Leaderboard

Ok so a lot of people on the guru are saying they don't like wings...... Well I Love wings. I don't do them near often enough. I really wanted to do something different because enough though I love the standard beer brined Frank's sauce hot wing, I just knew that wouldn't be very interesting and I like to stretch myself for challenge cooks. (however I did make some standard Frank's wings during this cook, but they were not the star) of course, perusing serious eats was a good start and low and behold I saw a recipe for jerk chicken wings. Now, I've only had "real" jerk chicken once and I adored it. I bought a bottle of the homemade sauce the restaurant used while on vacation but that bottle is long gone. So I was ecstatic to try making it. And then I got to thinking about my "Thang" I wanted to do cuban black beans and rice (which ended up turning into a coconut rice recipe from kenji that was delicious but a pain in my butt) but I didn't feel like doing either of those on the kamado.... Then it came to me. One of my favorite summer time sides! Mexican street corn salad. This stuff is bomb. Com and whenever I make it, it's gone in a flash. Which is good because it isn't so great leftover. With that lengthy interlude, here is my challenge cook. First things first, assemble the Jerk sauce and marinade All ready to go in the blender And all smooth Then marinated the wings for about 8 hours. Mean while I had been working on the Cuban black beans all day so I got to work on my Mexican corn salad ingredients. All stuff prepped for the corn I got the coconut rice going.... Which took forever but was not that difficult. Also not healthy. But really pretty tasty. After the wings had been marinating for a while I got them on the KK at about 350. The wings on the left are jerk wings, the wings on the right are just dusted with honey high and because BBQ wings for the kids and hot wings in case the jerk wings were gross. Spoiler alert-they were not gross. In fact, when I mixed up the sauce and tasted it it was so good my husband and I were licking the lid of the blender because it was soooo tasty. Then I got the cast iron hot on my Akorn for the corn salad and dumped it in and letting it pop and crackle After a bit it was ready to get all mixed up in the salad. Wings are just about done. Applied sauce to the hot wings and BBQ wings and set the glaze. And all the wings are done and I tossed the jerk wings with a little more sauce since it was so dang good. My plate of food. And dang all these wings were GONE. The next time I make the jerk sauce I will quadruple the recipe so I can have multiple batches in the freezer. My husband said they were the best homemade beans he ever had and went back for 3 servings.... And he never goes back for beans. This corn salad is always a hit and was the first thing gone. It was a great challenge cook. As we were eating my husband said "I love challenge cook night."

My ciabatta is making the rounds : ...and it’s featured in this month’s Amazing Ribs Hot From the Pit Newsletter.

lol....thought the same thing

I think that CocoChar is a pretty good substitute for binchotan, but that's a bit speculative, seeing as I've never cooked with binchotan in my yakitori grill. Fingers crossed that Dennis solves the shipping problem, as I've been seriously hoarding my last few boxes of CocoChar.

Shuley, what fun that cook must have been a fun fun experience. Everything sounds and looks so delicious. Yum yum. [emoji7]

Ok so a lot of people on the guru are saying they don't like wings...... Well I Love wings. I don't do them near often enough. I really wanted to do something different because enough though I love the standard beer brined Frank's sauce hot wing, I just knew that wouldn't be very interesting and I like to stretch myself for challenge cooks. (however I did make some standard Frank's wings during this cook, but they were not the star) of course, perusing serious eats was a good start and low and behold I saw a recipe for jerk chicken wings. Now, I've only had "real" jerk chicken once and I adored it. I bought a bottle of the homemade sauce the restaurant used while on vacation but that bottle is long gone. So I was ecstatic to try making it. And then I got to thinking about my "Thang" I wanted to do cuban black beans and rice (which ended up turning into a coconut rice recipe from kenji that was delicious but a pain in my butt) but I didn't feel like doing either of those on the kamado.... Then it came to me. One of my favorite summer time sides! Mexican street corn salad. This stuff is bomb. Com and whenever I make it, it's gone in a flash. Which is good because it isn't so great leftover. With that lengthy interlude, here is my challenge cook. First things first, assemble the Jerk sauce and marinade All ready to go in the blender And all smooth Then marinated the wings for about 8 hours. Mean while I had been working on the Cuban black beans all day so I got to work on my Mexican corn salad ingredients. All stuff prepped for the corn I got the coconut rice going.... Which took forever but was not that difficult. Also not healthy. But really pretty tasty. After the wings had been marinating for a while I got them on the KK at about 350. The wings on the left are jerk wings, the wings on the right are just dusted with honey high and because BBQ wings for the kids and hot wings in case the jerk wings were gross. Spoiler alert-they were not gross. In fact, when I mixed up the sauce and tasted it it was so good my husband and I were licking the lid of the blender because it was soooo tasty. Then I got the cast iron hot on my Akorn for the corn salad and dumped it in and letting it pop and crackle After a bit it was ready to get all mixed up in the salad. Wings are just about done. Applied sauce to the hot wings and BBQ wings and set the glaze. And all the wings are done and I tossed the jerk wings with a little more sauce since it was so dang good. My plate of food. And dang all these wings were GONE. The next time I make the jerk sauce I will quadruple the recipe so I can have multiple batches in the freezer. My husband said they were the best homemade beans he ever had and went back for 3 servings.... And he never goes back for beans. This corn salad is always a hit and was the first thing gone. It was a great challenge cook. As we were eating my husband said "I love challenge cook night."

