Leaderboard

Here's my weekend cook. Wagyu Sirloin Cap. Look at the marbling on that. I split the cap, giving 1/2 to my neighbor. I seasoned it with salt, pepper, and garlic, and also added a light touch of rub that had some sugar and chili. I let that sit in the fridge for a few hours, and then cooked it at ~250 with a lump of hickory to an internal temperature of 120. I brought up the KK fire and seared it. I probably could have used a bit more sear, but I was worried by the smoke and smell from the burning grease. I thought perhaps I was burning the steak. It was absolutely delicious. My wife and kids wolfed it down in no time. I'm still learning my way through KK technique, but this is pretty straightforward!

Last weekend, I decided to use the extra time at home from sheltering-in-place to make pizza in the slow Napoletana style. I followed Tony G's method for his world championship pizza to make the dough. The dough was made from zero zero flour, yeast, sea salt, and water only. It took 3 days of total prep to make the starter and let the dough rise. It was the first time I've made a dough like that. After it was done, it was visible what Tony G is striving for. Long gluten strands and complex channels of air in the dough. I tossed the dough carefully, trying stretch the dough but not to compress it. My KK is a 19" Li'l Isla, and here is where I ran into some problems. I wanted to put my new pizza steel on the main grate and then put the pizza stone on the upper rack. Tony G recommends that setup to cook the pizza on steel and then toast the bottom of the dough on the upper stone for a moment - just enough to crisp the bottom enough for the dough to hold its own weight. As it winds up, the handle of the swinging charcoal opening on the main grate would have prevented me from being able to pick the pizza off of the steel on the main grate using my peel. To improvise, I stacked the heat deflector on the main grate withe the pizza stone on top. This lifted the surface high enough so that the pizza peel wouldn't be impeded. Then I used the steel on the upper rack. I baked the dough on the upper rack and then slipped it into the stone below to finish it. There was barely enough room to slide the pizza in. For KK buyers who are interested in making pizza, I recommend getting the 23" KK or larger - it would just give a bit more comfortable room to work with the pizza. I did also have problem still in getting the temperatures hot enough. I had initially warmed the KK to 550 degrees, but when I put the stone and steel in the KK, I couldn't raise the temperature above 450 - despite trying to give it ample time to heat soak the stones. I topped one pizza as a Margherita, and the other as a white pizza with mushrooms, Red Onions, salad greens, and a touch of olive oil. Despite some struggles, it all tasted great!

You were living your life and it rolled past on your screen like yesterday's old news. 😜 Glad you like it. Yes @Basher et al, the steak was very tasty. The Husband says we don't have that shiraz but we had something else that was nice. You said that the steak would cost a lot round your neck of the woods. Well, it did here too. Buying the ager wasn't cheap so that steak must be one of the most expensive I've ever eaten! Maybe in a few years when I have aged more salami and eaten many more aged steaks I will be able to justify it on cost. At the moment I justify it based on the sheer pleasure I get from experimenting and eating the results without dying. In this case the steak smelled very fresh and clean when it was broken out. I scraped a little surface mould off in a couple of locations but it was remarkably perky for a piece of meat that had been sitting around for that long.

Simple dinner of BBQ'ed chicken. Played with 4 different sauces, just to make things fun: Dinosaur Honey Mustard Creole, Dinosaur Wango-Tango Habanero, Cackalacky CheerWine and my house sauce. All thighs were dusted with Slap Yo' Daddy. I only sauced the undersides, trying to keep the skin side crispy. Direct, on main grate, cherry wood chunks, 350F. Plated with roasted spuds and hushpuppies, with a side salad. Final jury is out on the sauces, as I only ate 2 pieces of chicken with dinner - the Creole and the Cheerwine. Leftovers await!

I have disappeared down a dry aging hole and I am loving it. I managed to get a good deal on a dry ager that i had been drooling over for years and would highly recommend it if you like aged meat. Here is where I have been over the last few months. 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.

I use both techniques - prefer to forward sear on the thinner cuts (<1") and reverse sear on the thick ones. It's too easy to overcook a thin steak using the reverse sear - you'll end up with that gray band just below the surface by the time you get a crust. The solution to the problem is to just sous vide the steak first and just put it on the grill to char the surface quickly. But, it seems like extra work to fire up the grill for a 2 minute sear, let alone the waste of charcoal.

Got the craving out of the blue. Had to improvise a bit, as I didn't have any cans of coconut milk in the pantry. Faked it with a combo of half-n-half and coconut oil - worked surprisingly well.

Interesting indeed. Will give that a try.

Have you tried the reverse fire starting technique? Ckreef with your love for fire I’d be surprised if you were not across this. http://thehelpfulengineer.com/index.php/2011/02/make-your-fire-last-longer-light-it-upside-down/ I started doing this a few years ago and it makes an amazing fire that needs very little to no maintenance for a few hours. Haven’t tried it for a cooking fire. Most cooks want just the embers with no flame. This fire definitely has less smoke as it’s burnt off through the flame, so, maybe it does make for a good cooking fire? Give it a go and let me know your thoughts. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks @ckreef. Good to see how you set up the wood stack inside the grill. Up to now, my focus has been on getting as much coal as hot as possible as fast as possible so that I can get on with cooking. It will be fun to slow down, build a wood fire, wait for it to burn down and then start cooking. An Argentinian BBQ book that we have talks about wine and salads filling the time before the meat is ready. That may be why they take so much time to set up!

