Komodo Kamado Ultimate 23 Review

hi I'm Dave from high - smokehouse and I want to spend some time over the next few months showing you a little bit about the different types of barbecues that I cook on going through some of the features some of the pros and cons and how you can actually use them also over the next few months I'm going to put together some videos that we're going to show you how to prep meat and also a few recipes and how to cook some of the the basic dishes for barbecue the best of my barbecue is that I want to show you is the Komodo Kumada I bought this two and a half years ago and is probably the most used barbecue that I own it's very very versatile and very flexible it can do low and slow at 225 F but can also grill sticks fantastically at over 900 degrees C and it makes the best pieces and calzones you'll ever come across the thing is absolutely incredibly well-made it weighs over 250 kilos and all of the stainless steel whether it's on the hinge assembly the handle or inside all the grills are all made of three or four stainless steel and it's a very very thick ceramic wall bit like a tandoor oven and and it keeps it the heat incredibly well and I also use a primo XL which works really really well and I've also and had a look and a play on the Quemado jur and but they're okay at the price points and a brilliant of the price points but that they are but this is a lot more expensive and you can really see it in the way it's manufactured if I ended up will just having to I've worn barbecue that could do everything this would be the one but unfortunately it's expensive and you would need a bank loan to actually do it but it is just such a fantastic beautiful barbecue I could highly recommend this to anybody as you can see the handle and clasp mechanism are all made out of 304 stainless steel and the lock mechanism has two parts to it so you can open it and then it goes down closes but then you have to click it into place to lock it into position again incredibly well-made and very very strong and steady the thermometer is a tell true thermometer one of the best you can buy and is very very accurate and even though I've got the thermometer I do often use and I grills and things like that to actually modify the temperature and understand the temperature a lot better and it gives me a lot more control but the tell true thermometer is very very accurate and works extremely well the hinge mechanism is 304 stainless steel and as the biggest spring that I've ever seen this makes lifting the lid incredibly easy the lid is incredibly heavy but you can lift the lid with a single finger in fact it lifts up by itself as you can see so I'm not touching it now and it's gone all the way up and I can push it back down again with two fingers and it works that well and is incredibly balanced so it makes it a joy even though this is so heavy it makes it a joy to lift the lid up and down and you've got none of those feelings out the lids going to fall off and it's incredibly robust and strong and you feel very very confident with it here's the shot of the hinge and spring mechanism from behind and just by looking at this you can see how well it's actually made once the fire is lit and the air can be adjusted in the temperature can be adjusted from the bottom dampener and the top chimney the top chimney moves up and down on a screw so as you can see it starts to 10:00 and it creates more airflow for the air to get out on the hot gases and you open it wide to get really hot and fast temperatures so if you're heading towards and 7 to 900 degrees you're really opening it a long way if you want to be doing it two to five then really you're closing it right down so you're basically going to take it all the way down till it stops and then turn it about a quarter of a 10 and that's all it needs for about 225 degrees F perfect for low and slow here is a view from inside the hood this shows the chimney and as you can see from here as I'm actually turning the lid you can see the gap opens wider and wider to allow a greater amount of airflow here's the view inside the Kumada inside you can see a charcoal basket and this charcoal basket when it's full of this in this case is full of our Molly root and with this Molly root I can probably keep the barbecue cooking at 225 for around about 15 hours comfortably without having to change and the fuel or add any more fuel it's incredibly energy efficient and seems to work really really well when when trying to keep the temperature nice and low and slow inside the grill you can also see two steps in the ceramics this allows two different levels of grilling and perfect for grilling or for doing low and slow but also with one of the expendable extendable grills you can also go even lower to the to the charcoal itself so you actually got three to four different grilling levels depending on what you're trying to cook I'll try and demonstrate each of them for you now with the extender grill you can place and you your grill very very very close to the calls so in this fair setting you can actually place it directly onto the handles which is only and sort of 40 50 mil away from the actual curls this can then be turned upside down and that then lifts it to roundabout and 15 centimeters above the actual call surface so just with this one an extended grill you've got two different setting levels next you can set your mid-level grill which fits directly onto the ridges in the cañada so that's another level where you can actually cook at you can put and your heat deflector on this level if you do in low and slow or you can grill at this level next we have the top grill this sets at the highest level so if you've put the heat deflector on the middle level this then would sit directly above there and this is where you would be cooking and you pull pork or your briskets family I can add the extender grill this sits on top of the top surface and gives you more surface area to be able to cook more items in this case you could actually then put on and to boss them books on the bottom and a Boston but on the top or two briskets and obviously with the deflector plate at the middle level it keeps the heat aware and gives you a perfect indirect cook even though I enjoy cooking directly on the stainless steel grills and I still also enjoy using and grill grates and luckily I had a couple of grill grates pair which just managed to fit into the top part of this and I found this really good I'm really worried about and getting flare-ups and this controls the flare-ups and stops the meet from and from from carbonizing to quickly the deflector is a ceramic deflector which is about 25 mil thick and which sits perfectly at that middle level and then if you're doing the low and slow you just put the top grill on and then you're ready to cook straight away and do a low and slow cooking the temperature is controlled by the bottom dampener and turning this wheel allows and the amount of air and oxygen to actually get into the fire if I'm cooking low and slow and cooking around about 225 and literally I'm talking about 2 or 3 mil gap and to actually let the air in and that's all if I'm cooking hot and fast then I will open it there fully open and that'll cook along around about 6 700 degrees if I want to get it really really hot and especially when I'm starting the fire and I want to get to the temperature quickly I actually pull the dampener out and let the air in once I get up to eight nine hundred degrees F I just push it back in and then leave it fully open and that'll run comfortably around about an 800 degrees F once the barbecue is finished and I want to close it down and starve it of oxygen I just close the top lid and then slide this so it's all closed and it's low it cools down however it takes a long time it can take as long as 12 hours to actually cool down if you've had it hot and fast because it's so well insulated around the side there is a small hole with a plug in this is used for cooking with things like barbecue gurus to control the actual and temperature and the airflow so all you do is pull this out it fits in quite comfortably you put the barbecue guru in and that controls the temperature and once you've finished again with a barbecue guru you just push this in and it clips back into place the back of the cake here is an ash door this door can be pulled out pulled fully out and you can see the ash in there you can then use an ash tool to scrape all of the ash out but my preference is always to use a shop vac and more often than not I actually going from the top use a shop-vac and soak all of the ash out of the bottom of the care care very easy very simple to clean you can also buy many different accessories with a care care and Dennis makes fantastic antique furniture to go with it and one of the main ones I got is the side tables the side tables are just so solid it's unbelievable and they hang on the side of the barbecue when not in use which makes it very easy to put the cover on and but when you want to use them again very simple take them off the cover spin them over and place them on the side really strong really rigid and really well-made and out of all the accessories that I bought I think they're one of the best ones so there you have it a quick tour around the Komodo Kumada hopefully over the coming weeks I'll do some cooking and some recipes on here and actually show you what in use and maybe tonight when I get chance I'll actually show you I'll actually light the barbecue as well and using a map lighter and I hope you enjoyed this space review and hopefully there's going to be more in the coming weeks thanks for watching you

Channel: Hectors Smoke House

Views: 45,558

Rating: 4.8914728 out of 5

Keywords: Komodo Kamado, Carson Rodizio, Kamado, Review, BBQ, Grill, Hectors Smoke House, BBQ Team, Ultimate, 23

Id: M4WqRKq4WGI

Length: 10min 56sec (656 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 02 2016