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Yesterday was Day 198. Here is the whole sirloin rack when it arrived back in September of last year. I coated three ribs in fat and the rack has been sitting at the bottom of my dry ager for months. I invited friends round last night. The fore rib, one shelf up, was the back up in case the long aging experiment had gone wrong. The fore rib had only been in for about 50 days. Sense of trepidation. I thought I could see some dark mould underneath the fat on the end face of the meat. I need not have worried. It was an amazing revelation to see such clean, beautiful meat on the inside. We did have to trim off the ends. Cooking pictures to make you drool. No plated pictures. We were too busy eating. Salad, sweet potato fries and bearnaise made for a lovely meal. The meat wasn't too funky, just a slight blue cheese flavour. Very very enjoyable.

Cheese, pepperoni & veggie

Brisket finished wayyy early. Expected ~16 hours took 11.5. 16 lbs @ 235-250F. Back up plan to hold in the oven until dinner. Bark lost a bit of crunch in the process but flavor and juiciness held. The point was a bit more roast like than I usually love but all turned out great considering. Very juicy and smoky. I wanted to cut into it terribly this morning when it finished because it had great jello jiggler jiggle, but I abstained. Rosemary and roasted garlic gold potatoes with some Parmesan for crisp. Mac and cheese...no credit deserved, just warmed from the store. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Needed lunch meat for work so pork loin it is. Nothing fancy...just S&P, garlic and thyme. On a side note...I had the pleasure of meeting Tony B. the other day. We had a couple beers together at Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa CA. I can tell you Tony is as nice in person as on the forum. Good conversation along with good beer.

Nicely done BOC. Troble your pizza cooks keep getting better. I’m 2 hours into that lamb shoulder. That annatto marinade is bland to taste, however, once it’s exposed to flame.......... my goodness there’s some sort of caramelising BBQ Nirvana going on with it. The smell is an ultimate BBQ. Can’t wait to taste..... only 4 hours to go. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes! A full case of Russian River brews. And a few bottles of wine tossed in for good measure, too!

The pleasure was all mine, Paul! It was great to meet you, too. Good stories, beers & pizza, too!

Of course I couldn't resist. For UK KK'ers - this book is on a number of sites for over £100. I got the best deal, at £49, here https://puritandoors.co.uk/recipe-book-by-ranjit-rai.html

@Troble's beer, stack, beer, stack method is much more exciting than mine! I rotate mine by 60 degrees in each layer so that I return to original position every third piece. Exposes more of the edges to the flame I think. For my most recent cook I realised that carrying an exposed spike down the stairs to the KK was not the best idea I had ever had. Safety tip for the day: put a cork on it if you have to carry your trompo king around and don't have the meat or pineapple stacked to the very top.

Mr Bill, Congrats to you my friend, you know it's gonna be, "Wicked Pissa." Well, if your a Pat's fan and have a KK to cook up bbq for game day, all I can say is, nothing could be better. Fair warning, watch out for Tekebo, she likes to bet....don't worry though she's an Eagles fan and they don't win much. So tiles it is I presume, if your from Boston it's gotta be tiles.

198 days, amazing and it certainly sounds delicious.

Prior to stacking. Consume 2 strong beers. Once you have a good buzz start stacking meat. Do so in an alternating fashion. One east/west then north/south, east/west, north/south etc after finishing stacking consume another beer and one other note. You can try this dish with pork shoulder as it’s traditionally served in Mexico, but the sauce will work with any meat. I’ve posted detailed instructions and this video over in the “Pork” section on the board Here’s the video guide

Hi My name is Bill and I ordered a BB32 earlier today. I've been making BBQ for more than a few years, started with a BGE and then went to a Primo. Figured it was time to get my end game cooker Just wanted to take a minute to say hello and ask a few questions. Thanks Bill

