Double Smoked Spiral Cut Ham on the Cobb Supreme

I did this 9.2 pound ham cook on my Cobb Supreme Grill using one of my new proto-type Dome Extensions which is an accessory that I have obtained from Cobb Grill International Company that increases the total cooking height in the grill by about 2-1/2 more inches. This increased cooking height opens up many more cooking options for this fine Stainless Steel charcoal grill. 

I served my spiral cut ham sandwich with some baked beans, some candied yams, and some veggies. I added some horsey sauce to my sandwich as well. 

I brushed on a sticker, then sprinkled on a medium coat of a good pork rub and fancied it up with the pineapple and cherries.

In the background is one of my new "proto-type" Cobb Supreme Dome Extensions.

I maxed out the charcoal basket with 26 all hardwood charcoal briquets for this cook. I then added some hickory chunks for my smoke wood.

I decided to cook my ham in a tin foil half pan to make for an easy clean-up. I had to bend the corners down some to make it all fit into the cooker. Had some misting rain during the cook.

I wanted to run at a good barbecue cooking temperature of about 250-300F degrees so I closed off 4 of my 8 exhaust vents which in my opinion makes the cooker run like a dream at these temps. Had a nice amount of smoke coming out early into the cook from my hickory chunks.

I monitored both the cooker temperature and also the internal meat temperature with a remote thermometer setup during the cook. I had to put the sending unit in a bag to keep the rain off of it. The receiver went into the house with me. This old lazy cook likes his perks.

The ham smoked for 2-1/2 hours and I took it off the cooker at 155F degrees internal. It was mopped and glazed with one of my homemade glazes.

Just off of the cooker and cooling down. I did have to add 6 more briquets and some more smoke wood during the cook.

Ham came out a little drier than I expected but is still very good. I think these sliced in advance hams will be a little drier than a non sliced ham.

It was a good practice cook for the upcoming holiday. It sure made a fine lunch.

I am anxious to try using the cooker with two of the new Dome Extensions which will allow me even more cooking space in the cooker. I want to try cooking on two levels. This higher cooking space will give me the room required to add a “rotisserie unit” to the grill. Now, that will be some real fun! 

New Cobb Pizza Stone / Bake and Review

This thing has been talked about for many months and has finally arrived and I purchased mine for $18.00 dollars plus shipping from Cobb Grill America a few weeks ago. 

It is designed to fit into the Cobb roasting rack on the Premier cooker. 

The new Cobb Pizza stone is about 7/16" thick with four feet and is a very nice accessory if it will do a good job with pizza. It is very wide and doesn't have very much room (7/16") between the stone and the dome cover for the heat to come up around it to cook the top of your bread and pizza. It measures about 10-1/2” in diameter. Everything about this new hearth stone is quality. 

Having done a lot of baking on this cooker, I knew it might be difficult to make this stone work as expected. To help with this first bake, I used my modified cooking grid which has 24 extra larger holes in the outside edge which will help getting some heat and smoke up around this very large stone to help cook the top of my bread and pizza. 

I started with the maximum amount (13) of all hardwood briquets for this first bake. 

I decided to use a dome extension for this first pizza attempt with the new Cobb hearth stone. I figured that to keep the bottom of the pizza from burning before the top got cooked, I needed to get my hearth stone up and a little higher from the fire. 

I let the stone heat up for about 20 minutes and then checked the temperature on the top of the stone and found it at about 270F degrees and I also had a probe in the top of the cooker and it was registering about the same, and I had an oven thermometer inside on the stone and it as well was about 270F degrees. That sure seemed low to me for baking but that was all I could get out of the cooker with this large stone. At this point, I was wondering if I could get a good pizza off of the cooker at this low temperature.

I made up a very simple pizza for this first try with just sauce, cheese, onions, bell peppers, and pepperoni.

Loaded my first pizza onto the Cobb and started the bake. 

It is done on the Cobb grill and ready to come off the cooker. It took way too long to bake at over double the time of a normal pizza bake as I couldn’t get enough heat up and around this very large hearth stone to bake a good pizza. 

I did get a pretty good pizza off of the cooker with the kinda crispy crust I wanted but this was a very simple pizza without much goodies on it. There is just no way this stone will work very well with the average pizza cook. It’s just too big in diameter for the cooker. I’ll bet the engineer designed the hearth stone on a Friday afternoon after spending too much time in a pub for lunch! 

I wouldn’t recommend this stone for the Cobb Premier but it is a great hearth stone which I will use in my small Big Green Egg and my small Weber kettle. 

A proper sized hearth stone for this Cobb Premier shouldn’t be over 9” in diameter and will produce wonderful pizza, breads, cobblers, pies, cakes, and other baked treats. 

More Pizza on the Cobb Grill

Baking a nice pizza on the Cobb Premier Grill has been a little difficult to master and I have done about a dozen bakes trying to perfect it into something that would suit me. I think I have figured out a method that will produce a pretty good pie. 

Grill Setup:

I think the best pizza is always cooked on a hearth and I have found that the best size to use on this small grill is the smaller 8-1/2” stone. One of the biggest problems with pizza on this little cooker is getting the top done before the bottom burns. A larger stone than this will prevent the heated air from coming around this stone to get up into the dome where it can cook the top of the pie before the bottom burns. I have also placed this stone on the raised roasting rack to get it higher into the dome and away from the grid to allow more heated air to come out from under and get into the dome. I am using the grid from the Cobb BBQ Kit as this grid has many more slots that will allow more heat to  get out and around the hearth and up into the dome for the best results. I am also using the dome extension under my pizza setup which gets my fire a little farther away from my product. 

