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List Price: $149.95
Sale Price: $143.29
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The kids got this for me for my birthday, and am I glad they did. I have cooked pizza on my Weber before,but I was always a little disappointed with the results. I have had this device for two weeks, and we have used it every Friday night since we got it. I was a little worried that I would not get the advertised temps, but it was no problem.
I use one full Weber chimney starter of ordinary Kingsford Briquets, (my preferred, their cheap)arranged in a semi-circle around the back of the grill, then I add about 6-8 fist size chunks of either applewood or hickory. It takes about 10 minutes for the temp to max out both of the thermometers. I have a 14" pizza stone that I got from a local big box store, (again, it was cheap and it works), and I put that in the oven to warm up with the grill.
We make the dough from scratch using Fleischmans Pizza Crust yeast. You don't have to wait for the dough to rise, and it makes a bomb crust. We roll the dough out on a wood pizza peel, using plenty of corn meal to keep it from sticking. Then each of the kids will add what they want for toppings and it goes in the oven. Total prep time for the pizzas is about 15 minutes, and once it goes it the oven it take about 4-6 minutes to cook. Golden brown crust, hot melted toppings, YUMMM!
The grill stays hot enough to cook about 3-4 pizzas before adding more fuel. I never have added more charcoal, we just add more chunks of wood when the temps drop below 700, and the temp comes right back up. The first time we used it we cooked 7 pizzas, which around here was just about enough.
There was a note in the box that said if you posted a video of the oven in use on youtube, they would send you a free gift. I posted the video, sent them the link, and within a week I received a very nice BBQ apron and some other gifts along with a nice personal note. You can't go wrong with customer service follow through like that.
American Made, does what it says it will do, great customer follow through.
Nuff Said..
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I received the Kettle pizza basic kit as a birthday present as I had been admiring it for quite a while. It is the closest thing you can get to making wood fired brick oven pizza, without the brick oven. It does require a bit of a learning curve, as I discovered from some small non product related difficulties, which I will explain. I found in using it the first time, that my pizza stone I had gotten as a gift years ago was insufficient, and too thin, and translated too much heat to the surface of the dough, burning the bottom of the pizza before the top was cooked. Invest in a good, more expensive pizza stone, as big as possible, 16 to 16.5 inches, as the opening of the front of the pizza kettle attachment is approx. 17 inches. Position it in the middle but a little more toward the front, leaving more indirect heat space between the fire and your stone. You must close the top vent on the kettle lid while cooking the pizza, as this will channel the air from the fire over the top of the pizza which is essential to cook and brown the top of the pizza. I also found out that it is best to make the pizza as quickly as possible on the wooden peel, so the dough does not have time to stick to it, and a wooden peel is necessary with corn meal in order to have the pizza safely depart the peel to stone neatly and efficiently. The wooden peel provides natural texture with the corn meal, preventing sticking of the pizza to the peel, and sliding off neatly onto the stone. The pizza peel likes to stick to the metal peel if used with the raw dough, making it exceedingly difficult to shake the pizza off. I only use the metal peel for spinning the pizza around while cooking, as it cooks faster in the rear toward the fire, so it is essential to spin it around while cooking to insure even cooking, and the metal peel to remove the pizza. Pay attention to the top of the pizza and the bottom in judging when to remove it when you deem that it is done. I hope you enjoy using the Kettle pizza attachment as much as I do. My wife doesn't want to go out for pizza anymore though, she wants the good homemade wood fired pizza only this can give you. Good luck and enjoy !
Best Deals for KettlePizza Basic Kit for 18.5-Inch and 22.5-Inch Kettle Grills
I'd give this 6 stars if I could. I've had this thing for a couple of months now, and it is awesome. I use it in conjunction with a pizza stone, and am making some of the best pizza I've ever made. I've been using Cowboy charcoal, which seems to burn at a higher temperature than the Kingsford briquettes. I'd recommend getting that type of charcoal or something similar. After heating the charcoal in the chimney, I spread it around the back of the oven. Then I throw in some more charcoal as well as blocks of wood. In about 2-3 minutes the wood goes up and the grill is ready. I've discovered that the best thing to do is prepare the pizza on a pan with a lot of cornmeal. Put it in for a couple of minutes (on top of the pizza stone) until it looks like the crust has firmed a little. Then I take the pizza out, remove it from the pan, and put it directly onto the stone for a little longer, turning it periodically.
