Ten Years on a Kamado Joe (and the Cheaper Grill That Got Me There)

I cook on my Kamado Joe at least four or five times a month, every month, all year. Rain, cold, a Georgia summer that could poach an egg on the deck rail; doesn’t matter. Steaks, burgers, pizza, pulled pork, whole chickens, my annual Hatch chile roasting, and a brisket I’m still chasing after all these years. It’s the most-used piece of cooking equipment I own that doesn’t live in my kitchen.

I bought it from Costco in 2014, and it’s one of the best equipment investments I’ve ever made. But I didn’t start here. I started cheaper, learned what I actually needed, and then upgraded. This is that story.

(There’s also a thirty-day stretch where I cooked on it every single day, but that’s a whole tale of its own, and it’s coming in its own post. Consider this the trailer.)

Starting Cheap: The Bayou Classic

When I first got curious about kamado cooking, I wasn’t about to drop twelve hundred dollars on a grill I might not use. That’s roughly what Kamado Joe and Big Green Egg were running back then, and that’s real money to gamble on a maybe.

So I bought a Bayou Classic from Lowe’s for under $600. I’ll be honest with y’all: I also bought it partly because it was prettier than the others. That cypress-leaf glaze is genuinely lovely, and I’ve never once regretted being shallow about it. (I looked them up while writing this, and it seems they’ve leveled up since; their kamados now run in the same neighborhood as the big names.)

It was a great way to learn without a huge commitment. I had it about eighteen months, and in that time I figured out two things: yes, I loved cooking on a kamado, and yes, I wanted a better one.

Why I Upgraded

Two things pushed me.

First, the Bayou was about half an inch smaller all the way around than a standard 18-inch kamado. Doesn’t sound like much. What it meant was that half the accessories I ordered didn’t fit. Pizza stones, grates, deflectors; I’d buy something sized for a Kamado Joe or a Big Green Egg, and it would be just a hair too big. Maddening in that specific way where nothing is quite wrong enough to bother returning.

Second, after about a year, the firebox started to crack. The Bayou didn’t come with the kind of warranty the big names offer, and I could see where this was headed; this grill was not going to last the way I wanted it to.

So I started researching.

Kamado Joe vs. Big Green Egg

The two big names were, and still are, Kamado Joe and Big Green Egg. I looked hard at both. Here’s why I landed on Kamado Joe.

Local, at the time. This one stings a little to update. For years, one of the things I loved was that my Kamado Joe was assembled right here in metro Atlanta, about eight miles from my house; that came in handy more than once for parts and pickups. But the brand has grown (Middleby bought them in 2021), and the grills aren’t made here anymore. The ceramic comes from overseas now, same as everybody else’s. That’s disappointing, and I’m not going to pretend it isn’t. The company is still headquartered in the Atlanta area, so I can still get parts and warranty help without much fuss, but the “made a few miles away” part is past tense now. I can live with it. I just won’t pretend it didn’t change.

What comes in the box. This was the real tiebreaker. Kamado Joe included accessories that Big Green Egg made you buy separately: the Divide and Conquer system (a split cooking grate and two half-moon deflector plates) plus a coal basket with a divider for indirect cooking, all in the purchase price. With Big Green Egg you bought the grill, then the nest, then the plate setter, and so on. Those deflector plates alone sold me; being able to set up for indirect heat, run two zones, or bake a pizza without buying a pile of add-ons is worth a lot. Kamado Joe still leans on this in their marketing, and it’s still true; the competition still charges per piece.

One honest note on my particular setup. Mine is the original 2014 Divide and Conquer, which is the two-piece split grate and the split half-moon diffusers. In 2019 they redesigned it into a fancier three-tier system with a hyperbolic smoke insert, and no, I don’t have that. I’ve got the old two-piece version plus a grill expander that lets me raise one half into a second level. It does everything I need it to do, which is the theme of this entire grill, honestly.

Price and value. In 2014 the Classic was about the same price as the comparable Big Green Egg but came with more, and that tipped it. I paid around $1,200 at Costco. (The base Classic runs $999 on Kamado Joe’s site today, which is more or less my grill’s grandchild.) Mine doesn’t have the air-lift hinge, the locking seal, or the beefier gasket the newer ones have. That’s fine; I replace the gasket as part of my annual maintenance and everything else still works perfectly. If I were buying today, I’d step up to the Classic II for the air-lift hinge and the better gasket. Worth the bump, in my opinion.

And the warranty is the last piece: the ceramic is covered for life as long as you’re the original owner. My cracked-Bayou anxiety has never come back. (Well. Mostly. More on that below.)

What I Actually Cook on It

Most weeks it’s the rotation: steaks, burgers, pulled pork, pizza, and Sharon’s teriyaki chicken skewers, which have become a permanent fixture around here. Chicken tenders for Zach’s lunches basically every week. Nothing fancy.

Special occasions bring out the bigger cooks: brisket (still not where I want it, still working on it; this is a lifelong grudge match), Momofuku-style pork shoulder (my favorite thing to make on this grill, full stop, and it’s coming to the blog very soon; I’ll link it here when it lands), and slow-smoked tomatoes in summer for the best tomato sandwiches you’ve ever had.

And every September: Hatch green chiles. This is a full-blown tradition now. I order a case from New Mexico (from The Hatch Chile Store), get the grill good and hot, and roast the whole lot until the skins blister and blacken, then peel and freeze them so I’ve got that specific smoky, grassy heat all year long. It’s the single most anticipated cook on my calendar, and the smell takes over the entire yard.

Now, a couple of confessions about size and hot dogs.

For years I thought I wanted the Big Joe, the bigger model. I’ve since made my peace: the Classic is exactly the right size. I’ve fed ten people off it without breaking a sweat. I don’t need bigger.

