Knaack box parilla build

I have wanted to do this over a year, finally scored a 24x48 Knaack box from CL this evening.

I am not a metal fabricator, so a lot of what is left to do will get done by someone who is a metal fabricator. So when I say "I am going to...." what I mean is my Visa card will be the tool I use to have whatever thing done.

The plan is to cut most of the front panel free, but then hinge along the bottom cut. So with the front panel folded back where it started and the lid closed I can leave it out in the weather.

When I open the lid and lower the front panel I will have a brick lined parilla so I can cook over glowing hot coals made from cordwood.

Parilla is very internet searchable, think of a brick fireplace a couple feet up off the floor with wood burning down to coals on one side, cooking grate over the middle and other side with hot coals under it.

When it is a finished cooker I am going to dub it the "Knooker", but I am not sure how to pronounce that.

A goal without a deadline is just a dream. My goal is to cook Thomas Keller's recipe Yabba Dabba Do in the Knooker for Thanksgiving 2020.

 

@Bigdaddy4760

 

First problem for the brain trust, what do I do with this powder coat? Is it heat proof? Is it food safe when it is really hot?

I am pretty OK with a fairly rustic exterior, like a sleeper hot rod.

Can I burn it out of the interior like the rustproofing inside a 55 gal drum when making a UDS?

 

Please excuse, should be two R's in parrilla to load up the correct images when searching.

 

Weed burner alone is not the answer. I suspected it wouldn't be enough but spent a few minutes anyway. I did notice the bottom panel was moving around pretty good as it heated up. I was trying to do the bottom with the weedburner...

Next step is to put it up on cinder blocks, open the lid and build a cord wood fire in there.

Looking like I will need (Visa chore) some square metal tubing ladder-like on the bottom to keep it straight when it is hot, but I might be able to use some of that same tubing as the tuyere.

After it cools down I will get after the areas I heated with a wire wheel brush, but not holding my breath.

I should email Knaack and ask if their powder coat is food safe...

 

No response from Knaack last I checked my email, so off the power coat comes.

I did buy an angle grinder, never owned one before. The areas I had previosuly burnt with the propane weedburner came down to bare metal real nice, but the factory intact powder coat was pretty darn stubbon.

So today was cordwood fire day. I ran about a basketbal sized blob of burning embers around the edge of the floor, feeding more wood every few mintues and scooching the glowing blob of hot coals every 10-15 minutes.

I got the exterior pretty well bubbled, spread the coals out on the floor and clsoed the lid hoping to heat the lid panel up too.

 

So three updates. On the one hand I want to keep moving on this, but I don't see the need to create a post for every little thing.

1. I did hear back from Knaack. I figured in an advance they had no idea this would ever happen and had not tested their powder coat for high heat food safety. So I figured I was going to have to remove it. Here is what the email said, copy/paste: Product Model 4824 is not to be modified. It is not intended to be used as a BBQ grill. No recommendation is made. DO NOT USE in this manner. End paste. I will say, having got about 8% of the powder coat off my Knaack 4824 the factory powder coat is tough as nails. I will think about fabbing the next one from scratch rather than face this removal process again.

Full speed ahead!

2) Now that the unit is cooled down, and been rained on a bunch, I cut a very rough line with the wire wheel where I intend for the front panel to fold down and out on a piano hinge; and got busy on one of the end panels. I am going to focus on getting the front and bottom panels clean enough to go to the metal shop. I want some square tubing welded to the underside of the floor in a ladder shape to stiffen the floor, so I got to get that prepped for welding. I am planning to run the tuyere though one of the square tubes under the floor. I also think it will be easier on my back to get inside the thing with an angle grinder with both the lid up and the front panel down.

I am going to have to do another cordwood burn to get the surface finish off the top too, hopefully better air flow in there with the lid down but front panel open.

3) I found another show on Netflix with a real Argentine parrilla in it. It was "Street Food: Latin America" episode one, Buenos Aires. The first 90 seconds or so is a chef making an omelet (sort of) with cubed potato, eggs, ham, mozarella and panache. Electric guitar firing up, "boom!". That episode. The chef in the first scene has an authentic looking parrilla in her back yard and knows how to use it. It was about 40 minutes. Another good one, from a BBQ perspective, also on Netflix, but not edited by Norte Americanos was "Todo sobre el Asado." It is kinda wierd compared to normal television in the USA, but I drooled several times looking at the food. Imagine trimming all the deckle off all the ribeyes in a seven rib roast and treating it as a single steak. Both have audio in English, though they do let the kid sing unpolluted (and remarkably well) in the second one.

I am rethinking my plan for insulating the sides. I want to brick it up to help keep heat in, but the metal of the Knaack box was moving around a LOT when I was burning the powder coat loose.

 

Interesting project. Keep your thread up to date.

Knaaks response couldn't have been more predictable. Of course they don't recommend turning their toolboxes into BBQs

 

Not a whole lot to report, but OK.

I did run a second bigger burn with the toolbox upright hoping the powder coat at the top edge of the walls would bubble. No dice. This fire is bigger than it needs to be to bubble the powder coat on the lower 2/3 of sidewall height, but not big enough to get the top 1/3 to a bubbling.



