Kamado Joe KJ23R 23-Inch Grill, Red
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Price: $849.00 
Product Feature
- Kamado grill with handle and side shelves finished natural bamboo
- Base, lid and fire box/fire ring are high-fire heat-resistant ceramics
- Cooking grate and draft door are made of 304-grade stainless steel
- Cart is powder-coated cast iron and features locking casters
- Cooking surface is 18 inches in diameter, 256 square inches
Product Description
The Kamado Joe is unlike traditional barbecues in that the unique shape and natural ceramics retain heat efficiently yet controlling the temperature is easy with just a few simple airflow adjustments. Inside the ceramic egg, a ceramic bowl holds the charcoal. A draft opening in the lower side of the grill provides air to the charcoal and a controllable vent in the dome lid allows air to leave the cooker. Adjusting these two vents controls the internal temperature in the cooker. A hole in the lid allows the thermometer to be inserted for monitoring the temperature. All ceramic grills are not created equal. Kamado Joe cookers use the best refractory material for the cookers, fire boxes and fire rings. Each high fire ceramic piece has a minimum one inch thickness. You can actually smoke a brisket for 24-hour without adding charcoal every few-hour. The grill also acts as a self cleaning oven. After cooking simply open the vents and allow the grill to reach a temperature of 500-Degree for 15-minute. Beyond quality ceramics the Kamado Joe BBQ uses powder coating and materials like 304 stainless steel and thick finished bamboo for weather resistant qualities.
Kamado Joe KJ23R 23-Inch Grill, Red Review
EDIT: See WARNING below!
About a year ago (last memorial day), my wife and I decided we needed to get a backyard grill. I was all in favor of the idea but not a fan of the particulars -- meat cooked on gas grills always tastes like Butane to me, and I've never been a fan of the Weber charcoal grills, either, largely because of the rusted-out home for retired spiders that we had in our backyard when I was growing up.
So because I didn't like either of the alternatives, and because I was intrigued by everything I read about them, I decided what I really wanted was a ceramic grill. But they were too expensive. So a year later (this past memorial day), when I realized it'd been a year and I still wanted a ceramic cooker, I decided to pull the trigger after all. I considered a few different brands: the "killer app" of ceramic cookers is the Big Green Egg, and they have the widest range of accessories and the most active fan base (to the point of hosting regular "Eggfests") but they also have a policy of forbidding all online vendors, and that irritated me -- I prefer to do my shopping online, without a salesman trying to upsell me extended warranties or accessories or delivery charges or whatever else. There are a lot of other potential options out there in the world of ceramic cookers, many of which may be great, and I looked at most of them, but for a mix of reasons (not least among them simple aesthetics), decided on this particular cooker.
I've had this grill now for about a month and cooked on it multiple times, and I've been pleasantly surprised -- the results have completely lived up to the hype surrounding ceramic cookers. For example, I'd be honestly surprised if I ever cook pork tenderloin indoors again -- on this thing, what I've found to normally be a relatively dry, relatively tough to flavor cut of meat was *incredibly* moist and permeated with flavor from the rub I used. I suspect this was because the nearly airtight ceramic grill retained the meat's moisture in a way that cooking indoors or on a "normal" grill simply can't accomplish. This effect is extreme enough that when I opened the grill up two days later to clean it, it released a still-powerful scent of spicy roast pork, and the grill surface itself had not dried out -- I got wet grease smeared on my hands. It's also very useful to have a charcoal grill that allows me to regulate the temperature -- I've been able to successfully transition some of my oven recipes over to this grill fairly easily, just by setting the grill's airflow controls to achieve the required temperature (i.e., 350 degrees or whatever). It does take careful fire-building to get the temperature up above 400 degrees, but it's definitely possible to reach very high cook temperatures if you want (essentially, you build the fire using only the largest lumps of coal, with no small bits at all, and you slide the top vent *entirely* open -- not the little small circles, but the whole vent).
