Welcome back to The Barbecue Lab. My name is David Gafford and today we're going to
take a deep dive into one of the heaviest Kamado grills on the market,
coming up.
Grill Dome has been manufacturing Kamado grills since the 1980s and today we're
going to take an in-depth look at their flagship Infinity x2 Kamado. Now the x2
comes in three sizes. There's a small, a large, and an extra-large. And today we're
going to be looking at the large size. This is a kamado that's a little
larger than what you'll find in the Big Green Egg or Kamado Joe. But that's
not where the difference really lies. The difference really lies in the weight of
this unit. This unit weighs 265 pounds, and in comparison, a large Big Green Egg
is only 162 pounds. That's over a hundred pound difference in something that's
very similarly priced. Now when you start talking about the similarities between
them one of the things that I want to really point out for this unit is that
this unit has a lot of features built in that are add-ons and upgrades from other
manufacturers. Now the grill dome is made of all 304 stainless steel whenever you
find steel on this unit. The bands that go around the dome itself are stainless
steel, the side cart shelves are also stainless steel, you're gonna see that
throughout the whole entire unit and that's some nice upgrades. 304 stainless,
which means it's going to resist the elements better than anything else
that's out there. And when you talk about those side shelves one of the things I
really like about these shelves is that they actually have tool hangers on the
front. When I first saw the tool hangers I wasn't sure what I thought of them, as
they're just a little bit of a piece of metal jutting out from the shelf but it
handles any of the tools that I have here. I even had a pair of tongs that I
didn't think were gonna work on it and I set them on there just yesterday and
it worked perfectly. The cart that this unit comes on is called the Dome Mobile,
and the dome mobile is a fun name because I remember as a kid watching the
Gnomemobile on Disney, and every time I think of the cart on this I sing that song.
Now there's two lockable wheels on the front and two wheels on the back
that aren't lockable, and I have to say I actually love
this unit when it comes to the wheels. The Grill Dome is really easy to move on
flat surfaces but it's heavy to lift over a lip if you have one in your
garage. If you're gonna take the Grill Dome and put it on your back patio you
shouldn't have any issues wheeling around back patio. The same with the
driveway, you shouldn't have any issues moving it around the driveway. But since
I'm going from a garage to a driveway that has two lips one that's about 3/4
of an inch and one that's about an inch and a half I have a significant time
trying to get that thing in and out of the garage because it weighs 265 pounds.
So one of the benefits of this is that it retains heat so well because of the
weight of the ceramic that's in it. One of the downsides of that is if you have
to get it out over any kind of a lip you're gonna have to get down and
actually lift it up to get it in and out of the garage. So that's what we found;
just want to pass that on as a little bit of information. One of the benefits
also has a drawback to me. Grill dome uses something that they call the stack
and rack system. And the stack and rack system is made up of a bunch of half
units that allow you to be able to have different levels of different cooking
experiences. Everything from a stainless steel grate that allows you to put
stainless steel rack on one half and a stainless steel half on the other for a
full grill grate across the entire surface. Or since this is called the
stack and rack system the idea is you can within one stack you can put
something on the bottom and something on the top so you have multiple layers of
cooking. So for example what we'll do is we'll take the half pizza stone and take
that and put it on the bottom of the rack on the left and then above that we
can put a couple more stacks and then put stainless-steel grill grates above
that giving us indirect cooking on that side for multiple levels. Then on the
right hand side we could put a grill rack just about wherever we wanted to
and have direct grilling at one of the three levels that gives you the ability
to be able to do something like a pork butt where you're actually doing a long
term cook indirectly and on the right hand side still sear something off
towards the end of the cook without having to
remove grates and add different utensils. There's so many different ways you can
set up the Grill Dome and on our website we've taken a bunch of pictures of how
we've set ours up and what we use it for. You can also find something like that on
the Grill Dome site. But that's going to be very useful as you're trying to
figure out how to get the most out of each of the different levels of surface
in the grill dome itself. Now this unit is designed to be completely rust-free
due to ceramic design now there's a cover available and you can get that on
the Grill Dome website but this is built to be able to run without a cover and
not have to worry about it. The stainless steel itself and the
ceramic with this nice glossy coating on the outside will withstand the elements
even without a cover. Now we have a cover for ours and that's primarily just
because I love taking really good care of my grills, but that cover I like one
of the facts that you can actually take the handle on the top and lift the cover
off in one smooth motion. I have plenty of grills that don't have a handle on
the top and it you have to shimmy it off around the Kamado and it's not my
favorite thing. But this cover I really like because it's so easy to get on and
so easy to get off. I've also found that the glossy finish is really easy to
clean. I'll just take some Fantastic, spray it on the outside, and I can wipe
down the outside of the Grill Dome no matter what gets on it during a cook. And
it looks gorgeous and glossy as soon as I'm done. Now the Grill Dome is said to
be able to get temperatures of 175 degrees all the way up to in excess of
750 degrees. Now that is a wide wide swath of what you can do with this unit.
