free-range chicken skin side down on the grill. Adjust your burners so that the flames in not under the chicken, but on each side of the chicken. This is called indirect grilling. I have a four burner grill so I place the chicken in the middle and use the two outside burners.
5. Generously season the chicken with the seasoning, don't be skimpy.
6. Close the lid, and adjust the heat to 350-325 degrees.
7. Walk away for 15 minutes or so.
8. Come back... Baby come back, any kind of fool could see, there was something in everything about you... remember that song?
9. Flip the chicken over and season again. Shake, shake shake... the seasoning not your booty.
10. Close the lid, check your grill every once in a while to make sure you haven't run out of propane... I hate it when that happens. Roast until done. Take the chicken's temperature. It should read about 175-180 in the thickest part of the thigh and breast. The juices should run clear too, no tinge of pink or red in it.
11. I roasted a 6.6 lb chicken for around 2 hours. It was perfectly tender and juicy!

Ummm, Ummm, good.
Wish you could smell it!


I just noticed that you have to give your email address to watch the above video clip from Cook's Illustrated, so if you don't want to do that, here is a video you can watch without the hassle. Although I do love the Cook's Illustrated website and I think it worth the hassle to become a member. They have lots of good cooking stuff.

I also ran across this one and it made me laugh. The guy is wearing gloves (?), the chicken looks pathetic, no doubt a grocery store chicken, that must be why he is wearing the gloves. Like I said, grocery store chickens are junk. He also says to use a 3.5-4 lb chicken. I bawk at that. Are you serious? A roaster in my humble opinion is at least a 6 pounder! He also has you take out the breast bone, but I don't, more work, but I guess maybe I'll try it next time to see which way I like it better. And finally, he says there a "little clean up to do!" Uhh, not with an Open A Bar 2 Ranch chicken dude! He says to cut-away the fatty material... Once again, no fatty material on the Open A Bar 2 chicken. Go ahead and watch it, but don't believe everything he says!

The End