Nicely done Tekobo. You remain the only person I know with a hacksaw as part of their kitchen utensils. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm unlikely to experiment with the FinaMill, because I don't want to lock into someone else's system for storing spices. This is something I've thought long and hard about. My first recollection of school was teaching my classmates to play Simon Says backwards, and the student teacher leaving in tears. So I don't take direction well. Hario Ceramic Coffee Mill -"Skerton Pro"Hario Ceramic Coffee Mill -"Skerton Pro" Recently, our ancient, inexpensive "Pavoni" grinder started to fail. All it really needed was a good cleaning. This however prompted me to buy the new edition of the Hario Ceramic Coffee Mill. Various people had figured out you really want to run this with a cordless drill/driver, so the new design features a handle that slips onto a hexagon stem that's drill/driver ready. I was never before able to grind spices as finely as one can buy them pre-ground. Now, the spice I grind this way are so fine and fluffy that they're actually hard to pinch. They squirrel out of the way. Not sure how I feel about this. One could back off on the grind. Peppermate Traditional Pepper Mill For general use we have a number of colors of the Peppermate. It was billed to me as a "cook's" pepper mill: It doesn't make a waiter's impression like the ornamental pepper mills many people get as wedding gifts, but it can grind a teaspoon at a time like no one's business. I first saw these taking Italian cooking classes with Giuliano Bugiali in his New York apartment, long ago. (He has passed.) The one pepper that is a challenge to grind is Sichuan pepper. Two passes at different settings with the Hario does a wonderful job, I'll cache a few weeks worth at a time. Good Sichuan pepper can be hard to find. Back when the real thing was contraband in the US, I saw a worker at a Flushing, Queens Sichuan restaurant open a cabinet at the front of the store, housing a 50 lb bag. Their Sichuan pepper clearly rocked, as the meal was already reminding us. I approached the worker with an outstretched twenty dollar bill, only to have the woman manager tackle me. This was their livelihood at stake. So if I claim this is the best Sichuan pepper I have ever found, I hope my recommendation will be taken seriously: Sichuan Tribute Pepper (Mala Market) One can't go wrong with anything they sell. Their best Pixian chili bean paste, best soy sauce, and best vinegar are each transformative. I buy all of their chilis.

... and well aged!

@tekoboi have purposefully resisted this thread until now because I did not want another rabbit hole of gadgets that I “had to have”. Finally read the entire thread. WOW! Thank you for all the info. I’ve never even ordered a dry aged steak before so I will likely pick one up at my butcher to taste the difference but once again you have taken things to the next level. Well done!

My copy arrived yesterday, too, and the day before another lovely book on Tajines that looks really promising. This is a gorgeous book, by the way.

Welcome to the Obsession, C6Bill. Second the suggestion to load up on the charcoals and smoking woods. Only way to get them right now.

I'll be jumping on this bandwagon soon. My cheapo version of the Trompo King arrived today from Amazon. It's was less than half the price. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0882VPRPS I'll probably set it in the double-bottom drip pan to catch the shavings (I might have just found an actual use for this damn thing!) I liked this one over some of the similar models, as it has the elevated disc.

Welcome to the Obsession! You've definitely "upgraded" your BBQ equipment. But, the practical experience that you gained from the other grills will jump start you cooking on a KK. Ask away - that's what this Forum is all about (that, and the food porn!)

Congrats! Best to get it all at once for sure!

Well a BB32 in Terra Blue became available last night so I placed the order for everything this morning, thanks Dennis !!!!!!!

Since we know Dennis likes to over engineer thing, I imagine he will come up with a v shaped bottom with an auger system to move the ashes out of the front of the KK. I imagine he would work some kind of gear mechanism run off of the roti motor. Thinking some form of teak knob on the shifter that shifts from roti to augur mode. I think we would see it first on the OMG52 or possibly on the WTF102, but not on the LOL1002 as that will have the revolutionary walk in ash room with the in the wall vac system.

