Home Made Pizza Kettle


 
J

JamieLamb

TVWBB Member
Home Made Pizza Kettle Question

I bought a food grade steel barrel for $10 over the weekend including a lid. It held some sweet smelling blue food coloring/additive and by the time I got it home in the back of our SUV, I wanted a funnel cake. I cut the barrel and made a pizza kettle for my 22.5" OTG (after burning off the old barrel paint, cutting the front hole, etc. pics to come later). I have read that people have issues with the bottoms of their pizzas burning while the tops of the pizzas are not yet fully cooked because so much heat stays up in the grill lid. I have cut the barrel lid to the diameter of the pizza kettle and am going to attach it as a heat deflector. How high above the pizza kettle opening to attach the deflector? Do I want the deflector to be the diameter of the pizza kettle or do I want it smaller to properly vent during cooks? Any help would be appreciated.
 
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I think you want the pizza kettle lid to fit tightly, forcing the hot air around and over the top of your pizza as it travels to the front hole. I could be wrong though.
 
I finished the pizza cooker enough to attempt cooking a pizza and couldn't be happier. Here are some pictures as promised.

I cut the barrel lid to sit in the top of the ring just above the height of the side opening. I decided that lower was for the better.



The pizza cooker sits down into the Weber base and sits behind the tabs that hold the cooking grate. I wanted it to sit down in the grill so I wouldn't lose heat.



I am using a hinged cooking grate for the pizza stone to sit on. I broke the handles off of it and used stainless steel wire to tie up one of the hinges so that it permanently sits in the up position in order to make room for logs.


I added a good high temperature Tel Tru thermometer (BQ225). What I found interesting was that the Tel Tru thermometer, which was under the heat deflector was reading almost 600 degrees, while the Weber lid thermometer, which was above the heat deflector was reading nearly 300 degrees lower. I took the pictures too early. The Tel Tru thermometer maxed out during the cook while the Weber thermometer above the deflector never reached 400 degrees. I wasn't trying to get the temperature too high as our test pizza was a thin crust from Papa Murphy's. My dirty welding gloves dirtied up the ring after carrying it, as you can see in the picture. The high temp grill paint held up great.



I had some old grill tongs that I cut in half and they now serve as my pizza turners. I rounded out the ends on my bench grinder. They worked great.


I forgot to take pictures of the pizza when it was finished, but we loved it. I cooked it on the paper pan that it came on and spun it continuously. The edges of the paper eventually caught fire, so at that point the pizza was firm enough to scoot off onto the pizza stone. It finished very quickly after this point. The crust was awesome and the pizza cooked very evenly to my delight.

Takeaways: I need to add handles to the sides of the ring to be able to pick it up when it is hot in order to be able to put out the fire when finished. The fire was well over 700 degrees when I was done cooking and the front opening keeps it raging. It is impossible to put out the fire unless the pizza ring is removed.
I need to add a handle to the heat deflector in order to be able to lift it up and add more logs if we are doing multiple pizzas.
A pizza peel is a must. Removing the pizza from the stone without it was more difficult than I thought.

Overall I am very happy with the finished product. The heat deflector made a TON of difference. At one point I looked inside and the flames were rolling nicely across the heat deflector right above the pizza. Just as I hoped. The fire got extremely hot and at one point the cooking grate section that was tied in the upward position with the stainless steel wire was visually red hot. I cannot wait to try this thing again and to try multiple pizzas in one night.
 
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How is the wood of your cart holding up to all that heat Jamie?

You did a great job on that cooker. I'm afraid that I will ultimately have to order a Kettlepizza or the Weber pizza device from overseas. I may have a lot of mechanical ability but don't have that kind of patience. Great job.
 
Bob Ivey said:
How is the wood of your cart holding up to all that heat Jamie?

You did a great job on that cooker. I'm afraid that I will ultimately have to order a Kettlepizza or the Weber pizza device from overseas. I may have a lot of mechanical ability but don't have that kind of patience. Great job.
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No problems so far...knock on wood. The hot part of the grill hangs below the wood structure, except for the side of the cabinet I built, but so far so good. If I have any issues I will just install flashing over the trouble spots.
 
