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@RokDok I loved the story thanks for sharing....also no judgement on the drinking while you wait for your KK, totally understandable in general I agree with @tekobo and I’d personally like to get closer to my meat to “know the animal” and know how it’s raised. That’s why I’m intrigued by this guy who’s local to San Diego and raising Japanese style Kobe beef cows in Montana. I’ve been watching his Instagram for about 6 months now and I feel like when I actually go in and talk to him I’m going to get a different level of knowledge about the beef I do t plan on buying this as a regular occurrence but I do plan on trying it out. A good friend of mine who I introduced/educated on how to smoke meat went last week he picked up a 3lb tomahawk steak, a ribeye and a couple fillets. He gave me detailed feedback and said the beef was great although expensive, 1/2 the price of what’s you’d pay at a steakhouse but he said the fillet in particular was an “otherworldly” experience. I’ve known this friend for 15 years and respect his opinion on food as we’ve dined out fine dining many times I have a new KK sitting off the coast in Long Beach waiting to go through customs and get to me. It’s likely to be awhile before it gets here but I think I might break that bad boy in with a Wagyu fillet

Get a cheap shop vac and put a drywall filter in it. Quick, easy, no clouds!

!!!! you just sneaked that in, all casual like @Troble!!!! Tell us more. Now. Please.

@jeffshoaf that looks good. I took a quick look round the options online and there seem to be many more at an affordable price than when I bought mine. Worth taking a look at the features on the one I ended up with to see if any of the features are worth seeking out in your current choice or another option. I started off with a cheap wine fridge but moved up to this as a more reliable and safer option. The funny thing is that now that I have one, I know that I would like another to run at different humidity and temp settings for salami making. No-one needs two dry agers in their life so I am using our enclosed porch to age a proscuitto and a cool basement room to age salamis. Wow, I just looked up a US site for my German made dry ager. The US price is off the charts. That's funny. We usually find that you get stuff much cheaper than us in the US. Nice that it is the other way round this time. Here is the link so you can see the features https://www.dryagerusa.com/products/dry-aging-fridge-ux-500 @Basher answers to your questions: Are you melting animal fat then painting it on as it cools? Yes, it is a bit tricky to get the right balance. I only just melt the fat and I apply it to cold meat to avoid heating up the meat too much in the process. Is there a preferred fat to encase your meat? I use dairy cow fat simply because I have some from mincing and then melting down the lovely fat that came from the dairy cow meat that I bought a while ago. I froze the fat in blocks and defrost one when I need it. Also, all our poultry here has to pass through a mild chlorine/ bleach wash to stop salmonella here, and then rinsed. We rarely ever get salmonella sickness as a result and you can’t smell any traces of the wash. Is it the same in the UK? I started off by trying to find out what happens to chickens in the UK to prevent salmonella but gave up when I couldn't find anything quickly. In any case, I figured the question that you were really asking me is whether I think it is safe to dry age chicken. The answer is that some sites tell you that you will die, instantly, if you dry age chicken and eat it. Others are more relaxed. I can only rely on my and my various mentors' (suppliers and restauranteurs) experience. Using good kit with the right temps and safety features and maintaining good hygiene practice means that I have not had any issues to date.

My 2 cents; I'll pass. I have the older 19.5" and 23" In either this box would sit in the bottom below the charcoal basket and only catch a small percentage of the over all ash produced. Removing ash from the cooker is easy enough without adding more steps, which I see this doing.

The above tasty looking cooks have set off hunger pains for me that I just had to satisfy. Off to the freezer I went and found a little cheese ball.

Lovely lamb for Straya Day, but where are the snags??

Aussie day lamb lollipops Sent from my SM-T835 using Tapatalk

Just for fun.

Great looking cooks everyone! I’m starving right now about to eat a bowl of honey bunches of oats! Wishing I had some meatloaf, Pork tenderloin, chicken or lamb lollipops. I made chicken soup and beef stew last weekend and have been working through that all week

Yes that might work on the 16 or 19.. But these are much more necessary in the other grills because the draft doors are not flush to the floor of the grills like in the KK. This feature makes ash removal MUCH easier then the glazed ceramic pot kamados.

Thanks Tekobo! Here's the ager I'm looking at; it can also be used for dried sausages with the optional humidifier: https://steakager.com/ It's more economical than others I've looked at but seems pretty capable. Uses UV light to help sanitization.

Tease! I have my asthma and diabetes under excellent control but I am hoping my diagnoses will help me get vaccinated sooner rather than later. We may be visiting you sooner than you think!!!