My method for cleaning out is similar to @Basher's - shake basket down, take it and deflector out and I just use a small brush and pan to sweep up and I don't even bother with a vacuum cleaner now. If you did use a shop vac it would avoid the inevitable dust at this stage. I too dump my "coals" in from the bag but they are cocoshell briquettes and they produce no dust at all. No flavour at all either. You could add flavour with a smoker or smoke pot or with hand placed charcoal on top of the briquettes to avoid the dust. Good luck!

Looks good Tony. I haven't done those in a while and now I want to of course.

That had to be tasty, Tony.

Happy Earth Day!! 🌎 50 years - WOW! I guess that I was distracted on 4-20 day and forgot to post pics of the dinner. Pork Satay skewers with peanut sauce over coconut rice, with a nice side salad and a tasty Rose. Main grate, direct, 350F with peach wood chunks.

Sent from my SM-T835 using Tapatalk

Morning to afternoon is a bit long, that's probably for really big grills. From lighting that stack to doing the sear took about 45 minutes. If I wanted just embers I would have done a little bigger stack and it would have taken 75-90 minutes. Really depends on your wood and how big of a stack you built. I only use wood, never lump. Here is the stack. I actually added one more piece of wood to it before firing it up.

I got two picanha trust me this was not raw was so tender ... Sent from my SM-T835 using Tapatalk

Here is the follow up to my post about coating two fore rib chops in cow fat and leaving them in the ager for a while. We ate one a couple of days ago after 78 days of aging. Delicious. Tasted of blue cheese.

I'll do the curb service but I'm not putting on the roller skates. 😆

Steve you know I am 15 minutes away. I could have picked my pizza up at the driveway.

It's been a while since I've posted but, saw Mac's eggs and thought I'd share a couple of recent cooks. My KK has been out of service for about 6 months while we rebuilt it's spot. Thankfully, we got done with everything just in time for the lockdown. So, lots of time to catch up recently. Been in a rut using the smoke pot with coffee splits lately. So everything starts out that way. First cook was some pork steaks that I smoked to rare, then took them to temp with a reverse sear and finished them off with a coating of bbq sauce that carmelized with the heat of the sear. We've become addicted to smoked corn. Taken to cutting them, so they stand up and get a full coat of smoke. After reaching temp, I have my top grate turned upside down over the coals to for searing. 20200327_232839000_iOS.MOV Easter cook was smoked wings with a spicy dry rub. The diablo eggs have candied jalapeño and red pepper flakes. The tri-tip came along for the ride... It's been vac packed up for later. I've really enjoyed catching up with all the great postings, plus seeing a lot new names has been great. Our world is small, community is important, stay well and keep sharing.

Is that the BBQ Forum equivalent of "check's in the mail?"

WOW! How did I miss all this? Anyway great post and awesome looking meat.

I am glad your pizzas were tasty. It is always good to get a result when it has taken a few days to get to the point of actually cooking your food! Full disclosure: I am not a good or regular pizza maker but the method that you describe sounds a little complicated. Others recommend using the steel on the upper rack and cooking your pizza on that for the whole time. When I have made pizza in the past that has worked and it was stressful enough getting the dough on and off once without trying to swap between a stone and a steel during the cook

Very clever!

One of the Forum sayings is "No pictures, it didn't happen!"

Great looking dinner, lots of nice colour on everything, Tony and you have a bonus meal waiting for you in the fridge.

Put some of those pork ribs from the other day to good use. Made a potatoe salad with sous vide potatoes. They work great because they stay in tact. Sous vide potatoes, all in tact. Ribs and salad plated. Pepper, smoked paprika and silk chili all from B&B spices.

My wife and I are taking meals to her folks during this viral shutdown, Todays lunch was ribs, slaw, and beans, a pretty classic BBQ lunch. I like to buy spareribs so I can trim the tips and pick the deliciously tasty and fatty meat to save for future bean cooks. I got a bit of a sloppy trim on one of the racks , had a few prior to the trim work . be safe, stay healthy steve

Looking tasty Steve, and Pequod- great journey. I've been locked out of uploading with Tapatalk- too many photos so back to laptop. This was Saturday nights eye fillet and rib fillet, grilled with split grill. Forward sear on those eye fillet cubes- they were about 2' cubes. Plated with jacket potato, bacon bits, mushroom sauce and coleslaw.

Started the big guy early in the AM. Then we took a short drive to one of the many vineyards in town. This one is offering 50% off to medical workers (my wife is one at a local hospital), so we decided to stock up. Found heaven. A Franklin style brisket point, wrapped after the stall. Ain't she a beaut, Clark?

A box of Grass-Fed Australian Picanha arrived today. Never cooked it before, can hardly wait.