Outdoor Cooking (smoking, grilling, barbecuing, open spit, etc.)

[David S.]

Trade that nonsense in on a pizza steel or two?

[rob_s]

Quick Ooni update (while I’m still mad)…

Fuck this stupid fucking thing.

Temp and gas knob on the rear should have been the first clue that it was designed by a moron.

Now, to further compound on that horrendous design choice, the metal spindle gets hot as shit and the knob softened and is allowing the knob to slip.

In addition to all of that, cooking one pie at a time is just stupid. Six people all with personal pies means nobody is actually going to enjoy the meal.

So, IMO, fuck this home cooked pizza fad. I have a phone and they can have exactly what I want delivered to my door in less time than it takes the Ooni to heat up (30 min is the recommended time).

Update on the update…

I’m going back and forth via email with various Ooni customer service people. They asked for a pic of the knob, which I sent, and they confirmed it’s melted. Now they want me to try and get the thing to light with a pair of pliers on the shaft, to which I have declined because it’s all been packed away again and testing this functionality will require digging it back out, hooking it back up to propane, and then try to perform a function that sucks with the knob and results in burned off arm hair only now with piers? Yeah, no, fuck you.

Funnily enough they keep dodging my request for clarification on how to light this stupid thing with the knob on the back.

I wish I hadn’t looked up how much it cost. Or, more to the point, I would have rather have had nothing (except a quiet day at home) for Father’s Day then to have gotten this stupid thing. What I want to do is take a sledgehammer to the dumb thing and send them a picture of that.

Trade that nonsense in on a pizza steel or two?

Maybe, but I have determined that making pizza at home is just silly, and with various perfectly serviceable places in the general vicinity, a waste of time.

I make bbq and steaks at home because nobody else gets it right. I don’t have that issue with pizza.

[HeavyDuty]

@rob_s , does it cook decently? I don’t have the need to make multiple pizzas, if they have a model without the knob issues it would probably work for me.

That said, I’d personally love to build a backyard brick pizza oven. I was going to get one built for my Sicilian stepfather who loved making pizza, but he had to up and die on us before I could do it.

[rob_s]

The actual cook is... fine. With some caveats:

1. Don't even bother with people that can't listen. They make their pie too big, they make the crust too thick/thin, they put too much shit on it (and then mom yells at them, and they have to take some off, leaving a bunch of nasty shit back on the ingredient plate for the poor bastard doing all the cooking and getting burned to use since he goes last), they don't put enough flour on the bench before they start, they make it too far ahead of when it's ready to go in, refuse to wait for the stone to heat back up between pies, etc. (IOW, don't cook pizzas in a house full of women)
2. It's been a learning process, and we've figured out a fair amount, but when people refuse to learn from their past fuckups or listen to the person that actually bothered to make notes it's... frustrating.
3. Either get a different oven, or get the larger version from Ooni with the knob on the side. I'm not kidding, this knob shit is a major deal-breaker with this particular make/model/size. Or if you think burning wood/pellets sounds like fun for you, get one of those.
4. I think the bigger one would be better anyway because it's also got an L-shaped burner along the back and one side vs the 12in model having just one burner at the back
5. Figure out where you want to keep this thing. I lucked out and the 12in fits exactly on one of the pullout shelves that I built in my tiki bar. Which, of course, also now precludes me from getting the larger one.*
6. Get some tools made for the task. You want an aluminum pizza peel (square), and an aluminum turning peel (round), and an infrared thermometer.
7. Use their dough recipe. We've tried a few other doughs and they don't work as well. If you have a stand mixer it's easy (from what my wife tells me, I don't do the dough)
8. take it easy on the toppings, etc.
9. Stick to the size pie that the oven says it fits. you *can* fit a pie in the oven that goes from edge-to-edge. Don't. Make two smaller pies if you're fat or feeding a lot of people, don't try and make one oversized pie.
10. The pie size thing actually fixes a lot of issues. If I don't lose my patience and through this whole thing in the canal, next time we'll stick to the "small pie" rule.

