Leaderboard

We had a beautiful start to March here, (I'll take the lion at the end of the month!) - so on went the Tandoori chicken legs! Made a nice side of au gratin zucchini. Plated with some curry rice.

Lead me not into temptation. Baby back ribs with suya chicken thighs on the side.

Rack of lamb, Paprika, cumin, chilli, salt rub Seared fat side down on KK. Cleaned out the shed cos it’s now demolished and found some home grown cherry branches that were pruned 2 years ago. Took it to 65c( 150f) which is kinda half pregnant- not enough to render the fat and the meat beyond rare. I have sooooo much lamb in my cold room and other racks so this was an experiment. Still, very tasty. The smoke and spices were delish, Very moist. Now I’m really torn between taking this to a pulled lamb state, or trimming some fat and cooking rare! Maybe trim the fillet off, slow cook the ribs, then throw the fillet back in at the very end at high heat and keep it rare? Friday will be another lamb leg on the spit. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Well, the meat came out as expected but it's been at least 30 years since I did this prep at my old house. I let this one soak over nite and the results were way shy of what I expected but if memory serves me right it was a two day soak with a whole bottle of the Balsamic to get that tangy meat. Q1. Leaving the meat in longer is an experiment, the longer the better for penetration, don't be shy. Q2. The balsamic has a sugar content and will darken the meat on the outside however, the inside is yours for temp, this cook should be at medium or better. So again let it soak, turn it, and let the marinade do it's thing. You may fork it for quicker penetration, I'm still holding to the longer the better although that's up to the indivigual.

Blasphemy ribs! Baby backs cut into individual bones BEFORE they’re rubbed and smoked. More bark per bite!

Tyrus, I have one of those walk-in fridges as well and I plan to use it when I do my bacon soak-out. Here is my beer fridge.

Nice cook on the lamb Basher and Lamb is one of my favorites to cook. Did you ever marinate your lamb in Balsamic vinegar for say for maybe a day ( just a cheap brand will do ) and cook it up. Makes great sandwiches. It changes the complexion of the meat and gives it a nice tang, only saying because you have a ton of it. Since I first posted prior , I was bitten by the basher bug and had to run to the market for some lamb and this is what was available. In a bag with the Balsamic (the cheap stuff) with one Pablamo, an aged Habernero half strength, 5 cloves chopped garlic, 1 bay leaf and a dousing of herbs de provence. Out to the rear deck to marinate. You see in New England the back deck in winter is fashionably referred to as the frig. Will pop this on the KK tomorrow to rotisserize.

Four Wagyu Tri Tips, reverse-seared and smoked with cherry and coffee wood. Best beef you can put in your mouth. Grilled on my 42" Serious Big Bad of course!

Lamb Shank Steak. Forward seared on the 16" KK then 300* coasting to 130* IT on the 19" KK. Served with leftover mashed potatoes and corn.

I bought a few awesome Camp Chef Accessories. Definitely had to get the cover. Needed some leveling feet especially when using the griddle. A longer propane hose is always nice. And of course we needed a Travel Trailer to go along with the Camp Chef. I mean what's the purpose of owning a camping grill if you can't go camping 2020 Grand Design 2600rb. Just the right sized couples trailer for me and Mrs skreef. Standing in the bathroom doorway. The other end, standing in the bedroom doorway.

That looks so much more comfortable than the tent I used for camping.

Sent from my SM-T835 using Tapatalk

Beets down under and pork up top...a fine Australian dinner

You will need to flip the half grate of the 32 over due to a flat side on the back end. Here is a picture from tonight with the 32 half grate in and the basket divider in so the chops are cooking indirect

That is true Toney and a good suggestion as we sit here today. The only practical experience I have is a slow soak, it is a vinegar, and I don't know the correlation of the direct vs injection. I'm willing to try but unsure of the results. Trouble is I've never written things down and this one bit me in the butt as far as expectations were in concerned. Tomorrows another day

You could always inject it with the Balsamic marinade to get better penetration and shorten up the marinating time.

