Bull Another RT-700 Order

[Biohazrdman]

I have had mine for only a few days now.... first smoke was a LB of bacon. 2nd was 2 chicken breasts. Today is a bunch of jalapeño poppers.... and sometime tonight will start 2 pork butts for Sunday!

 

[BoostLife]

thx. I did not think about cooking right after the burn in. I like the idea. Don't get me wrong, We will eat the chicken. I will be like a big kid at grandma's house eating all the good home cooking.

Yeah I look at it as a convenience cook being it is to the right temp. I am going to hit up Sam's club and see what they have for thighs. My wife doesn't really care for them all that much but I don't mind them.

We caught Boston Butts on sale back in Jan and picked up 10 of them. So there is a pulled pork in my near future. Also have a Prime Rib and I think a Turkey as well. As you can probably tell by now I have a few big freezers....

 

[Greg Jones]

What are these kona mats your speak of?

These are the mats I use. Five of the on Amazon are less than one from recteq.

 

[Waterboy]

What @Greg Jones said ^^^^. I gave two to my son, one to my daughter (small grill) and I kept two.

 

[BoostLife]

Driver pulled in at 11:30. Got most of it assembled. Up to the point of attaching the chimney and I had to get back to work. Well that and I bought some of that high temp tape for sealing the lid and wanted to put some on the chimney. So it was a good place to stop.

I did think it was a bit strange to have that 40# bag of pellets sitting loose on top of the pallet where everything else had shrink wrap. It appears a bag lost its way at some point and ended up loose on top of my pallet as I have 260# of pellets.

So far the only possible issue is that there doesn't appear to be any screws for the access cover on the competition cart. I might have to reach out to customer service. Also the screws to assemble the competition cart pretty much suck. I was using a Dewalt cordless drill with a brand new correctly sized bit and it was kind of hard to run them in. I am half temped to pull them out, redrill the holes and rivet the thing together.

 

[sdynak]

Bestest decision you will ever make! Enjoy!

Sorry.. don't have the comp cart to help on the issues there.

Thank you for your service.

 

[BoostLife]

Got it all together.

I am going to hold off for burn in and first cook till tomorrow though. We have Scouts tonight so I just don't have a lot of time unless I want to eat at midnight.

I did call the customer service number. Actually I called them, he said I was breaking up, he called me back, same thing, then he called me back from a different line. He could hear me then. He apologized several times. Not a big deal. He basically said they would be more than willing to send out additional screws. He said it is the same screws that are used to assemble the cart so I am not sure why I was missing exactly the number of screws it would take for that access panel. He went on to say that there isn't anything special about the screws so if I wanted to get it mounted quicker I could just pick them up at a hardware store. Like I said, I didn't care much for the screws anyhow so I will swing by the hardware store and get some. I am sure some people might be driven crazy by spending this much for some screws and having to go buy some but really, it isn't a big deal. I don't know why I would need to remove this access panel but if it is a screw that I might have to remove in the future I think I will go with a better screw.

The other question I had as long as I was on the phone with him had to do with the app. I tried signing in with my account from the website. I use a password generator for all my accounts so my password was some crazy long 26 character or so password of gibberish. I wasn't sure if the password was too long or if it is a separate account. Turns out it is both. I had to create a separate account which is fine. However I think the max length on the password is 13 characters. So I have a much shorter bit of gibberish for the password for the app.

I bought a couple of those air tight pet food containers to store my pellets. So one is filled with a bag of the RT Competition Blend Pellets. I loaded some in the combustion chamber and some in the hopper for the burn in and the first cook for tomorrow. Got the Wifi all set up. So we are ready to go.

Here is a link to the storage container.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002H3S5U

 

[sdynak]

Looks great! I do like the looks of the comp cart. It is just so nice to have something that just works in this category. Good luck with the burn in and first cook!

 

[BoostLife]

Well yesterday's first cook was a complete failure.

The RT wasn't to blame. I was getting things sorted out and my wife came out....

"Didn't I tell you we are going to _____'s for dinner?"

So reset for tonight. Luckily I was just getting things out to make the brine at the time. The burn in is done. The Chicken Thighs just went on about 20 min ago and cleaned up everything from the raw chicken. So far so good.

Air temp is right at 70F and when I did the first light it was barely going up. I did the handful of pellets in the fire pot but figured I was waiting on the auger to prime. About 10 min later all of a sudden the sound changed and it sounded like a blow torch and the temp was rising fast. Took about 1 hr to get to 400 from start but has been sitting right at the 400-402 as I have been watching the temp. It actually recovered quite quickly from having it open while loading the grill.

I did do a brine that I started over lunch today. Water, salt, sugar, soy sauce and olive oil. They were in there for about 5 hrs. Then some seasoning before going on the grill.