Hi @jeffshoaf. The best thing that I can say about dry aging at home is that it has become routine and exciting at the same time. This photo illustrates my point: The cote de boeuf at the top went in last week Monday. No fuss, just sitting there and we will probably have it with chips this Friday night. I asked The Husband to pick up a chicken from the supermarket today, something that we almost never do apart from to mince up for our cats. I want to see how/if aging will make a supermarket chicken worth eating. We will probably eat it sometime next week. And at the bottom is the three rib sirloin joint that I coated in fat at either end and started to age in September. Smells just fine and there is no sign of any sort of mould because of the fat painted on either end. So. On to your questions about whether to age small pieces or not. I was unsure about how best to use my dry ager until I visited a great restaurant in Wales last year. They kindly let us see their aging operation and these are the notes that I made afterwards: Mackerel - guts out cut flat underside. 7-10 days. Duck crown - ideal 10 days absolute max 3 weeks Fat encased joints - 8 months and more Chicken - max ten days Lamb fat trim - 6 months before making butter Tuna - 5-10 days Turbot (big) -10 days Their confidence about these timescales and the book "The Whole Fish" gave me more confidence about using the dry ager to a) improve tenderness and flavour and b) improve the dryness and crispiness of skin with a whole range of meats and fish. I was starting to lose confidence in my plan to age the three rib sirloin joint for 200 days, ala Lennox Hastie. Last week I dropped at note to my mentor at the Welsh restaurant and he came back to say he had gone up to 300 days but would advise I stop now unless I want a really "cheesy" taste. I like the blue cheese flavour so I will likely wait until my birthday in late Feb to break it out of the fat. You never know, we might be allowed to meet people by then. We have many friends who love to experiment with us. I hope you do too. It will be lots of fun.

As usual @tekobo, I agree with you.

@tekobo great effort! Wish I could make my own tools in the shop but alas I am terrible at any construction or machine related tasks. Nice job!

I am such a copy cat. This is @Troble's original: Here is my copy, using beef and suya spices: I was desperate to try this and, following @BOC's advice about how to make a Trombo King of my own, I hunted around in my cake tin box and presented The Husband with this, an hour before it needed to go on the grill. Make me one of those please I said. He drilled a hole through the middle and "secured" the skewer with a plate he found in his workshop. Here it is loaded up Lessons learned? Cook low and slow initially to avoid too much fat rendering and collecting in the base, cut the skewer so that it fits within the KK without tilting and ... do it again. Soon.

Unusually @RokDok, I am going to disagree with you. If the definition of provenance is that you know where your food has come from then I don't think that makes much difference to the taste of the meat, which is what I was thinking of when I posted above. At the very least I know the name of the supplier of the meat that I buy but I often know the farmer, I have sometimes met the animal and I usually know when it is to be killed and how long it will be hung. That knowledge makes me feel connected and responsible for my meat eating but my ranking of what impacts the taste is: 1. Breed of animal 2. How long it has been aged/hung 3. How it was raised and what it was fed (and this could be what you mean by provenance but I don't know that that is in the strict definition of the word) Which brings me neatly back to @Troble's original question. Is it worth trying Wagyu beef and does it matter where it was raised - US or Japan? The biggest difference will of course be the fact that he will be eating Wagyu. The things that will set the Japanese Kobe version apart will be items 2 and 3 on the list. For me they are in that order, for a Japanese person who knows their Kobe, 3 may come ahead of 2.

This was our Conference championship meal. Crazy delicious. The recipes were from the Pitt Cue Co book. Found a copy for the chicken online here: https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/07/whole-spicy-smoked-roast-chicken-from-pitt-cue.html I originally thought I should have cooked the chicken directly on the grate but I did as I was told in the recipe and cooked it in a pan. So glad that I did. These juices and sticky stuff were delicious! The anticipation was off the scale when we cut it up And we paired the chicken with a real flavour hit from the Pitt Cue Co book: pumpkin home fries with Nduja mayonnaise. Picture not pretty but so, so tasty.

RD that reminds me of this story. My cousins are bull farmers in NZ. They sell their meat for a premium price thanks to the American market preferring bull meat for their burgers. All grass fed and all exported. As good farmers living the dream, they always have an array of animals for their own consumption- Chook’s, pigs, a few sheep. When we were visiting a few years ago they said the local ice creamery had a failure with one of their freezers and they needed to dump 200 gallons of blueberry ice cream. My cousin lobbed in their door with a truck full of drums to pick up this ice cream and for a month, this fed the pigs before sending them off to the butcher. Our trip coincided with the return of this pork.... talk about a build up of high expectation for the anticipated bacon breakfast the next day. Expectations were high........ It tasted like bacon! It was pretty good, in our minds we had all built up an expectation of a little blueberry, or hint of ice cream flavour in the bacon [emoji23] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There's a place in the Napa Valley where I buy meat every now and then. They roll out the whole carcass on an overhead rail and ask you, "What cut ya looking for?" Great place and great product. You are spot on with the provenance!

