So I have longed forever for a
Komodo Kamado, but the price of admission has been far too steep for me to take the plunge.
Anyway I was in a Gander Mountain recently and noticed a
CharGriller Kamado for around 3 bills and kept looking at it. It is a metal Kamado with insulated walls. The lid felt light and it appeared a bit like a gimmick so I kept on trucking. Later I checked the reviews and was surprised by how positive they were. There were some air gap issues, but later reviews indicated this thing was legit.
Fast forward to a Lowe's flyer and a $299 price tag. I had a $25 off so I ordered one online and had it shipped to my local store. The total weight is about 97 pounds and I put it together in a half hour to 45 minutes. The first thing you do is season the grate and so I fired up the beast with a few pounds of charcoal and burned it at 400-500F for over 3 hours. I was amazed it held the heat that well. I did two mods immediately, one was to get a Weber grate and the other was a Weber pizza stone. These are used as a heat shield above the firebox and work darn well for $25 worth of mods.
Next test was a 7 lb butt. I put around 8 to 10 lb of charcoal and lit it from one side. Before long I dialed in the heat around 220-230F and it got as high as 245F one time. The time I had in mind was about 7 hours and in that time I got to 195F and then closed the dampers. Unfortunately I should have pushed it to 200F before stopping the show. The butt reached 195F and held there and I would have liked it to climbed a few degrees higher. Now worries, when I opened the grill the butt was a thing of beauty so I wrapped it in foil and stuck it back on to just stay warm. For a 7 hour smoke I probably used 3 to 4lbs of the charcoal. I believe had I used all the charcoal in the firebox it could have went 15 to 18 hours.
I need to taco it out a bit more, but thus far I'm starting to believe this may have been one of the best purchases I've made in awhile.