I found some thanks Troble and made up the sauce last night. I’ll marinate the lamb tonight. Those chillies are full of seeds so customs would never let them through the post. I’ll try to plant out some seeds. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I was gifted this steak, lucky me. Served with air fries and roasted carrots.

I posted this in the Cooking thread, but thought it appropriate to repeat here. Boneless leg from Porter Rd, so it was trimmed up nicely to start with. My house rub, with a bit of extra mint tossed in, made into a paste with Duke's mayo and shoved inside with a teaspoon, along with rubbing the outside. Rotisserie cook, with smoker pot of coffee and apple woods, 275F until rare (120F).

You look like you're heading in the right direction. There are so many different ways to do lamb but I think many of the western style recipes centre on garlic, rosemary, mint as the point of departure and simplest way of doing lamb. It's just a flavoursome meat anyway. Greek, Moroccan, Lebanese, Israeli, Indian, Malay all have variations. I'll write up a good recipe but the anchovies was something that I first tried about 20 years ago and have sworn by ever seen. It provides a dimension of umami flavour that hits all the right notes. How did it turn out in the end?

Alas, just last night put the last three anchovy fillets left over from the caesar dressing I made from scratch the week before in my wife's Chef's Salad. Not the sort of thing I keep around on hand, although I should, at least as a paste. Did manage to make a paste with one whole bulb of very fresh garlic, a lot of fresh rosemary, and a little olive oil. The results shown in attached photo. Leg of lamb is on the grill. Results in about 2 hours, eta, more or less.

Not much more to ad here. Bards you can cook a leg of lamb to medium rare or have it fall off the bone. For pulled lamb I’d prefer the shoulder over the leg. Also, I’d highly recommend balsamic vinegar even if it’s just to moisten the meat to help your rubs stick. herbs that suit- garlic, cumin, rosemary. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm thawing out a 2.5 lb boneless leg of lamb from Porter Rd for tomorrow. Plan is to rotisserie with coffee wood chunks. I have my own house lamb rub that I've developed over the years. It's a mashup of Greek/Turkish/Moroccan styles of spices/herbs. It leans more oregano than mint, but has both in it. The Moroccan style brings the heat (cayenne) and a hint of cinnamon. My other fav is the simplest - tons of garlic & rosemary. Stab slits into the meat all over and jam in big slices of garlic and tufts of rosemary leaves. Then hit the outside with S&P.

Balsamic vinegar, cumin, mint, salt, pepper, garlic. rotisserie that bad boy if you have it ive done a bunch of leg of lambs recently and Basher has as well. Use the search function and you should get a bunch of hits

I’d do it hot and fast. I did a lovely tandoori leg the other week. Marinated overnight in Indian spices and then a hot cook on the high plate on my 32”. Took about 90 mins [emoji39]

Just finished my second dry aged ribeye from the Steakager - very happy with this result. It was a one pounder, reverse seared after slow roasting for an hour on the gas grill. Needed just a bit more sear but very tender and tasty. Next one will be over charcoal.

Here's my beer fridge.

My cold room... 😉

I tried the deflectors one time (coming from a primo was used to using them and they helped with stability), and then started playing with other options on the KK. For most of what we do aluminum foil, food service pans, or lids end up being the most flexible / useful for deflectors. I will include pictures of the setup from this weekend (~36lbs for a block party). I have been really pleased with the stability of the kk even without the deflectors or water pans, etc. The kk chugged along overnight (no pit controller) as our local temp dropped from 60f to 35f - a good thing since I was asleep!

