AlterEgo Guest
|
Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 4:07 pm
|
|
|
|
Wow, I love the Internet, for here I found out so much about my old Sazco kamado. Here's its story along with some practical maintenance advice:
My Aunt lived in Pasedena, California and drove all the way to Memphis with her second husband, and in the back seat, her daughter (my first cousin) and the kamado purchased somewhere in the LA area.
It was a Christmas gift for her parents, my grandparents. It was bitter cold, so it didn't get used until after my Aunt left. Grand knew nothing of grilling, and my being the son of the family grillmaster, grand looked to me to fire the new gadget up, even though I was just a little kid.
Well, in all honesty, I'd never actually done it by myself, as dad had a 55-gallon monstrosity he made all the stainless parts for in which he'd start the coals with GASOLINE, so I always had to stand well back for safety reasons. Nevertheless, I'd watched him grill scores of times, so I pretty much knew what to do.
Accordingly, I started my very first fire in the then-brand-new Sazco. It's the smaller, 14-inch-grill-diameter "Genie," with a slick, bright orange glaze both inisde and out. I don't remember how old I was, but it was sometime in the 1960s. The sliding lower damper says "Sazco Pat. Pending," so I'm thinking it was a very early example before Sazegar's patent had been approved, maybe 1964 or '65.
At any rate, that day I grilled two porterhouse steaks over lump charcoal (that's all that was available back then) to perfection. And so began my avocation as a grill jockey.
I only grilled on it a few more times before a fissure appeared in the inner coal chamber pot. Perhaps it was the 98-octane gas charcoal starter that did it, or maybe that I was using way to much charcoal--I now realize. Grand had by then made a superbly stable low triangular cart out of wood with heavy casters on the corners, which made it easy to roll in and out of storage. I helped him make it, so if anyone wants to know how, I'll be glad to tell you how--it's a cinch.
Anyway, he was afraid his daughter/my aunt, who was notoriously sensitive, would go berserck if the grill broke, especially if she found out I was the one messing with it. My cuz had let it slip how much it cost--$40 or $50 was a lot of money for a grill in the mid-'60s--so that made matters worse. Consequently, Grand cleaned up the kamado, rolled it into storage, and covered it up. There it sat unused until he died in the early 1990s!
It went back to my aunt, who had moved to Memphis by then. When she passed, her daughter/my cuz moved from California into her house. A couple summers ago I was over there for a 4th of July cook-out (a gas grill, pull-ease!) and thought about the old Sazco for the first time in many years. I asked to see it while we were eating, and she said it was still around, never having been used, in the garage.
But several mohitos later, we'd forgotten about it. A week later, she pulled up in the drive unannounced, and asked for help to get something heavy out. It was the orange Sazco kamado, and she insisted that it belonged with me, the undisputed family grillmaster. How cool--I now had the very first grill I ever used! Furthermore, I'd been considering sinking serious money into a Big Green Egg, and now I'd be able to experiment first hand with how these ceramic kamados cooked with no investment.
First thing I did was get some super-high-temperature fireplace cement to seal up the crack. It would have actually been much better had it been completely broken, as it was impossible to force the thick cement all the way down into the narrow fissure, but I did a half-decent job.
Otherwise, it was perfect, with not even a tiny scratch on the immaculate bowl glaze or speck of rust on the chromed metal parts. The entire staff of the local independently owned grill/fireplace store gathered around and could not believe the pristine condition it was in. The owner's son, who does home deliveries, said he'd seen only one other old kamado in town. From his description, I now know that it was a '60s or 70's-era Richard Johnson copy-cat, which explained its poor condition.
A lifelong grill jockey, I've had and have a number of different charcoal/wood grills--the aformentioned 55-gal behemoth; small, medium, and large Weber "bouys;" several different styles of 2-box barbecues; a few upright smokers; even a scaled-down brick pit modeled after the famous but long-gone one behind Leonard's Barbecue on South Bellevue here in Memphis. And I've smoked whole hog many times in a true in-ground pit, as well.
However, the ceramic kamado proved to be a whole new animal to tame. My considerable knowledge and experience with other grills actually worked against me--terribly frustrating. With practice, of course, I figured the thing out, the keys being: using only about 25 to 30 briquets, getting the top and bottom dampers adjusted just so, and turning the meat AROUND, not just over, to achieve even doneness.
In fact, I use that old orange Sazco three times as often as I do any other grill. For direct grilling for just two people, it's perfect for steaks, chops, burgers. Using three parafin fire starters, coals are ready in about 20 minutes, so in half an hour, I'm eating delicious char-grilled meat. Isn't that the reason we barbecue?! However, forget about cooking indirect on the Genie, or any small grill, for that matter.
I figure I've used it about 150 times. Alas, I recently went out in the morning to clean it up, only to discover a piece had fallen out of the bottom of the coal pot. I used the same heat-resistant cement to fix it. I also made a circular bottom charcoal grate out of heavy-duty wire mesh screening and a round "fence" of equal diameter sitting perpindicular to and on top of it out of the same stuff. These will keep the hot coals from touching any part of the ceramic pot and hopefully prevent further damage due to thermal shock.
So far, so good, but I'm a realist and know it's just a matter of time before a piece cracks out or the whole pot collapses, rendering it unreparable. So I checked Big Green Egg parts for compatibility.
The small BGE uses three separate parts: the fire box (aka pot), $70; a fire ring that sits top it, $50; and a round cast iron charcoal grate, $10, that sits near the inside bottom of the fire box. Since the small Green Egg has a deeper base than the Sazco Genie, you do not need the fire ring; the fire box (with the charcoal grate down inside) will bring it up to about the same level as the original, and the original cooking grate will sit right on top of it just fine. The BGE small grill grate fits the Sazco Genie too, if you need to replace it.
So, after all these years of grilling on numerous types of devices, that old Sazco from my childhood returned to further my barbecue education, convincing me that the ceramic grill is the best overall type for those who cannot afford or just don't have the room for more than one.
When I move into my final home, likely a zero lot line condo with limited space, I plan to design what little backyard I have around an extra-large Big Green Egg as the centerpiece of an outdoor kitchen. All thanks to that antique ceramic Sazco Genie bottled up in storage for forty-some years. [/i] |
|