Tyrus I’m inspired. How did your cook turn out?Too late, just coated a leg in dried garlic, chilli, cumin, ground pepper, purple crack, ground mustard seeds and peppercorns. All small proportions cos it’s now bagged and marinating in balsamic vinegar and molasses and a stack of chopped basil( cos my garden needed trimming). Plan is to pull it out Thursday, 24 hours air drying in the fridge, then spit roast Friday. I’ll have a yard full of workers for the new ODK and also friends dropping by to pick up their lambs..... a little taste test before they go home. Q1: How deep will the vinegar penetrate? Q2: Will the vinegar dry out the lamb surface air drying in the cold room and further crisp up the crust? Oh, and pequod, those ribs look amazing, like lollipops. And Mac, it’d be good to see that cold room operating through summer[emoji3062] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@Basher good to hear! Now the fun begins. Hope things go smoothly for you

Led zeppelin...... great bbq music. I could handle that. 4 weeks early Troble is outstanding. Our demo started on Thursday. Squeezing an excavator into the back on Monday. They reckon 2 days to get the excavation complete with footings. Then it’ll shape up. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@Basher congrats on that purchase you must be getting excited. Seems like sound logic to me, if you can come back from a war zone and still work you’d think you wouldn’t break it at home. Are you starting to break ground on your project yet? my guys are flying and are gonna finish 4 weeks early. Never heard of a construction project finishing early.

But if you blast Led Zeppelin while grilling that could be cool

Bruce I have about 50lb remaining across various cuts, vac sealed and a further 20lb in the freezer. 15 more lambs coming in this Friday to be distributed to other friends. They weigh around 60lb each lamb. Tyrus thanks for the suggestion. I’ll look up some balsamic lamb recipes and give it a go. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There’s plenty to go around pequod. You could start the revolution to bring the American people back to lamb. It really is the tastiest of the red meats. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Decisions, decisions, I can see why your head hurts. Tasty meals to come I'm sure.

I keep wondering why Americans don’t eat more lamb. Now I know. It’s because @Basher is hoarding it.

Yum yum they look delicious Dennis, nice cook

Pork Marbella, I found the recipe here - https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/pork-marbella

One of the pork tenderloins went to make breakfast meat slices. Partially freeze the pork tenderloin and get a nice sharp knife, eh Bruce, and slice the loin very thin. Sprinkle with coriander, cumin, light brown sugar and pepper all in equal proportions 1/2t/lb. I divide it up into serving sizes and freeze. It's a breeze to cook in the morning only take a few seconds. Here it is sliced and ready for spices and dividing.

Thanks, Bruce. I will put the recipe up later this morning.

Mac that looks delicious, the prunes olives and garlic sounds interesting. Care to share the receipt?

Went to Costco yesterday to get a pork belly that I want to turn into bacon. It is in the cure as I type and will get smoked on the KK next week. While there found some pork tenderloin so made a new to me recipe - Pork Marbella. It has prunes, olives, garlic, and capers. Seared. The goodies are added and it is ready for the oven. Just look at that moisture. Plated.

Volatile and unstable gas if used improperly, just look at the Hindenburg. I guess that could be said of LPG also, as you say Au products are over regulated so maybe that's a good thing.

Troble I’m opting for a Heatlie drop in natural gas burner. https://www.heatlie.com.au/heatlie-bbq-ige-island-gourmet-elite The commercial products here don’t comply on residential properties.... we are over regulated. I’ll tell a story why Heatlie. We raised funds for our local kindy 8 years ago and had surplus funds the committee put aside to buy a decent bbq to continue fund raising through sausage sizzles. I got excited, started the research and determined Heatlie made the best transportable plate gasser to cook sausages and onions for 4 hours at a fete..... BUT, the committee voted for a cheap hardware product at half the price. Despite my protest saying it will melt 90 minutes into the cook, they ignored my polite suggestions. Sure enough, less than an hour into the first cook this brand new bbq melted, the plate buckled, the frame fell apart. Twas a disaster. Heatlie had just won an Australian Army contract to supply 350 bbqs into Iraq. All of them came home and I reckon they would have been bashed up, dropped out of planes and exposed to pretty harsh conditions. The kindy purchased a Heatlie and still cook on it today. Now known in our small community as an Iraqi bbq. I’ll review it once I have a few cooks on it. They also make a hydrogen bbq! https://www.heatlie.com.au/hydrogen-bbq Not sure what this is about? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We skated - the storm that they predicted for us today (5" - 8" of new snow) went south of us - woo, hoo!! Not complaining one single bit!

I agree. Learning to make bread takes time and, just when you think you have a good formula, it kicks back at you. Made some buckwheat bread at the weekend and I wanted to cry when it came out, mostly, flat. The good news is that my guests didn't care and wanted to know where I'd bought it! @Pequod, thank you for sharing your rich seam of references. I am already enjoying the read and I'll hopefully learn a lot.