Great story

Never had Wagyu beef but the above comments remind me of something we did a few years ago (well maybe 15-20) We had a local butcher who was an old chap and who sourced his animals from local farms. Mrs RD & I really liked the steak - and always had rump. He'd say 'this is a Hereford from the Piddle Valley '- ( four or five miles away) you could poke your head around the counter and glimpse the carcasses as he went in and out of the cold room. He'd trim them beautifully - clearly enjoying his art. The steaks were gorgeous. Then, one day the old boy had gone and Mrs RD and I remarked on how the steaks had become tasteless. I went in once more to buy our steak for the weekend and a young lad threw up an amorphous vac packed lump of stuff onto the counter. He slit the vac pac - the meat was bright red and sodden with watery red fluid. He cut a slice off, carelessly, no trimming - and it was unceremoniously chucked into a plastic bag and given to me. It tasted as grim as the scene portrayed. We never went there again. But we really missed the steak.... The valley in which we live has several small farms - organic and, I think , but not sure, the largest contiguous bit of organic farmland in the UK - don't quote me on that though. Some friends are stewards / guardians of some land called SSI - this means a site of Special Scientific Interest. It's chalk upland and has its own biodiversity - you can't mess with it, but you can graze it as it has been for centuries, if not millennia. They had a few pure bred Hereford which were suckled by their mothers and were grazing on this SSI land, with it's grasses, herbs and flowers. So disappointing had the steak been that we decided to buy a whole cow. It was a Heiffer and it was hung at the local artisan abattoir for 5 weeks. Mr Farmer brought it round in four quarters in a horse box and we hung it from scaffold poles in the rafters of the garage for a few more days. Fortunately I'd got to know a chap called Ray Smith, a butcher. I'd worked with his wife. He was Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's butcher - probably only known to UK folk, a kind of alternative celebrity chef. One of his books is here : https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/books/hugh-fearnley-whittingstall/river-cottage-meat-book/9780340826355?keyword=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjrOtwqW67gIVjJntCh3-vAP5EAAYAiAAEgJ6__D_BwE I'd recommend it - it's just beautifully written. In there is a recipe for "Ray's liver pate" , which I'd made and then when I met Ray I said to him that it was a good recipe but that instead of mincing the mixture I squeezed it between my hands so that it farted out between my fingers and made the pate chunky ( and saved the cleaning of the mincer). We had an instant rapport and he came round to our house, we got some pigs and he taught me how to butcher them. I've realised this post is a bit long - sorry Troble - hope you don't mind, but my KK is not being delivered tomorrow as planned so I am ameliorating my distress with some adult beverage. Anyway Ray came over and over the course of the weekend we butchered the heifer He was really impressed with the quality - in fact we cut fine transparent slivers of sirloin, rump and fillet straight from the carcasses to taste the difference. The slivers of raw fat were like butter. Cooked, the taste was etherial. So, to : Couldn't agree more. I'd add provenance. RD

Pork Tenderloin, with evo and KC Butt Rub, was last night's dinner. I intended to cook it Sunday night but was too busy watching the Chiefs game (How 'bout those Chiefs!) Cooked to 140° F, thick part of the tenderloin, before rest KC Butt Rub leans toward the semi-sweet side, so the cole slaw and olives made a nice change of pace for the palate. Accompanied by a 2009 DuMOL Finn Pinot Noir.

Couldn't agree more.

Some great looking cooks here. Those pork chops look particularly fine @jonj Presently:

We paid some guy who parks his sharpening van at a farmers market. He had equipment that could handle bread knives. Stunning difference. I needed to dull the tip, it was destroying our butcher block.

Define "real money" in terms of knives? In my book, it would be over $150. This one, with the discount is $38. So, what would you say is "Go cheap?"

Bacon wrapped meat loaf. Ground veal, pork and hamburg with diced ham and salami de genoa. Diced carrot, fresh thyme, bread crumbs, eggs, garlic, worcestershire sauce, s&p, sauteed onion, buttermilk and a splash of hot sauce. Glaze with Ketchup, worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, white balsmic and a splash of hot sauce. Smoked in KK to an internal 145-50 over apple chunk. Pictures, but nothing sliced, sorry the kids were waiting. With stuffed potatoe bombs.

The $18 dolla plus tx special. I spent a bit a time on it, an hour. Changed out the edge profile because there wasn't much of one there, it was sort of a filed down and resembled a roll. 1/8" stock, so the belt sander went into the vise and it was cleaned up for an edge. Worked it on the stone for a 1/2 hour or so and gave it a slice to test, it'll carve a roast nicely now. It is an odd long knife from a different era, but I think it'll work, definitely took an edge.

After a very long quest to find a decent bread knife (I've been through at least 6), I am head over heels in love with this Japanese one that I recently purchased. Reasonable cost and cuts through crusty breads like butter! Suisin Inox Bread Knife 9.75" (25 cm) (korin.com) AND, it's 20% off now with this code: KSALE20

I disappeared down a rabbit hole thanks to this thread. Having spent half a day last week checking batteries, fluids and so on regarding my cars that I can't drive (due to lockdown and the weather), I decided to make myself feel better and decided to run to some knife upgrades. I may have gotten carried away. Not that something like that has ever happened to anyone on this forum before. One of the first upgrades arrived yesterday. It's a work of art and I'm not sure whether I'm going to be cooking or admiring it more. Picture enclosed. As a question for the group - does anyone have a recommendation for a bread knife? At worst, it'll have to slice sourdough and we've always used an old Laguiole (closest match is this). It works ok but the handle isn't very comfortable and feels far too small in my hand. What does everyone else do?

I really need to start a list of these Syzygies-isms!

Sure was a lot, but thats what happens when you show next door what the great smell is coming from my backyard 😀.....hahaha now they all want some