But what we've found is because the walls of the ceramic are so thick and
this grill is so heavy, it actually maintains temperature very easily. We use
everything from the Grill Gun to the Looftlighter to some of the
lighter cubes and lighter bundles that you can use to get this lit, but we found
that once we actually get some coals lit in the bottom and it starts to come up
in temperature that I can be up to 200 and 250 degrees within the first 10
minutes which isn't exactly the case when I'm looking at other kamado
grills. Some other kamado grills are slower to come up and I think that
really comes back to the size of the ceramic inside the grill. Like other kamados on
the market they have a top exhaust unit that Grill Dome calls their dial top. Now
it's a numbered top that you can use to dial in your temperature. Now when you
look at it you see other numbers on the top that show you how far it's open and
you can be able to choose and say well I want to open at a level two if I'm
shooting for 250, or if I'm shooting for something around 400 I want to open on
level five, and you can mark that for your level of altitude across the
country. It's helpful to be able to have numbers on there so you know the set
temperature that you're looking for is usually best attained at a certain
number you can write that down and remember for future cooks. Now between
the lid and the bottom of the kamado, we're used to seeing a gasket seal
around all of the kamados that we've tested here. One of the things I really
like about the Grill Dome is it comes with a fiberglass gasket like you're
used to seeing on oven doors and the like but you're seeing it on this from
the factory. A lot of times that's something you'd add to an older Kamado.
Some newer models are starting to ship with a fiberglass gasket but it's not
common by any means, and I love that it's there because it can withstand so much
more abuse than can just the regular felt gases that you've seen from
kamados of old. Now you'll see that between the top and the bottom and it's
just higher-quality I'm a big fan of it and I'm glad that Grill Dome's decided to
ship with that from the gate. The seal between the bottom and the top is tight
we haven't seen any smoke loss between the top and the bottom when
we're cooking, and part of that comes down to the hinge and part of it comes
down to that gasket itself. So while we're looking at maintaining temperature
it really depends on how much lump charcoal you use when you're cooking, how
much of that charcoal is lit, and where your dial top and dial door settings are.
Now the dial door is the input or the intake vent in the bottom and that
dialed door has different numbers on it as well so you can decide how much air
you want to let in to unit, versus how much is on the dial top
letting it out. So you can be able to say I want a level two on the bottom and I
want a level four on the output and you know you're gonna get a
temperature as long as you have about the same amount of charcoal inside. Now
the hinge is called a feather light hinge on this unit and we found the hinge
to be really really nice when you're using it. It's very easy to be able to
lift the hinge and close the hinge without having to use both hands or even
one hand. My wife and I were running a test and we can actually lift it up with
one finger and close it with one finger. That really speaks to the quality of
the hinge on the unit. There's also a hood thermometer and one of the things I
love about the hood thermometer is that it glows in the dark. So if you're
outside cooking and it's you know you know eight, nine o'clock and you're
cooking in the evening time. I could go out there and actually see what the temperature is
without using a flashlight or having to use my phone awkwardly to shine light
on it. I like that it's glow-in-the-dark that's just a nice little feature that
they have added on, and we found that that it gives us a pretty good
accurate representation of the heat at the point of the thermometer. Now it's
important to note that that heat is accurate at the point of the thermometer
not necessarily accurate at the cooking surface. That's true in any grill that's
out there and it's just a good reminder to make sure that when we're
looking at the thermometer up top that that is reflective of the temperature
exactly where that thermometer is; that's not necessarily where your food is
cooking. There are two other elements that are usually add-ons with most
kamado manufacturers that come standard with the X 2 from Grill Dome.
