Today I finally had a chance to put our new Kamado grill to a real test. I got myself dome pork belly, rub mix and marinade as well as chopped apple wood for smoking. Time to try some slow cooked and smoked food.
From my limited experience and excessive reading I knew hitting the right temperature might be challenging. I thought I started slow and was already closing the airflow when the temperature was reaching around 80 degrees leaving just barely enough gap for the air to keep the coal slowly burning. Despite this the temperature kept rising up to 140 degrees, 20-30 degrees higher than what I was targeting. Knowing enough I didn't even try to get the temperature down. For me it was close enough so I threw the meat in.
First step was to keep the meat on low heat and smoke for 3-4 hours or until it was easy to press a stick through the meat. Due to higher temperature I kept a closer look on the progress since around 2 hours in and at 2,5 hours the meat felt already tender enough for the next.
After dicing the meat and adding marinade it was time for another hour of waiting. Letting it smoke a bit more before the final braise under an aluminium foil. I did cut this time in half as the meat started already tearing apart while mixing it further along the way.
The final part was suggested to take 1-2 hours and one hour was definitely enough. After 5 hours of wait I was happy with the results. It was delicious, the meat was extremely tender from the inside and nice and crispy on the surface. I'm not sure if those couple of additional hours at the lower heat would have added much but I was happy with the result.