It's been a couple days, but I wanted to opine about pellet smokers.

I have been smoking for years with regular old-school side-box smokers but got a Green Mountain Grills pellet smoker when I moved states a few years ago. They work great - until they don't. Mine just wouldn't turn on one day when I had a brisket rubbed and ready and a chicken brined. I didn't want to wait on parts, so I bought a cheap $250 Oklahoma Joe's smoker on sale from Lowe's and it's perfect.

I paid a hundred dollars for another controller panel and it still won't turn on. In the meantime, I am still plugging away with the old-school smoker and it's great and I have a thousand-dollar unusable piece of crap sitting behind it.

nice, did you make the dough too?

I'm thinking about trying this out:



which has me looking at the Ooni Koda Pizza Oven, anyone have one and like or dislike it?

Sorry to hear you had bad experience. Did a decent amount of research prior to buying and didn't see a ton of feedback that would lead me to believe there's widespread quality issues with pellet smokers. That said, one of the reasons I went with camp chef is that their customer service seemed to get uniformly great reviews.

Making chili today and decided to write things down instead of going back through my old posts in EDF chili thread and trying to remember what I added when. Anyhow, dropping recipe here basically so I don't lose it, but feel free to use as a jumping off point if you don't have your own go-to. The great thing about chili is that it's super forgiving...hard to really fail badly. This recipe turns out a chili that I really enjoy...some spice, some smoke, some sweet, some umami...heat builds but not too ridic.

Sidenote:. Bacon was an accidental addition several years back (had some open that I needed to use), but it turned out to be awesome addition IMO, so I ramped up quantity over the years until settling on equal parts ground beef, bacon, and chuck roast.



Chili:

Double recipe Alton Brown Chili Powder (yields ~1.5 cups, will use ~.75 in this recipe):
6 dried ancho chilis
6 dried cascabel chilis
6 dried arbol chilis
1/4 cup cumin seeds
1/4 cup garlic powder
2 Tbsp dried oregano
2 tsp smoked paprika

Meats:
2 lbs 80/20 ground beef
2 lbs chuck roast
2 lbs thick cut bacon

Veg:
2 red pepper
1 orange pepper
2 pasilla peppers (or green pepper)
1 red onion
1 vidalia

Heat and fresh seasoning:
3 habanero (remove seeds and pod if you want less spice)
3 jalepeno (remove seeds and pod if you want less spice)
3 serano (remove seeds and pod if you want less spice)
6 cloves garlic
2 chipotle in adobo sauce

Liquids:
2x big can (28 oz each) Cento crushed tomatoes
2x small can tomato paste (6 oz each)
1 beer
2 shots bourbon

Seasoning round 1:
1/4 cup chili powder
2 Tbsp cinnamon
1.5 oz finely grated unsweetened chocolate
1 Tbsp cayenne
1 Tbsp smoked paprika
1 Tbsp cumin
1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
1 Tbsp ancho chili pepper
2 Tbsp kosher salt
heaping tsp chinese 5 spice
1/2 cup brown sugar
zest and juice of 2 limes

Seasoning round 2:
1/4 cup chili powder (or to taste)
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
half bunch cilantro and stems, finely chopped
couple handfuls tortilla chips

--------------
Make Chili Powder (From Alton Brown recipe here: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/...cipe-1943055):
-Stem and seed all dried peppers
--Roast over dried peppers over medium high heat with cumin seeds in nonstick pan for ~5 minutes (until cumin toasts)
-Chop in food processor/Blender with garlic powder, oregano, and paprika until fine powder
--Let sit for a minute to settle

--------------

Meat Prep:
1. Trim chuck roast and cube into ~1 in. pieces
2. Cut bacon into ~1 in ladrons
3. Form ground beef into 1 lb patties
4. In multiple stainless/cast iron pans (or in batches), par-cook the bacon ladrons and pull before crispy. Set aside and reserve grease
5. Using same pans, add back about 1Tbsp of bacon grease each and brown the chuck roast cubes. Be careful not to overcrowd the pan. Pull once browned on all sides.
6. Brown one ground beef patty at a time. Pull once well browned on each side and set aside.

--------------

Veg Prep:

1. Rough chop red, orange, and Pasilla peppers, and red and vidallia onions
2. Finely chop hot jalepeno, habenero, serano, garlic cloves, and chipotle in adobo in a food processor
3. Add about 2 Tbsp bacon fat to an 8 at pot that you'll use to make chili
4. Add rough chop veg to pot and sautee until onions start to get shiny
5. Add finely chopped veg and 2 Tbsp kosher salt to pot
6. Add 1/4 cup chili powder. Stir and sautee until soft, stirring often

-------------

The Boil:
1. Add beer and bourbon to pot
2. Add crushed tomatoes and tomato paste to pot
3. Stir well and bring to a boil. Boil for ~1 minute and then take back to a simmer