The only minor quibble I have is that the supplied thermometer stops around 700 degrees. I am getting heats well in excess of that, probably around 900+, although I don't know because the needle goes way past the last marking.
If you like to make pizza, this thing is probably as close as you will get to having a brick oven without actually building one.
Honest reviews on KettlePizza Basic Kit for 18.5-Inch and 22.5-Inch Kettle Grills
I was really excited to get this item since I've been wanting to master the Napoletana pizza making methods without spending thousands of dollars on a brick and mortar oven. This review covers the stainless steel cylinder which is the fundamental part of all the available KettlePizza packaging kits (basic, deluxe, and Super deluxe). It is a great idea to modify a Weber grill. It is a decent option to just buying the Weber Rotisserie kit and modifying it by cutting an opening for a pizza, but if you go the Weber route you also get the rotisserie kit. Although the KettlePizza is a great starter option for someone who couldn't modify the Weber rotisserie kit, it is pretty expensive for what you get (profit margin must be pretty huge for the inventor ... good for him, I guess), and it does a very poor job of helping to regulate, or retaining the temperature once you get it. It is ok for 1 pizza. Vera Napoletana pizza has some specific demands on an oven in that it requires that the pizza cooking time not surpass 60 to 90 seconds, which means your oven needs to be 800F to 1000F temperature, and it needs to be able to help hold that temperature if you want more than 1 pizza.
POSITIVES: You can get slightly higher sustained pizza cooking temperatures than your kitchen oven which is usually limited to around 550F. It is outside, which is the only way to deal with the Napoletana (800F 1000F) temperatures without an indoor brick and mortar oven (still awefully hot for indoors except winter). It converts another useful item, a Weber grill, rather than building your pizza cooking from the ground up, so you can try the pizzas without a huge expense. It can actually get Napolitena temperatures, at least for a little while.
NEGATIVES: Expensive for what you get (I paid $130 at the time). Has such poor heat retention (it's a heat conductor) that it is very difficult to maintain Napoletana pizza oven temperatures for more than one pizza.
Since I invested the bucks for this, and worked with it long enough to realize its limitations, I have since modified it to where it will really work as a pizza oven to cook 4-5 pizzas with only minor wood adjustments. Basically, I insulated both the KettlePizza and the Weber grill lid, which is easily done within about half the cost of this item. (BE CAREFUL!! if you try this since normal insulation cannot handle these VERY HOT temperatures.)
Would I buy it again? Probably not, since I am serious about making the Napoletana pizza. It is very expensive for what you get and is only a small (and simple) part of the necessary solution to make the real wood-fired oven pizza. It will not work well by itself for this objective.
However, if you are just a casual pizza maker and you are not ready to cut up a Weber Rotisserie kit, the KettlePizza kits may be the best and perfect option for you.
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for KettlePizza Basic Kit for 18.5-Inch and 22.5-Inch Kettle Grills
There are a lot of gimmicks out there for Weber kettles but this is NOT one of them. I'm very happy with the pizza kettle and the reason is because it turns the kettle into a coal fired brick oven which you can make artisan bread, roast a chicken, oh and I hear it can make a decent pizza :) The big problem I've always had with indirect grilling is that as soon as you open the lid to check your food your temp drops down a few hundred degrees and takes 5 minutes to return. As long as you have a long pair of tongs you can have burgers/dogs/chicken on the grill, flip them a few times and not lose any heat. Great with thick cuts of meat. (You can experiment and change the recommended "C" configuration of the charcoal for a bit more direct heat but I haven't played around with that yet.) It's definitely easier to manipulate with the lid off but hey, that's the compromise. I've had great results with a butterflied garlic & herb rubbed Bell & Evans chicken in a cast iron skillet. Golden brown and it picked up some of the hickory from the wood chunks and Stubbs charcoal briquettes. Oh yeah, and while I'm at it real charcoal briquettes are the best way to go as opposed to the industrial chemical concoction known as Kingsford. Better flavor and more heat.
As for pizza, you can read tons of other reviewsit's fantastic. The reviewer who called it "useless" and said you can do pizza directly on the grates is not entirely correct. Doing it that way you have to flip the pizza, then add toppings, then make sure the cheese/toppings get browned. Do-able... but a royal pain in the butt. Pizza stone is the way to go.
As for parts & assembly, it took all of 3 minutes...and made in the USA!
