Kamado Grilling and Smoker Thread

I spend a lot more time in the kitchen cooking and trying new things than I do with headphones on. Over the past year, one of my favorite recipes that I have dialed in is a Moroccan Kefta Kebab Lavash Wrap. The concept for the whole wrap was put together by a friend and me, but it’s not an original idea and there are many similar recipes out there.

The composition for the wrap as I make it is:

• Lavash bread
• Lamb and Beef Moroccan Kefta Kebab (recipe linked)
• French Fries (linked what I usually use)
• Kebab Shop Garlic Sauce (recipe linked)
• Fresh cut tomatoes
• Chopped red onion
• Leafy Greens
• Cilantro, sometimes

For the lavash, I have been buying pre-made lavash at the store, but I plan to make my own lavash starting with Serious Eats' recipe. Rather than using a broiler to cook the lavash, I am going to use my homemade pizza oven since it has a very large working surface.

When I prepare the Lamb and Beef Moroccan Kefta Kebab, I always use a 50/ 50 combination of flanken style beef short ribs and whatever whole lamb meat I’m feeling at the time. I choose the flanken short ribs for its high fat content, which really balances out the wrap. To grind the meat, I use a Kitchen Aid mixer with a grinder attachment. I place the grinder in the freezer about an hour ahead and run the meat through the grinder twice. To cook the kebabs, I use hickory charcoal with some applewood on the Big Green Egg and set it at 170ºC.

When it comes to French Fries, I have found that Kroger’s frozen Shoestring French Fries are my favorite low effort French Fry. I fry these on my deep fryer in peanut oil and the ROI from a time and money perspective make this option a no-brainer in most of my recipes.

The garlic sauce recipe included suggests that you use a mortar and pestle or other method to crush garlic, but this can lead to mild or bitter tasting garlic. If you really want the garlic flavor to pop, I suggest grating or mincing it. I always use a Microplane to grate my garlic.

To finish off the wrap, I add chopped tomatoes, red onion, and lettuce. For the lettuce, I like picking something crunchy without a bold flavor. I add lettuce for texture, but don’t like adding the white parts of iceberg and typically use something iceberg adjacent. In the photo below, I forgot to buy lettuce at the store, but had arugula growing in the garden.

I’m interested to see what other variations people have in mind, or other recipes like this that I should try.









...we definitely go heavy on the garlic sauce.

Sources:
https://www.kroger.com/p/kroger-shoestring-fries/0001111087524 (lol)
https://www.seriouseats.com/lavash-armenian-flatbread-5206283
https://www.thespruceeats.com/kefta-kebab-recipe-moroccan-ground-beef-2394668
https://thatspicychick.com/kebab-shop-garlic-sauce/

I can always merge this thread into to “what did you cook?” thread, but wanted to make sure this was easy to search for in the future. I'm also going to update the photos in this post with better ones in the future.

 

Reserved for future notes when I make my own lavash on the pizza oven. Need to make naan on this thing, too...

 

I'm renaming this thread to the Kamado grilling thread and inviting @ChaChaRealSmooth and all others to post in here. I'm going to post some notes on chicken wings here soon, since Chacha's profile post encouraged me to start cooking wings again. In the mean time, I'll leave you with a post of the last two things I cooked on my Big Green Egg.

 

As mentioned earlier in this thread, @ChaChaRealSmooth's post about chicken wings inspired me to start cooking wings again. There are quite a few methods out there for smoking wings and I’m wondering what everyone here has settled on.

For my recipes with wings, I always follow the concepts that James Whetlor has for his wings in his book Cooking on the Big Green Egg:

• Make wet or dry rub to apply to the wings before cooking.
• Make a baste to baste the wings twice during cooking.
• Set the egg up with the conveggtor and bring up the egg up to 190ºC
• Apply the rub of your choice to the wings. If using a dry rub, mix it with a bit of olive oil first.
• Place the wings in a single layer on the grill and cook for 15 mins.
• After 15 mins, turn the wings over and apply some baste.
• Cook for 10 to 15 minutes longer, until done (74ºC is needed for this cook time), apply the baste once more during the cook.

I highly recommend James Whetlor’s Cooking on the Big Green Egg for people of all experience levels. If you’re new to using a Kamado style grill, it will walk you through all of the important concepts of operating your grill. If you’re very experienced with Kamado grills, I recommend the book as a reference guide to keep on hand for referencing cooking concepts for each type of meat you are smoking. If you read books, forums, or websites for your recipes, you’ll find that there are many opinions on how to cook each type of meat. I’ve found the concepts in this book to be the most reliable across the board when comparing to other material/ sources.

The actual recipes in this book are very good, but I find myself using my own recipes from my head for most things I smoke while following the cooking concepts of the recipes in the book - there’s one recipe for almost every type of cook. The recipes in this book don’t follow traditional American/ African recipes that many of us expect in barbecue. Instead, many of the recipes in this book fall into a fusion category that feel like they were written by an English guy with a passion for Indian and Pakistani dishes. I like following these recipes, but I usually bring my own recipe to the table with a rub/ baste/ whatever that follows the theme of the meal I am cooking instead.

 

I mix my dry rubs with a small amount of light olive oil to get them to stick.

 

I’ve been wanting to make an Indian fusion dish that utilizes my green egg and pizza oven for a while now. This weekend I finally made good on those plans and made vindaloo smoked pork tacos and a couple of naan pizzas.

For the tacos, we made naan in the pizza oven and used it as the taco shell. The taco base is pulled pork shoulder smoked in vindaloo spices. I made my own vindaloo sauce to use on the tacos and as a pizza base.

For the tacos, I layered them as follows, with all of the toppings being fresh made at home for this dish. This is more complex than I’d usually layer something, but it worked so well:

• pizza oven naan
• smoked pork shoulder
• zhug
• pickled red onion
• pickled cucumber and radish
• raita
• vindaloo sauce
• cilantro

We hadn’t planned on making any pizza this day, but we decided to set 370g of naan dough and try out hands at a naan style pizza. This was my first time making naan, so i’m not used to the dough enough to make perfect circles yet.

For the pizza, we layered it as follows:

• naan (still brush with ghee)
• vindaloo sauce base
• pulled pork
• zhug
• red onion
• Beecher’s flagship cheese (it was all I had enough of, lol)

I was impressed with how well all of this turned out. I was particularly impressed with how well the vindaloo sauce turned out. I followed the vindaloo sauce recipe in James Whetlor’s “Cooking on the Big Green Egg” in spirit, since it seemed like a decent recipe. I made a few changes, including using freshly ground whole spices for this recipe and adding vinegar and ghee to the sauce.

For the side dish, we made a southern Indian green bean dish.