I also had a problem area on the back wall, so I turned the thing on it's back so the problem area on the back wall would be on the "floor", and I could move coals around on the inside of the lid too. This fire is "big enough" to get the powder coat bubbling with something like 15-30 minutes direct exposure per each area. I did have it burning a bit bigger for a while to get at the top third of the front wall, and had my propane weed burner running on the outside for a bit too.





On the afternoons it isn't raining when I get home from work I have been getting after it with an angle grinder 30-40 minutes each day. I am getting something like 90-95% bare metal when I go over a surface with both a knotted wire disc and a knotted wire cup on the angle grinder, and no complaints from the neighbors yet.



I am done grinding on the front wall and floor, but quite a ways to go with the wire wheels on the rest of the box.

Next step is to get some clay firebrick from Lowes-Depot so I can lay two thicknesses on the floor to figure out where the cut for the dropping front panel goes, and lay a single layer up against the side wall so I can locate the tuyere holes in the floor.

Then off to the fabricator. I am going to have him essentially put metal tube joists under the floor panel since I am going to pile a bunch of fire bricks in there with a cooking grate and a fire grate and some cord wood and some cast iron pots and some food and then set it on fire.

Besides stiffening up the floor I am going to have the front panel cut and hinges done, and a 4" diameter round hole somehere near the left rear upper corner in case I need to install flue pipe. And the OE locking mechanism removed.

Also a couple hasps. I think my grandpas called the two parts of a padlock system like on a gate or barn door a hasp and shackle, I guess both pieces is called a hasp now. Or my grandpas had it wrong. Whatever. The hasp that came with the box melted when dual heated by the cordwood inside the box and the weedburner singing backup on the outside of the box. I want one hasp at each end of the fold down front panel so I can close the hasps and keep the front panel in place.

I am going to have my welder tell me what hasps and hinges to buy.

I figure I got it hot enough to melt tin/zinc, whatever powder coat is still on there after two passes with a wire brush is heat stable enough to be food safe enough to suit me.




Once I get it back, the metal work that happens to the Knacck box will be done. From there, grind off the new surface rust and get going with a sanding wheel I picked up along with the wire wheels, and then high temp paint to the exterior.

Paint scheme is going to winter pallete high temp camoflague. Once I have the outside painted I'll get after the last of the grinding on the interior and then be ready to slather bacon grease on the inside and start running small burns for baked oil interior finish.

 

FWIW at this point paying $700 for a similar box fabricated from scratch with no powder coat to remove is looking like a good deal, and the remaining areas to grind are going to be the hardest on my lower back. But my next one will probably be 24x72...

 

Off to the metal shop tomorrow morning.

 

And back from the fabricators. Next step is to final sand and paint the exterior. I have to do that in the garage as it is too cold here to be running a rattle can outdoors, and I need to get it done and the garage aired out before my wife gets home from the lower 48. So here we are.

I got the 4" thimble on the back upper left corner as requested. It is from the HVAC section at Lowes-Depot but fits 4" single wall stove pipe just fine. It is like for clothes dryer vents, about 15 bucks IIRC.



I have the cut, two hinges and two hasps I asked for so the front panel can fold down. And the factory latching system is removed.



Here it is with the top up and fold down front panel on a wheelbarrow. The front panel is able to fold down 180 degrees so I won't have to reach over it use the cooking grate.



And here it is in the garage with the reinforcement tubing for the floor welded in.



I need to get busy with the sanding and the spray paint. I will replace the asterisks with pics when the charging port on my phone dries out.

 

So I have the bottom sanded and painted BBQ black. I figure very few hunters camoflague their boot soles, plus I can find BBQ black just about anywhere, so done.

Here is the Knooker on my boat trailer, kinda diagonal like with a couple cinder blocks for ballast, with the front folded down out of the way and the top up. Note the chimney top left rear.



I think that is too much weight on the dryer vent thimble, and I can imagine circumstances where I would need even more stack height; so I came up with a cardboard full scale drawing of "a bracket" and texted that to my fabricator already.



And I came up with a full scale tuyere shop model. The two firebricks on the floor holding up the tuyere are pumice, I plan to line this thing with clay firebrick, but the nominal size is the same.



My target temp at the cooking grate with the tuyere running is 1200 to 1400 degrees F. If I leave the tuyere in the hot coals, let it burn out and then air cool I would like to think (or buy the right steel) that I would just be annealing the tuyere over and over and over, not melting it down into the gaps in the firebrick. Is black iron pipe suitable for this, do I need to step up to 1065, or is this going to cost me a lot of money to get right?

 

With only nine weeks to target date remaining I used part of yesterday to test cook with the gear I have. One of the drivers behind the Knooker is to do a lot of menu items at once I end up having to teleport between the upstairs kitchen and the back yard charcoal cookers over and over. I have made all of these components before, but I haver never before plated them all at once.

The whole cook took 4 hours and 29 minutes, pretty leisurely, and I didn't have to run up or down the stairs at all.