Fuel:

For most baking, I like to use the small Weber charcoal chimney to start my fire to be sure I have all the coals about the same before I pour them into the grill. 

While I much prefer lump charcoal for about all baking, I have found that it is much harder to control in this little cooker for high temp baking. However, it’s great for steaks and chops. 

I have found that about 22-24 briquets are about perfect for my pizza. I started with the Kingsford Professional but these so called all hardwood only briquets still have the borax stink agent on the outside to help them release from the dies and I don’t want that smell anywhere near my pizza. I found that they also produce way to much ash for this little grill and will block the incoming air to my fire. I am using the larger charcoal basket that comes with the Cobb BBQ KIt. 

I found that the best fuel for my application is the Wicked Good all hardwood charcoal briquets and this has worked quite well for all my recent bakes. They have a great sweet all wood burning smell and produce very little ash as compared to other briquets. 

Let’s make a pizza...

I like to make my pizza dough in my Dough Maker (bread machine on the dough only cycle) as it does a great job with this task and it is just super easy to use for this lazy old fellow. 

This first pizza has sauce, cheese, fresh basil leaves, and tomatoes and is on my little wooden peel and after the picture, I carried it out and baked it on the grill. 

About done on the grill.

This second pizza has sauce, cheese, pepperoni, onions, and bell peppers and is about done on the grill. 

The third pizza was the same as the second but I did add some hot peppers to this one. 

All three pies ready for serving. 

The pizza as served. 

Brisket on the Cobb Grill

Wanted to try a Brisket on the Cobb with it’s small 12” in diameter cooking grid and the wife found me a nice brisket flat that weighed just 5.24 pounds that looked pretty good. This piece of meat is still 4-5” wider than the cooking grid but I think it will work without cutting it into a couple of pieces with my beer can trick.

Trimmed it of some excess fat.

Wife injected it with some Cattleprod from BPS.

Rubbed with a heavy sprinkle of butcher cut black pepper and then a moderate sprinkle of SGH rub.

Bagged it and placed it into the fridge for an overnight stay. 

On cooking day, I placed the beer can in the center of that small round grid and then draped the brisket over it. As soon as my grill was on temp at about 300-325 degrees, I carried it out and placed it on the Cobb. I also added large foil packet of Jack Daniels white oak barrel chips to the fire at this time. 

Finally a cool morning at 54 degrees and I got the brisket started at about 5:30am.

About two hours into the cook as I added more charcoal and wood chips. 

At about three hours into the cook and with an internal temp of about 175 degrees, I wrapped the brisket with about 3oz some liquid goodies. 

Around five hours into the cook, I had a probe tender brisket at about 202-205 internal degrees so I pulled it off and let it rest about 45 minutes before I sliced it for the table. 

Sure had a nice smoke ring. 

I made up a “Texas BLT Sandwich” which consists of brisket, lettuce, and tomato but also added some Swiss cheese and horsey sauce. 

Sure made a nice lunch.

Cobb Grill / Competition Steak Cooker??

Well...maybe. I think if set up right, a fellow could come pretty close to producing a competition quality steak. This is my attempt at this task with the little Cobb Cooker.

Those great folks at Grill Grates make their product for about any grill or cooker and sure enough, they had a pair of grates to fit the Cobb Grill so I did order a set for my grill.



For my first try at a good competition steak, I started with a 16oz ribeye and got it out of the fridge about 45 minutes before the fire. Applied a great steak rub and set it aside to a cooling rack. I also had one of those nice big Indiana pork chops (1” thick) that weighed about a pound so I applied some salt and pepper to this chop as well for the wife. To complete the cook, I made up three of my homemade 1/3rd pound 60/40 fat burgers as these are always great on any cooker.



Rather than using the standard lighting procedure for the Cobb Grill fire, I decided to use a small charcoal chimney to be sure I had all of the fuel hot at the start of the cook.



Poured the lump into the grill and spread it out evenly and my fire was ready to cook.



Placed the Grill Grates on the Cobb and waited for about 15 minutes to allow the grill to get up to about 600 degrees which is ideal steak cooking temperature and then placed the steak on the grid at the 10am to 4pm position for the first phase of the cook. Let it cook for 2-1/2 minutes and turned it 105 degrees to the 2pm to 8am position on the grill. After another 2-1/2 minutes I turned the steak over and cooked that side the same as the first and took the steak off of the grill after about 9-1/2 minutes at 135 internal which should come out to about a medium steak as the contest requires.



This is the steak just before it came of of the Cobb Grill and I think it looks great. That answered my question and I do believe a competition quality steak can be cooked on the Cobb Grill.



Here is the steak as I would present it at a SCA event.

Next up was my big Indiana pork chop.



I used the same procedure as with the above steak as it was about the same thickness of the steak and I wanted it cooked to about 140 internal so I figured it would need about the same amount of time.



Didn’t come out as pretty as the steak but did look good.

After the chop, I turned the Grill Grates over to the smooth side for my three fat burgers.



About 600 degrees at the cooking surface on the backside of the Grill Grates is searing excellence at it’s finest for my fat burgers. Cooked the burgers to medium rare at about 3-4 minutes a side.



The smoke pouring out of the cooker with the burgers on it kinda reminded me of an old steam locomotive climbing a hill many years ago.

Let’s eat...





Wife wanted the chop so I fixed her up with some peas and fruit and she had a nice meal although she couldn’t eat the whole chop.





While steak and chops are good, I live for my 60/40 fat burgers cooked to about medium rare as they are about my favorite meal coming off of a grill. I dressed the burger with a slice of tomato, a slice of cheese, a slice of onion, and some lettuce and then added some chips and a couple of deviled eggs and I was one satisfied old man.