Published on 29 September 2026 · 8 min read
Your first firing: breaking in a kamado without damage
A kamado comes out of the box with moisture in the ceramic and a fresh layer of adhesive under the gasket. Both need a calm first firing. Go straight to three hundred degrees for pizza and you risk hairline cracks in the glaze and a gasket that peels within a fortnight — both self-inflicted, and rarely covered by warranty. The good news: breaking in is not complicated and takes one afternoon.
Why the ceramic needs to go slowly
Ceramic is porous and holds moisture — from manufacturing, from storage and from rain in transit. Heat that moisture too fast and it expands into steam inside the wall, and steam that cannot escape pushes the glaze up from within.
The result is crazing: fine lines in the glaze. Usually cosmetic, and the kamado carries on, but it is irreversible and it is exactly what a calm first firing prevents.
The same rule applies later, incidentally: a kamado that spent a winter outdoors wants a slow start again in spring. Not a full break-in, but not wide open for the first half hour either.
The gasket is the real reason
The felt or fibreglass gasket between the two halves is held by heat-resistant adhesive, and on a new kamado that adhesive has not cured. It cures with heat, but only if the heat arrives gradually.
Take the first firing straight past two hundred and fifty degrees and the adhesive burns before it bonds. The gasket then lets go at some point over the coming months, usually at the front, and after that your kamado no longer seals — which means you can no longer hold it at low temperatures.
This is the most-reported and most-avoidable fault on new kamados, and one calm afternoon is all it takes to stay ahead of it.
- First firing: 150 degrees maximum, about two hours.
- Second firing: 200 to 230 degrees maximum, another two hours.
- Only then go high, and build up to that too.
What to check before lighting
Walk the assembly once before there is fire in it. Is the band set tightened evenly, does the lid sit square on the base, and does it meet all the way round without a visible gap? A lid sitting crooked has that shape cured into it.
Check that the fire box, fire ring and grate sit properly and bind nowhere. Ceramic expands with heat, and a part that is already tight cold is under stress hot.
Make sure the kamado stands in its final, level spot, and do not move it while warm. Hot ceramic and a shove over a threshold go badly together.
Firing one: low and slow
Fill the basket about a third with charcoal — no more, because you want to keep the temperature down easily. Light it with a single firelighter at one point and leave the lid open until the coal catches properly.
Close the lid, open the bottom vent a centimetre and crack the top vent. Let it climb to a hundred degrees over half an hour, then hold it between a hundred and a hundred and fifty for ninety minutes.
Overshot by accident? Close the bottom vent further and wait — do not open the lid to cool it, because that hands it oxygen and it will burn harder.
Afterwards let it cool closed, on its own. That cooling should be gradual as well.
- A third of a basket, one firelighter.
- Ninety minutes to two hours between 100 and 150 degrees.
- Overshot? Bottom vent shut, lid shut, patience.
Firing two: a little higher, and only then cooking
The second firing may go to two hundred or two hundred and thirty degrees, again for an hour or two. This is a good moment to put something fatty on — chicken thighs or pork belly — because that fat settles into the ceramic and builds the protective layer kamados owe their smell and their long life to.
From the third firing on you can go high: pizza at three hundred degrees and beyond. Build up then too rather than throwing every vent open, and always open the lid in two steps at high temperatures, or you get a flashback.
No cleaning is needed after breaking in. The soot on the inside is not dirt but exactly what you were after.
What to leave alone in the first weeks
No water pan or cold liquid straight onto hot ceramic, and no cold ceramic plate into an already hot kamado. Temperature differences are what cracks ceramic, not temperature itself.
Do not run it with the lid closed and every vent shut at once: a smothered fire that suddenly gets oxygen flashes back. That is a risk to you, not to the kamado.
And do not let it fill with water. A cover or a closed lid keeps rain out, and ceramic fired up wet is precisely the scenario from the first paragraph.