-------------

Seasoning round 1:
1. Add all round 1 seasonings to pot
2. Sir well and simmer uncovered for an hour, stirring periodically

-------------

Seasoning round 2:
1. Add seasoning round 2 dump (finely chopped half bunch cilantro, and 1/4 cup or to taste chili powder)
3. Season to taste
4. If chili is too thin, add a couple handfuls finely crushed tortilla chips
5. Simmer uncovered for an hour, stirring periodically

-------------

Seasoning round 3:
1. Season to taste
2. If chili is too thin, add another handful or two of finely crushed tortilla chips
3. Simmer uncovered for an hour, stirring periodically

-------------
Yields one big ass pot chili


Serve with whatever floats your boat. I like shredded cheddar, little sour cream, and a slice of sourdough bread.

nice post and good looking chili, I just happened to read the article below this week:

You Should Add Baking Soda to Your Ground Meat

Anyone ever used baking soda when browning meat, this is the first Ive hear of it

I haven't made chili yet this year. Getting close to time. Leftover chili is great as tostadas the next week. Home fried tostada shells, so good.

Yeah, and coincidentally enough that was the dough recipe, though I'm too lazy to knead. No pizza oven for me, just a baking steel in the regular oven.

That was a hot post foobar.

how was the dough?

The bad thing about bread and pizza doughs etc is they cant be made on a whim and thats how I tend to cook. I get the urge for something and want to make it and eat it now and rarely think 72 hours in advance like this pizza dough

do you think the 72 hours makes much of an impact?

yeah, that's why I don't have foccocia bread more often

Yeah, it really does make a difference. Big improvement in flavor.

The window around that 72 hours is pretty wide -- you can cut it short if you need to, at least after the initial 24 hour rise, and it's fine for up to a week. It's just best at 72-120h or so. I don't make pizza that often during the week, so I'll mix up a batch of dough on Tuesday, ball it on Wednesday and it's in prime condition to bake Friday night through Sunday night.

I've also had good luck freezing it (at the 72 hour mark), just pull it out 24h in advance and stick it in the fridge.

The 72 hours is for additional flavor from fermentation. I don’t have any experience with instant yeast bread, but 16-24 hours on naturally leavened dough is plenty to get a great flavor.

I’d imagine 16 hour cold ferment would be plenty for good flavor and yeasted bread rises way quicker that naturally leavened so I would think a 24 hour dough would be really delicious.

thanks for the tips, thats good to know it can be frozen as a batch is more than I'll eat before it goes bad

There is a 24 hour version on the baking steel site, iirc it adds olive oil. With so little yeast being used in the 72h version I think you need the time for peak flavor.

I usually make a half batch, makes 3 pretty big dough balls.

thanks for that post foo. i haven't made a pot of chili in ages and have been thinking about it lately. your post is probably enough to push me over the edge.

Kenji did a couple of pizza oven reviews about a year ago



Bigdaddy got a roccbox a couple of years ago and really liked it for both pizza and steak (search this thread and the steak thread for results).

i still have a first generation Uuni (before they changed the name) and had a lot of fun with it, but i'm sure the Koda and other newer ovens are better.

here are a couple of my previous posts

I made the best chicken I think I've ever made tonight. Was a throw some **** together thing because my grocery delivery was running 1.5 hours behind, lol.

Bone in thighs from Costco. Marinade for an hour in juice from one lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper. Heated the cast iron skillet, med high, started thighs off skin side down until brown. Flipped and added a few sprigs of fresh rosemary. Into the 375 oven after a few minutes on side 2. Cooked to 165, (probably could have pulled a little sooner but it was still plenty moist after all was said and done). Brushed a mix of dijon mustard, honey, salt and pepper on the skin and put it under the broiler until we had crispy skin.

I can't pretend I'm creative, lol, it's just a mix of several recipes I have saved, but damn, it's the perfect mix for me. Also roasted potatoes, carrots, and onions in chicken broth. No pics. I don't use tapatalk and every time I take pics of **** I make it turns out I'm too damn lazy to put them on my computer, upload them to imgur, then put them on here. Sorry.

lol mark....congrats on your dinner! skin on chicken thighs are the goat.

Thanks RED, those pizzas look great!

I guess it makes sense they use a tiny amount of yeast for that long of a proof. The long cold ferment is absolutely going to make for great flavor.

Think a couple of you may be tickled by this:

Thanks for this. We have a ton of ground beef from a cow we shared with family, and I'm definitely going to try adding baking soda next time I brown! The picture in the post is pretty impressive. (So it that unintended alliteration.)

Question from a friend:
What do I do so the cheese doesn't slide off my homemade pizza when I cut it?

I never make homemade pizza. Probably should.

Less sauce will help.

Thicker sauce will help.

Less cheese or lumpier cheese will stop the cheese from forming a strong matrix which will stop it all from coming off in the first bite.

Being sure the cheese covers the sauce around the edges and overlaps with the crust can help