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tekobo

Marmite - love it or hate it?

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Wait...this thread is about Marmite? When did that happen?? :smt017 :smt043

I’m thinking flank or skirt steak would work well here. Can’t wait to try it. Looks awesome! I have all sorts of ethnic cooks planned for next week celebrating the 4th of July — the birth of a nation of immigrants. My personal way of sticking it to the man!  

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49 minutes ago, Pequod said:

I have all sorts of ethnic cooks planned for next week celebrating the 4th of July — the birth of a nation of immigrants. My personal way of sticking it to the man!  

Ha ha.  Pleased that Nigeria will be represented.  

Remember that old expression?  Some of my best friends are black?  Well, some of my best friends voted for Brexit and for Trump (not the same friends given the geographic challenges).  What the current politics draws out is the differences between us.  I think it is a good thing that we are more aware of those differences but I sure as hell have no idea how we reconcile them.  

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I thought I had hit the jackpot today.  I was in London and happened upon a food court where suya was advertised.  I dashed up to them and asked them what cut of meat they use.  They looked at me blankly and said they don't serve suya at lunchtime.  When they realised I was odd and genuinely wanted to know about their beef cuts, they told me "ribs".  I am pretty certain they don't serve ribs and my Chinese friend guessed that they might mean skirt or flank i.e. flaps near(ish) the ribs.  

Anyway, I have now realised that I should not have bothered with all that internet "research".  I asked my mother in Nigeria today and she is going to ask her friend's son, who has a suya business, a) what his rub recipe is and b) what cut of meat he uses.  She recommended "fullay" but agreed there wouldn't be enough fillet to go round if that was the standard cut.  

Edited by tekobo
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I am pleased that we hijacked this thread away from Marmite and onto something way more palatable! :laughing6:

I used beef Top Round steak, that was thinly cut (by the butcher, not me!) - it was called Sandwich Steak. It was about 1/8" thick. I cut the slabs into strips for the skewers. 

Here's the rub recipe that I used (I modified it based upon what I had, plus how I thought it was supposed to taste?)

This recipe made plenty of rub for a pound of meat.

  • 1/4 cup of dry roasted peanuts
  • 1/2 TB of cayenne (I used Korean chile powder - Gochugaru - as I think it has more kick than cayenne.)
  • 3/4 tsp of smoke paprika
  • 1/2 TB of garlic powder (I used Lane's BBQ Garlic Squared, which has some herbs in it, too - Garlic, Salt ,Onion, Black Pepper, Parsley, Oregano, Basil, & Turmeric)
  • 1/2 TB of onion powder (I used Penzey's Fox Point with some extra dried shallot tossed in - Fox Point: salt, freeze-dried shallots, chives, garlic, onion and green peppercorns)
  • 1/2 TB of white pepper
  • 1/2 TB of hot ground pepper (or cayenne) (I used Penzey's Berbere seasoning, to not just give heat, but some complexity to the rub - it has a lot of Moroccan flavors in it - cayenne red pepper, garlic, ginger, fenugreek, cardamom, cumin, black pepper, allspice, turmeric, cloves, Ceylon cinnamon and coriander)
  • 1/2 TB chicken bouillon (I crushed up 2 cubes)
  • Salt to taste.

I put everything into my spice grinder and pulsed until well chopped/blended. The peanuts still had just enough oil in them to make it almost a wet rub, but still crumbly and not a paste. 

Lightly oiled the meat after I skewered it and generously sprinkled the rub on. As I said in my earlier post, I used the rest of the rub on the meat as it was cooking to layer it up. Worked well.

Edited by tony b
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Just spoke to my mother.  She said she has "triple sourced" her information about the part of animal used.  All three sources said "itan", because that where there is a lot of meat to cut.  "Itan" literally means thigh.  I suspect that is what we call a haunch and, looking at the picture of a cow, it looks like round, rump or sirloin.  Take your pick!  

The good news for me is that my mum is due to visit in August and is now on a mission to find me the ingredients for the suya rub so I will get those and the recipe too.  

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1 hour ago, Pequod said:

The recipe for Suya spice at that link has some interesting ingredients. Not sure I know what they are. Kuli Kuli?

I had to admit to @tony b earlier in this thread that I didn't know that suya pepper included peanuts/groundnuts.   I now know that  kuli kuli is required for the suya rub and that it is made from nuts.  See this text from the recipe from @Aussie Ora's link:

  • Kuli Kuli (also Kwuli Kwuli or Kwili Kwili) is groundnut (peanut) cake. To make Kuli Kuli, you simply grind roasted groundnuts, squeeze out the oil from them with a paper towel or napkin, press them into any shape you want and deepfry them in vegetable oil till brown and dry. 
  • Never use roasted groundnuts for your Nigerian Suya spice without first of all processing it into Kuli Kuli because there's too much oil in peanuts and this will form a paste instead of powder when you grind it.

The second bullet point is looks like a good tip.  I think that @tony b may have ended up with more of a paste than a rub but it sure sounded like it was tasty nonetheless.  

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Interesting. The Milk Street recipe also calls for ground dry roasted peanuts, but doesn’t go through that process. Authentic Kuli Kuli sounds like a peanut butter that has had the oil removed and then dried to a cake form. Wow! No wonder Americanized versions use ground roasted peanuts instead. Much simpler, and we just wouldn’t know any better anyway. 

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1 hour ago, Pequod said:

Authentic Kuli Kuli sounds like a peanut butter that has had the oil removed and then dried to a cake form. Wow! No wonder Americanized versions use ground roasted peanuts instead. Much simpler, and we just wouldn’t know any better anyway. 

Yes, a lot of authentic Nigerian dishes are time consuming.  I characterise cooking from my childhood as "first catch your goat".  

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That was nice of you to open familiar family and cultural treasures. I still have trouble pairing my chicken wing sauce to my beer for the nite. Ah, it's difficult but,  I'm glad you find the road to the world as open. Mae West would say, so many men so little time. Such as it is with spice, always looking for the perfect combo. Keep on kookin

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I found another recipe for Suya in a cookbook I own, called "Prime" (all about beef). The recipe calls for Kuli Kuli and Suya Pepper Mix, and notes that both are available online. Unfortunately, when I Google "Kuli Kuli," it turns out to also be the name of an organic food company, so the term has become overloaded and difficult to search. :sad:

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I was pleasantly surprised that my version, using the dry roasted peanuts, wasn't that pasty at all. I put them in the grinder with all the dry spices/powders. It came out fairly crumbly. A whole lot easier than making the authentic version.

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