I've also managed to successfully produce actual *barbecue* on it, that is, low-and-slow smoke-cooked pulled pork shoulder barbecue, which is something I'd always wanted to do. The air vent controls make manipulating the temperature of the grill and keeping it within a specific temperature range fairly easy, and the barbecue turned out moist and juicy and tender enough to easily pull apart into shreds, just like I wanted it to. I didn't use the Kamado Joe KJIHP23 Heat Deflector for that cook -- it was doing too good a job of deflecting the heat, and keeping the temperature below ~200, so I took it out and ended up just cooking on the grill, with a disposable aluminum drip pan on top of the coals. It can easily hold enough charcoal so that you don't have to open it up again during the cook (Filled to just below the grate, and held at ~225 the whole time, a 24-hour cook consumed ~2/5ths of the total coal).
So that's the good side. The downside was that I had a major problem with delivery; I ordered the thing on 5/30, and it arrived on 6/8 -- not so bad, except that it arrived with a smashed handle and a gigantic crack that had knocked the bottom section into two halves (much like an . . . egg). So I had to call Amazon back and arrange for a replacement delivery. Amazon sent me a new grill with no charge, so that worked out, but I still ended up having to wait till 6/16 for delivery of a working grill, or slightly over two weeks from when I first ordered -- not a huge deal, but extremely annoying. I suspect the packaging was largely at fault here -- it comes in cardboard box that's apparently designed to make it easy to set up the grill, but there's a clear need for more packing material around the grill's sides. Despite that catastrophe, though, all included components are solid and well-constructed. It came with an ash tool useful for cleaning the grill out, and the cart and side-shelves are strong, stable, and apparently durable. The metal parts are either stainless steel or have a powder-coated finish that seems fairly damage resistant, although there are one or two very small rust spots where the coating appears to have worn during transit Similarly, the wooden side shelves, have a brown woodstain finish which seems to have worn slightly along one or two edges during transit (I'd have been happier if I could've selected the plain bamboo side shelves with the black paint).
As to setup, I did manage to get it all out of the box and set up in the stand and everything by myself, but I wouldn't advise most people to try that -- if I hadn't spent the past couple years lifting weights that would've been a short cut to, well, a second cracked gril (and/or spine). The instructions say you'll need two people for setup, and for almost everyone, they're probably right (be sure to be careful and NOT grab it by the handles as you lift it out -- hold it as directed in the instructions).
All in all, now that it's finally here, I'm so far very happy with it, and surprised that ceramic cookers seem to live up to the hype. I don't know how other brands of ceramic cooker may fare, but this one cooks exactly as well as all those raving internet people said such things did. I'll continue to update this review with more detail as time passes.
A note on accessories: I did splurge on a few specific accessories after I did my research around the web (mostly following Cook's Illustrated and the guy at AmazingRibs dot com) and found out what was recommended. The first thing they recommended, and which I also strongly recommend, is that you grab a Splash-Proof Super-Fast Thermapen . It's a great general-purpose cooking tool, but it's almost a necessity with this grill; because of the way this grill retains moisture and the way smoked meats pick up a pinkish exterior tinge from the woodsmoke, it's difficult to judge doneness any other way, even with the grill's built in thermometer (which only gives the temperature of the air in the grill, after all, not the temperature of the food).
The Kamado Joe company does have its own fairly complete line of accessories -- Kamado Joe KJIHP23 Heat Deflector, Kamado Joe KJGC23B Cover for 23-Inch Grill, Kamado Joe KJSCS Stainless Steel Grill Expander, etc. The only thing the company *doesn't* offer, that I wish it did, was a half-moon-shaped heat deflector, to help with creating different heat zones on the grill surface. I suspect that you could also use accessories for the Large Size Big Green Egg with this, but I haven't tested that myself.
EDIT:WARNING:
Since I purchased my grill and wrote this review, this company has changed its website and now claims that buying their grill from an online vendor may void their warranty. While this explains the problems I had with shipping -- their packaging obviously isn't designed for mail-order -- it's probably a reason to avoid buying this grill from an online vendor. They do have quick and responsive customer service -- in fact, their "customer support" email appears to go straight to the company president. My problem got worked out, but given their public statements, I'd say that (just like the Big Green Egg, after all) any prospective buyers probably won't want buy this grill online.
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