The ash tool is a little tool with a hook on the end that allows you to reach
in through the dial door on the bottom and actually pull out the leftover ash
from previous cooks. That's a nice little addition that usually costs quite a bit
extra, at twenty or thirty dollars with most other manufacturers. They also come
with a grill gripper tool which is a tool that allows you to be able to reach
in and pull off your grates off of the Kamado
even when they're hot without touching them. We actually love this tool because
it gives us the ability to pull hot things off and swap things in, and I'm
actually thrilled that they've included with the purchase price. Usually this
would be a 20 or 30 or $40 add-on and Grill Dome has included this with the
unit from the factory. The Infiniti x2 ships with a deflector for indirect
cooking. And the idea of the deflector in most grills you're going to see
something made out of lava stone that sits on the bottom of the Kamado so the
heat can come up around it and gives you that indirect cooking method. Well Grill
Dome does that with a metal pan that sits on the bottom of the stack and rack
system that allows you to put anything from you know water to broth to beer or
whatever it is you might want to put on the bottom. You can use that as a
steaming liquid in addition to it being a diverter to make sure that you have
that indirect cooking on the kamado. We've done a couple of cooks and we've
filled it with everything from apple juice and water mixture, to water, and
then even some where we just left it completely dry, and it does give us
completely indirect cooking with a simple metal pan. You can also use the
deflection stone that comes with the unit. That deflection stone is a half
circle that allows you to give indirect cooking to one side of the unit. If it
were me I would go in and order an extra deflection stone when I purchas the
kamado so that you have two deflection stones
of 1/2 that make a hole and you can put pizzas right on the stone and get this
thing cranked up to 750 degrees, you can have pizzas in no time. Our experience
cooking on the x2 has been everything from hot and fast cooking all the way
down to low and slow. Now we've done everything from pork butts, to ribs to
brisket, to chicken; we've done all the different types of meats we could
imagine. We've even done a tacos el pastor recipe that you can find on our
YouTube channel. And we built that vertical spit inside the Grill Dome
primarily because the grill lid is actually so much taller than any other
kamado we've cooked on to date. I had 275 degrees as a target for my pork
shoulder, and for the first five hours before the wrap it held it no problem. I
didn't have to come out and babysit the smoker. I didn't have to come out
check it. I didn't have to come out, there's nothing I had to do. It just held
it at 275. Now then I went ahead and wrapped the pork shoulder, and for the next three
hours it stayed at that 275 without me having to add any wood, any charcoal,
it just held it. When it came to high heat grilling I'll just say it had fast start
up and we got up to really hot temperatures. We were searing in the 600
to 700 degree range without any trouble whatsoever and I'll just say that we
used Grill Grates on the top of the Infiniti x2 and it got those Grill
Grates so hot but we put an incredible-looking sear on some steaks
and some chicken and some chops. They look gorgeous and people were asking us
how did you get such great grill marks? Well it comes back to high heat cooking
and a great product like Grill Grates where you can put that incredible heat
on just very defined rails. Now I want to talk about the value of the x2.
One of the things that really stands out is that the x2 is priced at $999,
but that comes with the cart, and it comes with the stainless side shelves, it
comes with the stack and rack system, it comes with a 1/2 baking stone, the
ash removal tool, the great gripper tool. All that's included in the package and
that's at $999. So if you compare that to the competition Big Green Egg has a
large kamado out there and that runs at $899 for
the unit itself. Now that means no cart, no shelves, no
stack and rack type system, none of that. So if you actually want to add the cart
to a Big Green Egg that's about $165, if you want to add the shelves
to each side that's another $140 and then to add the stackable rack
system, comes in a five piece rack system with Big Green Egg for $270.
If you add those, the price for the same Big Green Egg is
going to be over fifteen hundred dollars. And so for me I look at it and say I
have the added vertical height in the lid, I have a hundred more pounds of
addition ceramic built into the unit, and I have
all of the accessories that I want to buy with it anyway for five hundred, at
least five hundred dollars less. So for me the Grill Dome is quite a value
because they have so much included with it and it's really a great kamado.
I just have to say I like cooking on this. Now we have a bunch of different
grills here around the lab. I have pellet grills, I have wood-fired stick burners, I
look over here I have combo grills, griddles. All the grills and griddles
and things I have here, the thing I come back to that we cook on at least a
couple times per week is the Grill Dome kamado. And we come back to it over
and over primarily because it's very fuel-efficient. If you start thinking
about how much lump charcoal it takes to be able to get this thing up to speed
it's not a whole lot. You're not pouring 1/3 of a bag of charcoal in to get this
thing to go for steaks for dinner.
And you're also not going out having to manage the fire. Once you get the
charcoal lit, and you have your dial door and your dial top really set set where
you want them to go, the grill is just going to run. And so I started out the
first few cooks taking an external thermometer so I could get grate temp
and meat temp. Ever since I've learned how to really dial in the Grill Dome I
don't put the grate temp the grate thermometer in there anymore because I
just know once I have it set it's just going to be there and I don't have to
worry about it. So I think that's one of the testaments to the Grill Dome that I
want to make sure I pass on to you guys who are interested in it. That is that it
really holds temperature and it doesn't take a lot of charcoal to do it. Wo why
do we do this? We do this to help you make decisions and educated decisions
about your outdoor cooking gear before you go out and spend hundreds if not
thousands of dollars on something to go outside and put in your backyard to cook
with. I know that I've bought my share of really terrible gear over the years and
that's why we started this channel to help you understand what you should get
and what you should avoid. And I must say with the Grill Dome I really like this
unit and at $999 I feel like it's a great value in this
segment of the market. So if you've never checked out Grill Dome go ahead and
check the description below. We have links where you can get the Grill Dome
as well as more information on our website with some additional pictures
and photos that we don't have here in the video. Feel free to check that out at
thebarbecuelab.com And I can't wait to see you next time here on the channel. If you
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are coming up. We have some new recipes coming out as well as how to use your
equipment the very best that you can to get the best results as you entertain
your loved ones, your friends and your neighbors in the backyard. I'm David from
The Barbecue Lab but I want to say thanks for joining us today and I look forward to
seeing you next time right here on the channel.