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(More customer reviews)Before we report on how this thing cooks, we need to mention all of this first...
We had to go through THREE of these cookers before we were able to piece together a fully working product! That is a pretty sad statement regarding Eastman Outdoor's manufacturing standards and quality control!
The first unit was a very bad repack that had obviously been opened and returned although the product box was taped before we opened it. The regulator and hose was not in the plastic bag and instead was loose in the box with the bag it is supposed to be housed in wadded up in a tight little ball in the bottom corner of the box. The owners manual was creased, wrikled and oil stained. In addition to all this, the bottom of the burner base had a big dent in it, so we returned it for a replacement. Not sure if this repack sold as new was Eastman's fault or Amazon's but I would be more likely to blame Eastman since I have never gotten such an obvious repack from Amazon before this incident.
The second unit arrived in a more factory fresh state, but one of the spot welded leg brackets on the burner base was badly misaligned to the burner body instead of being straight like the other two. The unit still stood up straight with the legs attached even with this shoddy workmanship so we decided to finish setting it up and try cooking on it.
We used this with a 16" Hand Hammered Carbon Steel Wok along with a 12" Wok of the same type and were BLOWN AWAY by how impressive this thing can cook! More than enough heat and then some! We only needed to turn the burner about half way up to get the Wok "screaming hot" and were able to produce a restuarant caliber stir fry with that distinctive "Wok Hei" flavor that only a burner like this thing has can produce! After a few days of use, while trying to collapse the legs, the brass button you push in to release the telescoping leg depressed through the hole and got stuck inside the leg preventing it from collapsing down for storage. We messed with the leg for over an hour trying to get the brass push button back out into the hole it is supposed to live in, but to no avail.
We processed another defective return and received a third unit which arrived today. This one, although all the spot welded leg brackets were straight was found to have a wobbly burner element even with all the mouting screws tight to the burner base. The sheet metal burner base that the cast iron burner element attaches to appeared to be much thinner than our first and second unit and could not support the burner element properly. It made a loud "CLINK-Clunk" when you put pressure on the neck of the element and can wobble it up and down. Also, two of the three legs refused to extend no matter how hard we tugged on them. One of the legs worked normally so we decided to just take this one functioning leg and use it to replace the defective one from unit #2, which at this point appeared to be the most solid of the three minus the defective leg.
So... In the end, we decided to keep Unit #2 and sent its one defective leg back with the more significantly defective Unit #3.
We now have a functioning product that for the most part all works, but MAN! Who the heck is doing the QC work over at Eastman Outdoors????
While this thing is truly AWESOME when it comes to cooking on its impressive 65,000 BTU burner (More like cooking on a rocket engine), we can only give this product three stars due to the shoddy workmanship and non-existent quality control we found in all three units we received.
I wouldn't buy one of these if Amazon has less than 5 in stock, since you are most likely going to have to go through several of them before you get one that doesn't have a major defect with at least one component in the product package.
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Eastman Outdoors 90411 Portable Kahuna Burner with XL Brackets and Adjustable LegsPortable Kahuna XL Burner with Adjustable and Removable Legs and propane regulator valve with hose. Burner legs will detach from burner and securely store underneath burner for transporting. Legs quickly extend out from 18-inch to 26-inch. Burner surface will accommodate pots from 10 qt up to 36 qt and 18" woks. Professional grade burner will burn 75% cleaner than standard CSA burners and use less propane.
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