In follow up to a recent post I wanted to start a new Thread related to the newer Duck Hanger accessory.  As the title says….let’s use this for “All Things Duck Hanger related”

Cheers, 

* Duck Hanger for different size KK’s - There seems to be questions on how well suited some accessories are for different size grills

* Techniques / tips- on set up and use

* Recipes ….etc 

Regards

Cooked a couple of leg quarters yesterday with red potatoes and a couple of Jalapenos and a loaf of take n bake bread.

Kook on KK'ers

Steve

First, taking inspiration from @Pequod's KK as a steam oven post and @Syzygies' updates, here is all the kit set up in my KK,

See here if you want to learn more: 

I heat soak the KK and contents for at least an hour before introducing the shaped loaf and, very quickly afterwards, some chunks of ice onto the aluminium disc below.  Before I did it I was really worried about how to introduce the ice and anticipated a big, dangerous whoosh of steam.  It is more gentle than that and, once the ice is in,  I shut the lid quickly to get this:

It is too cold to stand outside checking how long the steam lasts.  Will do that one day.  My ambition was to test the difference between a loaf cooked without steam:

and one cooked with:

The one cooked with steam is prettier. I do not have the right vocabulary to describe the bread, yet, but we found the crust on the steam cooked loaf more pliable.  I cannot for the life of me remember which loaf was which in the next picture.  I think the steamed one is on the left.  More experimenting to do and I am looking forward to making baguettes soon.

When I cook like this I think I need a bigger BBQ then it all beautifully fits and I think this BBQ is perfect. Don't get me wrong I will always want another KK!

Masienda

A shopping list for a full setup:

• Heirloom Yellow Bolita Corn (Oaxaca) (and/or other varieties)
• Chef-Grade Cal
• Chef-Grade Masa Flour (Harina) White
• Tortilla Press by Doña Rosa (this is better than the one you have)
• Premier Small Wonder Table Top Wet Grinder 1.5 Liter by SS Premier (as recommended by Oaxaca: Home Cooking from the Heart of Mexico)

One cooks corn with cal and water, then lets it sit overnight, to make nixtamal. Recipes for this are all over the map, and no one accounts for the weight of the corn and the water, unlike the brine recipes in Paul Bertolli's Cooking by Hand. I've found that 4:1 water:corn suffices for any corn variety, and 0.5% cal by weight is a minimum effective dose. For example, 360g corn, 1440g water, 9g cal.

Cooking times are also all over the map. One wants to see a partially translucent but not mushy kernel when you cut one open to check. After short cooking times Laurie experienced digestive distress. We've settled on using an old slow cooker on a four hour external timer. It only reaches an effective temperature in the last hour, and the corn comes out right.

One then rinses the kernels multiple times to get rid of the dissolved outer layer, then grinds the nixtamal to make masa. Traditionally one used a stone metate; this took hours and a shower. Mexicans often use hand-cranked metal grinders, but this requires two passes, and in Youtube videos they finish on a metate. It is rumored to take hundreds of pounds of corn to stop seeing metal fragments from these grinders.

Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo imported a Nixtamatic, a powered Mexican machine. Masienda sells the Molinito, a $1750, 26" x 13" x 19" countertop commercial unit. Bricia Lopez, in Oaxaca: Home Cooking from the Heart of Mexico recommends an Indian wet grinder. One grinds for 40 minutes, scraping down as needed, after adding 1/3 water by weight. This yields a too-wet masa that one corrects with masa harina; the masa still comes out much better than straight masa harina, even Masienda's. A wet grinder is easy to clean.

I cannot speak highly enough of Masienda's tortilla press. I actually had a project languishing over a decade to finish a cherry wood press. Now there's no point. The Masienda press is capable of greater force than any other home press I know. How does one avoid a tortilla thinner at one end? Easy, press, rotate, press. How does one easily peel the tortilla free? Press inside a slit open plastic food storage bag. Lift the plastic off one side. Flip, lift the plastic free from the other side.

While I own a comal, I vastly prefer cooking tortillas on a Baking Steel, in a pipeline three tortillas deep, flipping every minute at around 500 F. Restaurants use restaurant griddles the same way. It is essential to lightly season the griddle before starting, or wet tortillas will stick. Nothing beats a Dexter Russell 16160 Traditional Series 6" x 3" Hamburger Turner for flipping the tortillas.

This is all truly worth it.

First use was to cure sausages after my marathon sausage fest.  Temperature and humidity set at 15C and 70% respectively.  A much safer environment than the area I used to use outdoors, under the eaves.

Then we met up with @Braai-Q and his wife in London and alarmed the waitress in the restaurant as we swapped meat between our cool bags under the table.  This huge chicken is one of the presents that he gave us.  The Husband wasn't pleased with my decision to age the chook for a week before we ate it.  Thought I was risking a perfectly good chicken and quoted the old adage that everything looks like a nail to someone with a hammer.  Well, this time it worked.  A friend declared it the best chicken he had ever eaten.  Temp down to 2C and humidity up to 80% for aging meat. 

I wanted to do a comparison with brill.  The one on the left got eaten fresh.  The one on the right ended up in the bin.  A week's aging was too much in this case.  I have since aged red mullet and hake for a few days each and both were very good.  Flesh firms up and skin is nice and crisp when fried.  

This is today's adventure.  The very kind folk at a restaurant that we went to showed us their cold room and described some of their techniques, one of which was coating meat in fat and aging it for months.  Here are two Dexter cote de boeuf at the start of the job this morning.  They use liquid nitrogen at the restaurant.  I just painted the fat on every ten minutes or so and put the chops in the ager in between times.  