All of that to say, when I've made my own, alone, for me, without anyone else there, it's gone great. Other than the fact that this oven sucks, which is 75% because of the knob and 25% because I know how over-priced it is.

*To Ooni's credit, they are saying that if I test the knob with the pliers and it still doesn't work they may replace the whole thing. If that comes to pass I may even ask if I can pay the $200 premium to step up to the 16in model, but I don't know where I'd keep the goddamn thing.

[HeavyDuty]

Thanks, Rob - I think some kind of outdoor pizza oven is in my future, I just don’t know which one.

[HeavyDuty]

Keyword searching didn’t get any hits, so…

Something I think I would get a lot of use out of is a tabletop charcoal hibachi grill - a proper one narrow enough to use with skewers, like you see in a Tokyo yokocho.

Has anyone tried one of these?

(Hibachi in the proper sense, not teppanyaki.)

[Skinner Precision, LLC]

Thanks, Rob - I think some kind of outdoor pizza oven is in my future, I just don’t know which one.

I am getting ready to cast a "real" refractory cement pizza oven this fall/ winter but my ghetto clay brick/cmu/ concrete paver temporary oven gets over 750* F (see 800-850 at back edge of cooking platform) easily and can make a true neopolitan style crust with the appropriate texture and the right amount of "leopard spotteedness" on the bottom of the crust in about 50-80 seconds when up to temp. In the picture with it fired, I am cooking shrimp saganaki in a cast iron skillet.

Whatever oven you go with I recommend thinner crust and less sauce /toppings than a US pizza, long handled pizza peels are a must and you can have 5-6 10"-12" pizzas cooked way quicker than 1-2 large "American style" pizzas.

*note I am not recommending anyone duplicate my existing oven due to the thermal expansion properties of typical limestone aggregates found in precast concrete products and the associated permeability of said concrete products (water absorption and subsequent steam generation),doing what I do could cause hot spalled concrete to head your way...*

[HeavyDuty]

I am getting ready to cast a "real" refractory cement pizza oven this fall/ winter but my ghetto clay brick/cmu/ concrete paver temporary oven gets over 750* F (see 800-850 at back edge of cooking platform) easily and can make a true neopolitan style crust with the appropriate texture and the right amount of "leopard spotteedness" on the bottom of the crust in about 50-80 seconds when up to temp. In the picture with it fired, I am cooking shrimp saganaki in a cast iron skillet.

Whatever oven you go with I recommend thinner crust and less sauce /toppings than a US pizza, long handled pizza peels are a must and you can have 5-6 10"-12" pizzas cooked way quicker than 1-2 large "American style" pizzas.

*note I am not recommending anyone duplicate my existing oven due to the thermal expansion properties of typical limestone aggregates found in precast concrete products and the associated permeability of said concrete products (water absorption and subsequent steam generation),doing what I do could cause hot spalled concrete to head your way...*

Yes, like this - but not so ghetto. Are you casting your own? If you are, a thread would be fascinating to follow!

[Skinner Precision, LLC]

Yes, like this - but not so ghetto. Are you casting your own? If you are, a thread would be fascinating to follow!

I plan on casting my own as part of a much larger outdoor kitchen improvement. As much as I want to have the capability of making awesome pizza's like I can in the current ghetto oven, I also want a move versatile oven in regards baking and outdoor oven needs. I plan on casting a 32"ish diameter Mediterranean dome style oven. I am still debating the exterior cladding of the oven , stucco , brick or other...

I cant get excited about a $3-6,000 forno bravo or equivalent oven and having done stupid things like making concrete canoes in a past life I will DIY this one..

[HeavyDuty]

I plan on casting my own as part of a much larger outdoor kitchen improvement. As much as I want to have the capability of making awesome pizza's like I can in the current ghetto oven, I also want a move versatile oven in regards baking and outdoor oven needs. I plan on casting a 32"ish diameter Mediterranean dome style oven. I am still debating the exterior cladding of the oven , stucco , brick or other...

I cant get excited about a $3-6,000 forno bravo or equivalent oven and having done stupid things like making concrete canoes in a past life I will DIY this one..

Ok, now you definitely need to document this in a thread.