Made two loaves of ciabatta today. Child’s play for the BB32 baking stone. Here is the photo shoot. Funny how I don’t have many pics of my kids, but loaves of bread...yeah! We’ve got those! First, washed and waxed the winter grime off my KKids today, so here’s the BB32 shining. Made the biga last night and mixed the dough this AM. Ciabatta is a very wet dough. This one was 84% hydration. The results. Posing. I used @Syzygies steam oven technique. If you have a KK and you aren’t baking bread with it...well...let’s just leave it right there...

Any reasonably decent lump will get hot enough to cook with. The problem is most lumps don't last long when burning that hot. The harder the lump the longer it will last. The sound of two pieces of lump hit together is a good indication of just how hard it is. The harder the lump the more of a "clink" sound it will make compared to a "thud" sound. Take for example RO. Burns plenty hot enough but burns up rather fast. When you strike 2 pieces together it makes a dull "thud", almost hollow sound. The Marabu on the other hand has a "clink" sound to it. They talk about this sound when talking about binchotan. Let your lump talk to you, become a Lump Whisperer - LOL Also properly sized pieces is key to success. I never sort lump but will do so for this cooking adventure.

I'm really excited about your new grill @ckreef and it is, partly, @Syzygies' fault. When I was running through my KK purchase options Syzygies slipped in an off the cuff comment about buying binchotan if I was really rich. I was intrigued about a charcoal that required you to be rich and disappeared down the rabbit hole in search of this mystery coal. Way too expensive for me but it led me to yakitori and the konro grills. It seems like an amazing art, making binchotan and then cooking wonderful morsels of meat over it on the konro. Whenever there is a TV programme on BBQ and someone eats really good yakitori it seems like it is a tranformative experience. How far am I on the journey? Well, I have had some sumi bincho briquettes in our basement for some months now (poor man's binchotan at a tenth of the price of the real thing) and am still waiting for my konro grill. Hoping it will come in the next few weeks so I too can spend a leisurely evening eating meat over super-hot coals.

This review has very little to do with kamados. My intention was to find the longest burning lump suitable to use in my XL Konro Yakatori grill. Last night I tried Fogo Marabu Hardwood Lump. Using an XL Weber chimney I added two alcohol soaked cotton balls, a thin layer of RO lump and then filled it up with Marabu lump. With that setup it had no problem getting lit. I started it on the porch but quickly moved it out to the yard. To just say it was sparky is a huge understatement. I've bought $10 fireworks that didn't spark as much as that chimneys worth of Marabu. We did have a nice fireworks show before dinner - LOL. Once it was fully lit and glowing orange the sparks ended and I dumped it in the Konro. It did burn nice and hot. Me and Mrs skreef had a leisurely dinner cooking and eating that lasted about an hour. There were plenty of glowing coals still going when we finished. The Marabu lump eventually burned completely up and left very little ash compared to other lumps. In this Yakatori grill I've tried Black Diamond, Rockwood and now Marabu. Both the Black Diamond and Rockwood burned hot but definitely didn't last as long. I would consider the burn time of Black Diamond and Rockwood to be 1+ hour. On the other hand the Marabu would be a 2+ hour burn time. The extra burn time is definitely useful especially if you have a few guests sitting around enjoying a nice evening of cooking and eating. Would I use Marabu in a kamado? Probably not due to the sparky issue. For now it's the best I've tried in the Konro and will continue to use it until I find something that sparks less and burns at least as long. Sorry no pictures of this adventure. Not quite ready to showcase the new Konro Yakatori grill. (I still have some trim work to do on my modified Yakatori table.)