Kamado terms explained

The design is Japanese and centuries old: a heavy pot with a lid, a vent at the bottom and one at the top. Those two vents control the draught, and so the temperature.

The difference from an ordinary barbecue is mass. A kamado holds a steady temperature for hours on a handful of charcoal, and runs from 110 °C for pulled pork to well over 300 °C for pizza.

Reckon on forty to a hundred kilos depending on the size. This is not something you shift on a whim: decide where it goes before you buy, with room behind you to swing the lid open and not directly under a wooden canopy.

See also: Ceramic, Vents, Indirect cooking

The wall is usually a ceramic composite, often several centimetres thick. That mass is the whole reason a kamado works: it heats slowly, and after that barely needs touching.

Ceramic is also the reason for the two big drawbacks. It is heavy, and it can crack if you fire it too fast or let it freeze wet.

Wall thickness varies by brand and is where part of the price difference sits, though almost nobody prints the number. Thicker means slower to heat and longer to hold: welcome on an overnight cook, less so when you want to grill something at six.

See also: Kamado, Cracks and crazing

Brands use their own names, but the size that matters is the grate diameter. Compact is about 33 cm, medium 40, large 46, and XL 60 and up.

Large is the right size for most households. Smaller burns less fuel but forces you to cook in batches; bigger costs more charcoal and more heat-up time for an evening with four people.

Grate area grows with the square of the diameter, not in a line: medium to large is 40 to 46 cm, but almost half as much space again. That is why people more often regret going too small than too big.

See also: Grate, Kamado

Grill area is the area of the grate: π × (diameter ÷ 2)². We compute it from the grate diameter, because almost no shop publishes it, and it is the only number that puts two brands side by side honestly.

Size names do not help. "Large" is a brand’s word, not a measurement: what one maker calls Large is another’s Medium, and the gap runs to hundreds of square centimetres.

A diameter hides that too, because area grows with the square of it. Going from 46 to 54 centimetres looks like 17% more and is 38% more room: the difference between four burgers and six.

Where the maker publishes the area we use theirs. Where we compute it, it carries a ± and is rounded to 10 cm². That distinction matters: brands round their diameters from inches. Big Green Egg calls the Medium "40 cm" and its area 1,140 cm², which belongs to 38.1 cm, or 15 inches. Computing from the rounded 40 gives 1,257, ten per cent too much.

See also: Grate, Sizes

Grate in, lid down, and radiant heat from the coals does the rest. This is what you want for steak, burgers and vegetables: high heat, short time, a hard crust.

A kamado easily goes past 300 °C doing this. That is hotter than most people are used to, and it happens faster than you expect.

Keep the lid down between turns. An open kamado is an open fire: you lose your temperature, the fat dripping down flares up, and you end up standing in the smoke instead of grilling.

See also: Indirect cooking, Heat deflector

With a deflector between the coals and the grate, the kamado becomes an oven. Heat comes off the walls rather than straight up, and you can cook for hours at low temperature without blackening the underside.

This is what a kamado does that an ordinary barbecue does not. Pulled pork, brisket, whole chicken, bread and cake all come from here.

Put a drip tray under the meat, on the deflector or on a lower grate. That keeps the fat off the coals, saves a lot of cleaning, and the tray catches juices you can still use afterwards.

See also: Heat deflector, Low and slow

A ceramic disc or plate you put between the fire and the grate. Every brand has its own name. Big Green Egg calls it a conveggtor, others say plate setter or heat deflector.

Check whether it is included. On some models it ships in the box, on others it is a separate accessory of fifty euros or more, which shifts the price comparison.

Buying second-hand works, but measure first. Deflectors are not interchangeable between brands and differ by size even within one; a plate that almost fits lets heat past the edge and does exactly what you did not want.

See also: Indirect cooking, Pizza stone

Tough cuts with a lot of connective tissue (shoulder, brisket, ribs) only turn tender after a long stretch at low temperature. Reckon on eight to sixteen hours.

This is the discipline a kamado is built for. The mass holds temperature steadily enough to run overnight without sitting beside it.

Somewhere around 65 °C core temperature the thermometer stops climbing for hours. That is the stall, and it is evaporation, not a fault. Waiting works, wrapping in foil works faster, and turning up the fire only makes it worse.

See also: Indirect cooking, Vents

The bottom vent lets air in, the top one lets it out. More air is more fire and so a higher temperature. Some brands call the top vent a daisy wheel.

The classic beginner mistake is opening too far and then trying to come back down. On a kamado, going down takes far longer than going up: the mass that holds temperature so nicely also holds the temperature you overshot to.

Move in small steps and give it ten minutes. A kamado responds slowly because the mass has to follow; adjust again after two minutes and you are steering on something that has not happened yet, and you will oscillate all evening.

See also: Low and slow, Flashback

At high temperature with the vents closed, unburnt gas collects inside. Throw the lid open and it gets oxygen all at once, and the flame comes out at you.

So you open the lid in two stages: a few centimetres, pause, then all the way. It is the most important safety habit to learn.

Wear a glove and keep your face back while opening, including on the second stage. Eyebrows and forearms are the usual casualties, and it happens at exactly the high temperatures you are least expecting it at.