Lovely, Tony. It appears that we are having the same weather. Got love these spring teasing days.

We had a nice break in the weather this weekend - highs in the 50s! Just a teaser for Spring though, more cold and snow on the way this week. Took advantage and grill up a nice steak dinner. A nice piece of pichana, rubbed with a mix of coffee/chile based rubs, direct on the lower grate with chunks of mesquite and post oak. Simple baked potato, sautéed mushrooms & shallots, with a nice side salad.

Indeed. Only probe of its kind out there. That's the single reason that I backed their Kickstarter campaign.

Here is a 70% hydration Trevor J. loaf. Dough handling matters, people!

I rarely sift unless a particular recipe calls for high extraction. I don't do "no-knead" either. I use bulk fermentation to build structure via a set of folds. My bread muses are my pals Maurizio and Trevor J. 1) Maurizio (https://www.theperfectloaf.com/) has a number of recipes specifically for fresh milled flour. You'll also find that he has a number of recipes that include high extraction flour. He tends toward very high hydration doughs and exotic flour combinations. 2) Trevor J. Wilson (http://www.breadwerx.com/) is known for his open crumb techniques and his excellent ebook, "Open Crumb Mastery." While many try to push the hydration as high as it will go, Trevor J. makes the point (correctly, I think), that proper dough handling and structure building are the keys to open crumb, and hydration is secondary and over-rated. His Champlain Sourdough recipe, for example, is only 70% hydration as I recall, but with proper structure building and dough handling, has a fantastic open crumb. The take-away? Focus on learning to build structure and handle dough before worrying about hydration. Most people get this backwards. The issue with 100% whole grain is that the bran tends to act like tiny razor blades and cut gluten strands shorter and, hence, makes your breads a tad more dense. There are a number of techniques to fix that. These include a long autolyse (I typically use at least 90 minutes) so that the bran softens. Others will sift out the bran, but then add it back into starter so that, again, it has more time to soften. Peter Reinhart wrote an entire book on Whole Grain Breads but, as with many Peter Reinhart books, I think he misses the mark.

Looks great Basher, high hydration sourdough breads can be frustrating, its hard to bake a good loaf. The process provides me with plenty of opportunity to learn and say a few cuss words. 😁

Thanks. I love pasta made with 100% extraction flour but have been a little less adventurous with bread, sticking to Chad Robertson's ever more complicated/varying mixes of high extraction, whole grain and bread flours. Do you have any idea what colour the wheatgerm is? I have assumed that if I simply sift out the brown bran I must be retaining the wheatgerm but that assumption could be completely wrong. Do you have a go-to recipe/hydration level for using 100% extraction wheat flour? I also seem to remember you saying you used a modified Tartine no-knead method. Care to share?

Personally, I agree with you that sifting out the germ just to put it back in is just a wee bit silly. I would skip that and go 100% extraction. But that's just me.

Done to 75c. Request for no smoke, charcoal only. Oh well, still bursting juices with every break of the skin. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have been meaning to ask about wheatgerm. A number of the Tartine No 3 recipes call for, say 70g, wheatgerm alongside 500g of high extraction flour. Given the fact that I am milling my own flour it seems to make no sense to be buying additional wheatgerm when the flour that I mill will contain wheatgerm in any case. Thus far I have got over this hurdle by sifting the bran out of my milled flour to get to about 85% extraction. Where the recipe calls for wheatgerm I simply use more of this high extraction flour. What do you think? Should I be looking to buy wheatgerm as well?

The ribs turned out great .Ready to go..time for a rest..and carved. Sent from my SM-T835 using Tapatalk

Busy evening preparing meals for the week. Tried this chilli recipe with a few Aussie variations and left over brisket. https://www.vindulge.com/smoked-beef-brisket-chili/ It’s pretty good. Added some fresh soaked chickpeas that provided a different texture to chew. Also been asked to prepare these two chooks for some asparagus chicken with cream of mushroom for later in the week. This is where the Meater stands apart. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

London broil and Roto chicken, both great looking meals, it's hard to decide....envelope please....it's a tie

A few of us on the KK site started our kamado cooking on Primo Grills and were active on the Primo forum. One of the most prolific posters was Steve Graves, under his handle Ask-A-Butcher. He was a great resource and shared his meat & BBQ knowledge freely. Steve had recently been in and out of the hospital fighting mrsa infections and lost his battle last week. He was a great guy and will be missed. STEVE GRAVES Ask-A-Butcher