Here is the mise en place for the Bordelaise sauce. It took 2.5 hours total cooking time after the prep work was done. Lots and lots of checking to ensure it wasn't simmering too fast. Once I had the wine reduced and the stock added to the reduction I had time to fool with potato.



Once upon a time I had a perfect galette at some little humble unassuming inexpensive restaraunt and I have been chasing it off an on for years. Imagine uniform slices of potato cooked togther so the starch binds the slices in single item. Crispy on the outside like a potato chip, but soft and fluffy like a baked potato on the inside. This is where I need to focus my practice cooks over the next few weeks. I have made 20 or 30 of these since the Knaack box showed up on CL and these are two of the best ones. I don't "know" how to make these yet, but I do know how I want the finished food item to be, to look and taste and crunch and feel. Once I have this dialed in at the indoor kitchen, then I will try to make these out doors on live fire.



The tomahawk is a familiar item, this one is about halfway through its smoking time on the way to getting reverse seared.



I have been sauteing mushrooms on a cast iron grill over live charcoal all summer. We did some bacon mushroom swiss burgers at the August church picnic, my team picked it up pretty quick. Just stick a cast iron grill over hot coals and let it warm up for several minutes. Make darn sure that if any butter overflows the low end of the grill it doesn't drip into burning charcoal, that would be a big mess in a hurry. I use a regular spatula for the cook and same spatula and a pastry knife or dough knife to moved the cooked mushrooms from the grill to the cambro. Once the grill is hot, 1/4 stick of butter, let that pretty well melt, swirl it around, then one grocery store packet of mushrooms about the size of a pound of hamburger, swirl that around in the melted butter. Leave the lid off and the mushrooms alone for about a minute. If they aren't cooking, put the lid on for another minute and look again. I like to have the mushrooms cooked in four minutes or less, so hot fire and preheated griddle. If they cook much longer than 4 minutes the mushrooms absorb more butter than I want. About half way through add another 1/4 stick of butter.

 

Plating went pretty well. I had the oven at 400dF, powered down, and left the cooked potato in the oven and the reduction sauce in a strainer over a saucepan on the stove top while I dealt with the tomohawk and mushrooms outdoors.

Galette to catch juices:


Then a fan of sliced tomohawk:


Then mushrooms:


Then wine sauce pour over and a dry stout on the side:


The wine sauce didn't stand up very well to the smoke flavor on the steak. I smoked it on pecan chunks with hardwood lump, and then seared it over red hot coals of more pecan wood at about 1000dF. Both were delicious individually. I will pour the wine sauce directly onto the potato next time before I plate the steak, and maybe use less or even none smoking chunks for the slow cooking side of the reverse sear.

 

Please explain how you made those taters.The look great!

 

Just seen this thread. Cool build and quick way to make a pig roaster.

 

Thanks @Bigdaddy4760 , I am enjoying the process. I do have a six foot spit in stock that might end up integrated.

I am committed to cooking some more potato like these in the next few days, I bought ten pounds of russets today. I don't feel qualified to explain it because they aren't coming out how I want. I will commit to making many many more of these to figure out the process, and I will tag you in the OP when I start a new thread. Good enough? If you are internet searching "galette" you might also search on "Pommes Anna," a similar but more fussy concoction. Also "Francis Mallman potato dominoes" someday I will rule over that recipe. I have a bunch of call coming up pretty quick, it might be "a while" but it is high priority for me and I will tag you.

In other news the fire grates came in to Kroger today, but no fire brick at Lowes-Depot yet this fall when I was there yesterday. I picked up an "over fire cooking grate" at I think Kroger a few weeks ago, so my basic/ starter iron hardware is ready to use.



I expect I will end up hating both the fire grate and the cooking grate with a white hot hate. But I will know why, and knowing why I hate them is the experience I need to specify the higher dollar things I will want to replace them.

And I finished sanding today. I had started in three color paint on the one end but it took forever to apply three colors and the weather is cooling off pretty firmly, so as of today I have all six exterior faces sanded and painted BBQ black. I brought it into the garage overnight for the paint to cure fully. Tomorrow, it is going outside so I can put my garage back together and get going on a wooden support table.



Once I have a wooden support table ready to go I'll get busy sanding the inside of the Knooker in preparation for oil baked finish. My fabricator is not ready for me to bring this back in to his shop just yet. He is looking forward to having it back, and I did peel off Benjamins within two hours of him telling me it was ready last time, but custom BBQ cookers is not the core of his welding/metal business. Sanding the inside of that lid is going to be a pain in the neck.

 

Thanks!

 

I did a reverse seared NY strip today, supermarket thickness, 0.75 to 1.0 inches.

I used hardwood lump only, no flavoring wood for the low and slow part of the cook. For the sear at the end I lit off about 1/3 of a 350 cu in bag of pecan chunks with a bit more hardwood lump, made a deep pile in a small basket with forced induction and seared off at 900-1100 degrees F.

Wood flavor is a lot less intense than it would have been if I had used smoking chunks low and slow, but the wood fired flavor is still present and leaves, I think, flavor space for a reduction sauce to not be superfluous.