What I’d actually love, if money and deck space were no object, is a Joe Jr., the little one. And it’s entirely about hot dogs. Hot dogs on the kamado are fine, but firing up the whole grill just for hot dogs is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut; by the time it’s to temperature, I could’ve boiled them twice. A little Joe Jr. sitting ready for exactly that kind of low-stakes, quick job would be the move. So my grill lust these days runs small, not big. Make of that what you will.

Accessories, and a Little Maintenance

The Divide and Conquer setup is the accessory I reach for constantly. The half-moon deflectors make indirect cooking easy, and the split grate plus the expander lets me run two zones or two heights at once: deflector and raised grate on one side for something slow, bare grate down near the coals on the other for a hard sear. Two setups, one grill, no swapping halfway through.

What I don’t bother with: the heavy cast-iron grates and plates everyone tries to sell you as upgrades. Yes, they lay down prettier grill marks; I’ll give them that much. But they’re heavy, they’re a pain to clean, and here in Georgia they’re a storage problem on top of it. Leave them outside and the humidity rusts them (you can’t hold a full seasoning on a grate you’re searing at 700 degrees), and keeping them inside eats up a chunk of room I don’t have. I’ve never noticed enough difference in the actual cooking to justify any of that; the standard grates are fine, and they mark food just fine too. I’ve also eyed the JoeTisserie (the rotisserie attachment) and talked myself out of it, because I wouldn’t use it enough. The DoJoe pizza attachment, on the other hand, has been sitting in my mental cart for about a year now. Somebody stop me.

As for upkeep: once a year, usually in spring, I do a high-heat burn-off. Load it with charcoal, open both vents all the way, and let it climb past 900 degrees (it’ll usually peg the dome thermometer). It burns off every bit of grease and residue and strips the grates back to bare metal, like the self-clean cycle on an oven. Once it’s cooled, I blow out the ash (battery-powered leaf blower; genuinely life-changing), pull the firebox pieces and check them for cracks, replace the gasket if it needs it, tighten the hinge screws, check the exterior, and wipe and oil all the metal.

Is that more work than a gas grill? Sure. But a gas grill lasts, what, five years, seven if you baby it? My 2014 Kamado Joe is going strong past a decade, and I expect another decade out of it easy. The ceramic will outlive several gas grills, and everything else can be repaired or replaced. That math works for me.

About That Lifetime Warranty (We’re Testing It Live)

Remember a few paragraphs up, where I told you the ceramic’s covered for life and my cracked-firebox anxiety never came back? Well. Life has a sense of humor.

A crack showed up running across the dome of my Joe. Not a hairline you have to squint at; a real one, the kind that made my stomach drop the first time I spotted it. Ten years of 700-degree sears and sub-freezing low-and-slows, in a Georgia climate that swings from ice storm to blast furnace, and the ceramic finally had something to say about it.

Here’s the thing, though: this is exactly the scenario I paid for. So instead of the Bayou-era move (which was to panic and start pricing replacements), I did the grown-up version. I filed a warranty claim.

And so far, it’s going the way it’s supposed to. I sent Kamado Joe these photos, they accepted them as valid, and they’ve come back asking for a couple of measurements (the base and the dome) to get a replacement sorted. Original owner, over a decade in, ceramic covered for life. The paperwork’s moving.

I’m writing this while the claim is still open, on purpose. It’d be easy to wait until a shiny new dome shows up and hand you a tidy success story. But the honest version is the one happening right now: the grill cracked, the warranty is being tested, and I’ll tell you exactly how it lands. Update coming.

(And if you’re wondering whether a crack sidelines the grill in the meantime: nope, it still cooks. I’m just being a little gentle with it while the claim works through.)

The Bottom Line

The short version of why I’ll never go back: charcoal and wood give you a flavor gas simply can’t, the ceramic holds a temperature for hours with almost no fussing (a low-and-slow 225 is genuinely easier in cold weather, when the grill isn’t fighting the heat), and because you control the airflow so precisely, it sips fuel; leftover charcoal just gets relit next time.

Would I recommend a Kamado Joe? Absolutely. The included accessories, the lifetime ceramic warranty, the build quality; it’s worth the money.

Would I tell you to start cheaper, like I did? Maybe. If you’re not sure kamado cooking is your thing, a less expensive one is a reasonable way to find out. I learned a ton on my Bayou Classic, and when I outgrew it I handed it down to a friend who wanted to try without the big spend. Paying it forward felt right; it was a good teacher, and it could be one again.

But if you already know you’re committed and you’ve got the budget, skip the middle step and go straight for the Joe. You won’t regret it.

More than a decade in, I’m still finding new things it can do. That’s the part nobody warns you about with a good grill: it doesn’t just replace the old one, it changes what you cook, and how often, and how much you look forward to it.

This is the first post in an ongoing Kamado series here. The how-I-light-it walkthrough, the thirty-day challenge, the Hatch roasting, and yes, eventually the brisket I keep losing to, are all on the way.

Do y’all have a kamado? What brand, and what do you cook on it that I should be stealing? Let me know in the comments.

P.S. Yes, they now make an electric push-button version with a fan that holds the temperature for you (the Konnected Joe). Yes, I think it’s a cheat. No, I will not be taking questions. We can still be friends.

P.P.S. About that DoJoe. If you see me post about it in the next few months, know that I held out for over a year and that willpower is a finite resource.

P.P.P.S. The brisket will be mine eventually. It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of how many more mediocre briskets Zach has to politely eat before then.

P.P.P.P.S. The dome-crack update will get its own note the second Kamado Joe makes good. Watch this space.