Fully coated.  Not to be opened before 1 April 2020.  

Sitting in the dry ager.  Hanging on the top right is a strip loin that has been in for two weeks.  I cut a bit off and wipe off the mould when we want a piece.  It has aged beautifully and is so much more fun and tasty than defrosting a steak from the freezer.  The pichanha below has dried out quite quickly and will be difficult to cut and grill Brazilian style.  No worries, will grill it flat and eat it up, very soon.  

However, The 23", having a round fire basket, has the advantage of setting the zones front to back, or left to right. I have not been able to find any discussion about the variation of front to back zones may have on temperature variation.

Is this significant?

Surely this set up above will create a greater temperature variation to the set up below? through radiated heat from the dome alone?

In the same way reverse flow off set smokers distribute the heat more evenly. 

I am theorising, but wouldn't this make a significant difference?

Was the flute set towards the back for thermo design reasons or to distribute the weight over the hinge?

Sorry about the amatuer sketch and vandalising your artwork, I have fat fingers!

https://carsonrodizio.com/products/kit?variant=32352864665665&currency=USD&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&srsltid=ASuE1wQ4F1smBI0TuOHBKgAhxz79XPmfxjyIhPXHXturX-bpY58Ja0vvYXw

Would the small pieces be okay to use overnight or do you think they would burn out (smoking at ~110C). I'm also concerned they may restrict airflow. Since it is overnight I can't  top it up (I'm not willing to get up at 04:00 to tend to it!).

Thanks,

Paul

I am figuring it was the time that caused the dryness as according to Meathead (and other sites) this size should only take about 10-12 hours. This is the second time this has happened as I got something similar with my final cook last summer.  I have had success before (way less dry) but I don't remember the exact whys and wherefores of those cooks, though I dont remember those taking as long.

I am not against trying other things (different temps, foil, injections) but I should be able to get the pork butt nicely cooked with exactly how I was doing it.  I want to work towards getting this setup good so I better understand whats going on.

One thing I am thinking that I am going to try next time is modify the way I control the heat on the cook.  I basically had the top hat cranked all the way closed and was relying on the small amount of leakage coming out the main seal to exhaust the heat.  I did this because the temp started climbing past 225 at one point with the top almost all the way closed and I had to shut it completely to get it to go down.  I am thinking that the long cook times in the stall were maybe because of high humidity in the Kamado due to the sealed conditions.  I think next time I am going to try and control the intake through the fan by closing the fan damper more next time and leave the exhaust more open.

Anyone else have any suggestions I can try to make my cook time more on desired target.

Thinking of switching to Fireboard Drive plus fan (replacing my old PartyQ + Thermoworks Smoke combo).

Is there a consensus on preferred fan to use with the KK? I have a 23".

Thanks for any recommendations.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

My lighting method was to  use two Weber wax cubes spaced a little ways apart with smaller chunks of lump across the top of the coal bed, and larger pieces below. It makes sense that the hottest spots were around where those cubes were to start I think, but are there any tricks to getting a more even heat across the coal bed? I suppose it’s really only an issue on something like shrimp where there are so many pieces to shuffle around, but it could be helpful for next time.

Another user posted a YouTube video which I’ve watched many times in the past, but which I don’t believe went into much detail regarding setting up the coals and vents for holding temps around 170 or so. 

In theory, I suppose it should be possible to start as you would for any low and slow cook, but with the vents choked down more than you would normally. Is this correct, or are there additional considerations which need to be taken into account for cooking this low?

Thanks in advance, as always!

I could barely lift the leg and ended up cutting off the shin before stuffing the rest of the leg in our big commercial fridge downstairs. I got up early today to scrub, salt and wipe down my butcher's block.  It's not been used for this purpose for years.  The Husband arrived back from Sweden last night and was not impressed at the prospect of having to deal with a huge carcass over Christmas.  I think I will do this slowly over two days and enjoy it.  

When I read about the Americans on the forum talking about the price of meat I am amazed at how cheaply you can buy it.  I think that I do well by buying animals whole, or in the case of steers by the quarter, but I suspect you would think this expensive.  The 60kg (including all the bones) cost £600 which feels super cheap at £10/kg.  Anyway, off to start my adventure...

Happy Passover and Easter.  (We are Jewish)

equipment: rotisserie drum (amazon), tritogenia variable speed motor, thermometer gun. 

beans: ethiopia sidamo

goal: medium roast to 210-215c (bean temp).

what happened: motor speed was 55 rpm (max). dome temp 350-380f. after 20 min, still looked greenish. upped temp to 400-420 dome. finished roast in about 38 min. longer than i had anticipated. 250g in. 210g out. 40 grams of chaff and moisture loss? color looks pretty uniform. i was happy with the result, but i have no idea how it's going to taste. i did not hear any cracking. maybe it was the thick walls of the kk, but i put my ear against the exhaust and heard nothing..

i was told i need to degass for a few days, even over a week if i want to run it through my espresso machine. 

does anyone know how to upload video? i can't seem to do it on this forum..

The fridge compressor did not fail, but it did shut down because I think the fan was messing with the fridge thermometer. The compressor was constantly running, so I think it just decided to shut down before it broke itself. Had a tech look at it and it was working again, nothing was wrong. 

I think I want to try this again, but without the fan and water pan..and with one piece only. I've read that 30 days is not enough for a noticeable difference in taste, that you need to age 60-90 days for stronger flavours to develop. But you also end up with even more moisture loss and less yield. So a large bone-in piece would be ideal.

Does anyone here dry age meat at home? Either with a dedicated cabinet or in your fridge with dry bags?