We used my pizza ring this weekend with the neighbors and I couldn't have been happier with the outcome. I constantly spun the pizzas so each side cooked evenly all the way around. I added handles to the heat deflector in order to remove it easily (with heavy duty welding gloves) for adding more logs. I also added some old brass handles to the sides of the ring and it made things so much easier to work with. I have learned that the biggest element to success with the pizza kettle is that it MUST have a heat deflector above the pizza. All mine is is a cut down steel drum lid with the paint burnt off and a handle bolted to the middle. It sits on some stainless steel screws about 4-5 inches above the pizza stone and the flames roll nicely right along it right above the pizza. Cooks the pizzas very evenly and quickly. Even when the temperature was reading as low as 550 degrees on the pizza ring thermometer the pizzas were cooking in a matter of minutes. The other element to success is to make sure your stone is thoroughly heated before you start cooking. I think I rushed on the first pizza and threw it in there a little early. The heat deflector assured that the top of the pizza cooked quickly, but the bottom was a little doughy, especially in the center. Another 5 minutes of patience would have solved this. The last pizzas we did were restaurant quality...especially the bbq pulled pork pizza. Mozzarella, some smoked pulled pork that we froze after my last cook a few weeks ago, and some BBQ sauce. Delicious.

The only challenge we had was that the dough we made from scratch was a little sticky and we had to cook the pizzas for a minute or so on the pizza peel before they would slide off easily onto the pizza stone. We need to research a bit on what others do to get around this issue. Any help to previous links or advice would be appreciated.
 
how much charcoal and wood did you use to get it up to temp and how long did it take? thanks much
 
Matt H. said:
how much charcoal and wood did you use to get it up to temp and how long did it take? thanks much
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I used one Weber chimney full worth of charcoal that I let get ready in the chimney and poured it in a half-moon shape in the back of the kettle. I threw on about 5 to 6 4" chunks of pecan wood that I use for smoking. It takes about 20 minutes for my stone to come up to temp. All depends on how fast your stone comes to temp. I may pre-heat my stone in the oven in the future. With my heat deflector I have no issues with heat flowing over the pizza.
 
You and CaseT should start a production of your pizza attachments, nicely done Jamie
 
Very well done. Aren't you the guy who made the cart from pallet wood? You certainly are resourceful.
Dumb pizza question: When you talk about spinning the pizza, do you mean like a record baby right round? Do you spin the whole stone or just the pizza?
 
Greg Y said:
Very well done. Aren't you the guy who made the cart from pallet wood? You certainly are resourceful.
Dumb pizza question: When you talk about spinning the pizza, do you mean like a record baby right round? Do you spin the whole stone or just the pizza?
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Yes, I am the guy who made the pallet wood performer...and it is awesome so far and no issues with the heat. The only thing I have noticed is that some of the pine is still sapping, but on the cabinet door away from heat. When I say I spun the pizzas, I literally turned them on the pizza stone. The pizza stone stays stationary. Since the focus of the heat is to the rear of the pizza ring, if I did not turn them, the edge of the pizza in the back would burn before the edge of the pizza near the front opening was even close to being done. I pegged out the 700 degree thermometer I installed on the front so who knows what temp I got to in the back. I used the pizza peel to do the spinning. I also used the old tongs that I cut in half. Either worked great.
 
Put some corn meal on your peel before you put your dough on and it will slide right off onto your stone.

Kg
 
Jamie, was that a 55 gallon drum you bought? If so, did it fit inside the kettle , or did you have to make some adjustments to get it to fit inside the kettle? Also, what did you use to cut the metal drum? Great looking pizza oven and grill cart!!!
Tim
 
Tim K said:
Jamie, was that a 55 gallon drum you bought? If so, did it fit inside the kettle , or did you have to make some adjustments to get it to fit inside the kettle? Also, what did you use to cut the metal drum? Great looking pizza oven and grill cart!!!
Tim
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It was a 55 gallon drum. I used a metal cutting blade on a circular saw to make my cuts. I just felt that I would be more accurate with the circular saw than if I used an angle grinder. Don't have anything flammable around because lots of hot sparks. I was using rolled shop towels to keep the barrel from rolling and I caught one on fire temporarily...oops. Initially the kettle lid fit perfectly onto the barrel, but once I cut the barrel down to size the barrel body would not fit into the kettle. So I cut the barrel down to narrow it up. I ended up chopping the lip of the barrel off and it now fits nicely inside the taper of the lid. In the pictures you can see where there is a gap all the way around the kettle lid once on the barrel ring. I bolted the barrel ring together with two stainless machine screws/washers/lock washers/nuts, and I am also using stainless to hold the grill grate and the heat diffuser. I have not noticed any smoke leaking from around the kettle lid nor where I fastened the ring together with the stainless machine screws.

This whole pizza kettle project cost me roughly $40. The barrel was $10, the stainless hardware was another $5 and the Tel Tru thermometer was approximately $25. We already owned the pizza stone and the grill grate. I ended up buying a pizza grill kit from Lowes for $17.99 and it included a stainless pizza peel, a pizza slicer and a pizza stone. So I guess that puts me in just shy of $60. Figured we should have another pizza stone around the house, especially because I stole wifey's and it is now dark from being on the grill. Nice part is that my wife absolutely loves this contraption so I will get to use it frequently.
 
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