I wouldn't go 750/800 F dome for tandoori chicken in a ceramic cooker, at least for any recipe I know. Every 50 F step above 550 F is pretty dramatic, I'd take them one at a time. Temperature is only one element of the puzzle, and more is not always better; every cooker is different in its heat delivery characteristics. This is not a single variable (temperature) problem. For an example which is approximately two variables, take a pizza stone, where the temperature and the thermal transfer rate of the stone material work together to determine how the stone cooks. A ceramic cooker is a more complex system, closer to a tandoor than to a conventional oven, but not the same. I can't use the same pizza temperatures in my cooker that I saw Sicilians use in room-sized wood fired ovens, and I can't use the same tandoor temperatures that an Indian would use in an authentic tandoor. Nevertheless, if one makes an adjustment to one's cooker, the results can be delicious. Here are some pictures of a tandoori chicken recipe that I like: Here are some notes of mine from 2005, that I've edited a bit for this post: "Tandoor" by Ranjit Rai (ISBN 1585671444; addall.com, overstock.com) is a definitive treatise on Indian Tandoor barbecue, written originally for publication in India. It is quite approachable, particularly if one has cooked other Indian dishes before. Nevertheless, he assumes that one is using ingredients as found in India, and actually cooking in a Tandoor. I find this refreshing; I'm comfortable making adaptations to my circumstances, but I cringe at the idea of others making adjustments for me, that may not be relevant to my circumstances. For example, a ceramic cooker is very much like a Tandoor; much could get lost in translation by starting with a recipe adapted to a conventional oven. The following is my adaptation for a ceramic cooker of his "Tandoori Chicken"; I have tried to be as faithful as possible to his original intent, e.g. bringing into this recipe comments on technique made elsewhere in the book. There are many other recipes given for poultry, lamb, fish, vegetables, bread, accompaniments; I hope that this adaptation serves as an advertisement for the book, which belongs on any comprehensive barbecue bookshelf. This chicken is the first dish I've made on my cooker that is both exciting enough for me, and exciting to Laurie's nine year old daughter, who has requested that we make it every night. 1 whole chicken, 3-4 lbs 2 TB vinegar 3 TB oil 1/2 TB ground chile or hot paprika 1 tsp salt This is a typical size for a U.S. chicken, but roughly twice the size of the chicken specified in the recipe, so I give cooking times longer than the book. Nevertheless, quantities here yield plenty of marinade; I'd double everything for three chickens. One can follow the book's cooking times more closely for "tikka", or uniform chunks of meat. Quarter and skin the chicken, and pierce various places with a knife. Trim the quarters of any extraneous extremities, setting the scraps aside to freeze with the wings and backbone for stock. Mix the marinade ingredients, toss the chicken quarters in the marinade, and chill for an hour or so. Arrange the ingredients for the second marinade: 1 cup yogurt 1 tsp salt 2 TB ginger 2 TB garlic 1 bay leaf 3 cloves 4 green cardamom pods 1/4 tsp mace 1/4 tsp nutmeg 1 TB black peppercorns 1 tsp caraway seeds 3 red chiles 1 TB oil Drain the yogurt through a paper towel and a strainer. In a large Thai mortar and pestle or equivalent machine, pound the ginger and garlic with the salt to a paste. Use only the black insides of the cardamom pods; seed the chiles. In a heavy frying pan, gently roast each of the dry spices until fragrant, grind in a spice grinder, and pound into the mortar paste. Mix in the oil and yogurt. Drain the original marinade from the chicken, coat with the new marinade, and chill for six hours or as long as practical. ("White" cardamom is simply a bleached version of the green, so stock one kind, green. If you can find mace in strands as shown in the picture, it is far superior to preground mace.) 4 to 8 TB ghee (or clarified butter) Preheat the cooker to 600 F, and set up the upper grill for direct cooking. Have a mop and melted ghee at the ready for basting. Put on the quarters, adjust the cooker to 550 F or so, and turn and baste every 5 minutes. The chicken will be done in 20 to 30 minutes, a matter of taste, the actual cooking temperature, and the size of the bird. As tempting as it is to apply this approach to spatchcocked (butterflied) chicken, at these temperatures either the legs or the breast can finish first. In my opinion the breasts are done when a Thermapen registers in the 140's to 150's F anywhere one probes, and the legs are done in the 150's to 160's. Some may regard these temperatures as undercooked, so cook instead to your liking. The quarters will continue to cook a bit after they come off.