See also: Vents

Use lump charcoal, not briquettes. Briquettes contain binder and filler, give more ash and sometimes taste of it; lump burns cleaner and leaves less behind.

Big pieces burn longer and are easier to meter. Whatever is left after a session can simply be reused: put the kamado out by closing the vents.

Top up before the fire dies down, not after. Fresh coals on a fading bed take twenty minutes to catch, and in those twenty minutes your cooking temperature drops while the meat is still in there.

See also: Smoking wood, Ash removal

Chunks work better than chips: chips are gone within ten minutes. Apple and cherry are mild, hickory and oak heavier, mesquite fierce.

Less is more. Two or three chunks for a whole low-and-slow is plenty; too much smoke gives a bitter, ashy taste that does not come out again.

Soaking wood is a stubborn myth. Wet wood has to lose its water before it smokes, which costs you temperature and gives steam rather than smoke. Put the chunks in dry, among the coals.

See also: Lump charcoal, Low and slow

Grate diameter says more about what fits than the kamado’s external size. We record it in centimetres so two brands with different size names stay comparable.

Cast iron grates hold more heat and give a better sear mark; stainless steel is lighter and easier to clean.

Many brands sell half-moon grates and raised rings that give you two levels or two zones. That is the cheapest way to make a kamado do more, and it often saves buying a size up.

See also: Sizes

A forty-kilo kamado needs to be movable, and without a stand it also sits too low to work at comfortably. Some models ship complete, others as a bare pot.

Count it into the price. A separate stand often costs over a hundred euros, and it is the difference between two models that the price tag does not show.

Look at the castors. A sixty-kilo kamado on four small swivel wheels will not roll over paving or gravel, and castors without a brake let a heavy thing move downhill while there is fire in it.

See also: Sizes

With a deflector underneath and a stone on the grate, a kamado makes an excellent pizza oven. The stone absorbs the heat and gives it evenly to the base.

Let the stone heat up with the kamado. A cold stone on a hot kamado can crack, and a pizza on a cold stone goes soggy.

Dust the peel with semolina rather than flour: it rolls like ball bearings and burns less readily. And let the stone heat for at least half an hour: the kamado reaches temperature well before the stone does.

See also: Heat deflector, Direct grilling

Without a good seal, air leaks past the lid and you lose control of the temperature. It is a wear part: after a few years of hard use, replacing it is normal.

A kamado that will no longer hold its temperature more often has a worn gasket than an actual fault.

There are two kinds: felt, which is cheap and burns at high temperature, and fibreglass or ceramic weave, which costs more and stays put. Anyone regularly cooking above 300 °C ends up replacing felt with the second.

See also: Vents, Cracks and crazing

Air comes up from below through the fire grate. With a layer of ash sitting on it, too little air gets in and you can no longer reach temperature. That is the most common cause of "it will not get hot any more".

Clear the ash while the kamado is cold, before any session of length.

Do it cold, with an ash tool or a vacuum made for ash. An ordinary vacuum is a bad idea here: ash holds glowing particles for days, even when everything feels out.

See also: Lump charcoal, Vents

Crazing is the fine web of hairlines in the glaze. It is cosmetic and covered by almost no warranty, but it says nothing about strength.

A real crack through the ceramic is another matter, usually caused by firing up too fast or by water freezing inside the material. Keep it covered and bring it up to heat gently.

When buying, look at the warranty on the ceramic itself: lifetime with some brands, a few years with others, and that gap says more about the maker’s own confidence than any specification does.

See also: Ceramic, Gasket

When a shop shows "was €1,299", that is a claim by the party selling the thing. We record it under the shop’s name and repeat it as something they say.

We keep that claim per day. A discount is more often manufactured by raising the reference than by lowering the price, and only a dated record can show it.

Around Black Friday this matters most. A shop that raises its reference in October and shows "40% off" in November is selling at roughly its September price, and that is exactly what a daily series makes visible.

See also: Price verdict

We measure every kamado’s price daily and set today against what we saw before. That produces "lowest ever", "sharp", "ordinary" or "dear".

While there are too few measurements, we say so. We never base the verdict on a shop’s struck-through price.

So a new model has no verdict at first. That is not an omission but the point: we would rather say nothing for a month than say something immediately on the strength of three readings.

See also: Reference price

No maker here warrants a kamado as one thing. The ceramic gets by far the longest term, and the metal, the gasket, the thermometer and the accessories get much shorter ones. Kamado Joe runs lifetime on ceramic, five years on metal, three on heat deflectors and two on the thermometer, the gasket and accessories. The Bastard gives twenty years on the ceramic, five on the outside metal, two on the inside metal and six months on the gasket. Where a maker publishes those shorter terms, the specifications list them under Warranty, other parts.

So this site shows the ceramic term and names the part it belongs to. One figure without that name would always be the most flattering of five.

"Lifetime" is the makers’ word and does not mean unlimited. At every brand that uses it, it covers the first owner only and requires registering the product; skip that and you do not have it. It is a different kind of promise from twenty years, not simply a longer one.

A dash means we could not find a ceramic term published by that maker. That is not the same as no warranty: in the Netherlands you also have the statutory right to a product that does what you may expect of it, and no manufacturer’s warranty can cut that right back.

See also: Ceramic, Cracks and crazing