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This is more than you want to know about huli huli chicken. My favorite chicken in the entire world is huli huli chicken; often pronounced as hui hui chicken in Hawaii. It is very simple to make but too many people put way more spices and junk on it and destroy the taste of real hui hui chicken. Cook books and internet recipes provide a long list of ingredients such as brown sugar, pineapple juice, soy sauce, mustard, etc., etc. Some recipes call for soaking chicken in a marinade overnight. That is all good and I have no problems with those recipes. But in my mind’s eye, that chicken is not hui hui. True hui hui chicken must be flipped over in wire racks or prepared on a rotisserie over coals, and not baked in an 8x12 glass dish in an oven. I can not comment on the "true" nature of the marinades, rubs, or spices, but I believe they should be kept to a minimum to bring out the essence of the juice distribution from the flipping or rotisserie effect. Real hui hui chicken is very simple. We lived in Honolulu for many years and often drove on Nimitz Highway to Waikiki on Saturday mornings. As we drove on Nimitz, we always passed a huge hui hui chicken operation. We could see the smoke and smell the BBQ chicken blocks away. From Nimitz, we could see people mopping the chickens with sauce and turning the chickens which were sandwiched between wire mesh resting on top of, as I recall, long cinder block fire pits. We learned later they mopped a certain teriyaki sauce on the chickens. That place perhaps gets credit for being the original huli huli operation. However, hui hui chicken has been prepared by other Hawaiians somewhat differently. On Kauai, the best [my opinion] hui hui chicken is prepared using a certain Hawaiian wood to BBQ with. I do not recall the type of Hawaiian wood, nor can I find mention of it on the internet. But it is uniquely hui hui because it is fixed the traditional way of flipping the chicken in wire mesh over hot coals. Some folks use rotisseries. I doubt this technique is unique to Hawaii … but the special Kauai wood certainly is. On my KK32, I prefer spit roasting chicken on a rotisserie with just light salt and pepper. Even without the special BBQ wood, this chicken is absolutely the best! It is amazingly moist and tender. The key thing is when the birds turn on the rotisserie, they baste in their own juices ... and some of the juices drip on the coals. Those drippings cause some smoke which also helps add taste to the chicken. Al la hui hui rotisserie chicken. I am bragging in this video! Not only am I rotisserie roasting at 350*, I am showing off my Jackery solar generator which I use to power the rotisserie motor since I do not have electricity to my lanai area. Of course, I am enjoying Peter White doing “Groovin.” Listened to tunes on Spotify for about two hours as the rotisserie chicken roasted. Sorry to get carried away with the huli huli chicken stuff. But what comes first - - the chicken or the egg ... KK! djami in northern Virginia HuiHui chicken October2022.MOV

It's the tree that Allspice berries come from. I use the wood chunks, leaves and berries when I do jerk cooking. I put the leaves and berries in a foil pouch with a couple of small holes punched in. The wood chunks just go on top of the fire. In Jamaica they actually put the meats on pimento wood branches for the "grate" over the fire. I can't replicate that unfortunately but do the best that I can with what I can buy.

This is a heat shield for the 22" Beast.. It prevents the material dead center of the floor directly under the firebox from heating up and expanding (at high temps) which can actually make it rock a bit.. The center expands but the outside of the grill floor does not creating a high spot dead center. This plate prevents this from happening. As I always say, physics sets the rules!

I was in a cook shop in Sweden over the weekend. I think the must have titled this display "shock and awe" when they dreamt it up! Huuuuuge pots!

So after all drama it actually was a text book brisket. Texture was on par, tenderness, taste and fold was really good and everyone liked it, however the bark could have been better. So if the 24 hr dry brining helped with holding in the moisture as well as using some tallow in the butcher paper wrap then it was successful. All done.

Sunday lunch also a major success- pork butt rubbed with 5 Monkeys rub, cooked at 250F for 11.5hrs, pork ribs for 5 hours (including 1hr in foil). Vinegar based and also espresso BBQ sauces, pickles, coleslaw, white buns and habanero hot sauce. My brothers were feeling a little ‘dusty’ this morning after last night’s fun; suffice to say lunch made them feel a whole lot better.

Both of my brothers and their wives are staying with us this weekend- given restrictions in Australia over the last 2 years this is the first time any of them have had a KK experience. A large bag of meat was picked up today… Bistecca Fiorentina was on the menu tonight, with a spicy green apple (papaya) style salad. Ribs and pork butt coming up for Sunday lunch, I may never need to eat again.

After watching a YouTube vid (Pitmaster X) on making your own injection liquids, I went out and bought a cheap drip coffee maker. You put your spices/herbs/bouillon in the coffee filter basket and "brew" it. Let it cool down and inject away. I've only done it a couple of times now, but it works well. Plus, you know what's going into it and not some random mix of chemicals.

So...here is the result of my latest chilli experiment. We visited my cousin in NYC earlier in the year. He introduced me to a beautiful chilli oil called Akabanga from Rwanda. I fell in love instantly. It comes in a 20ml bottle with a dropper and you apply 4-5 drops to your food. No more. It's hot but not too hot. Delicious. Given I was growing a lot of chillis myself I figured I really ought to figure out how to make it. The only clue that I could find to how it was made was on this website: https://www.afrolink.co.uk/product-page/akabanga-chilli-oil-product-of-rwanda. It says The recipe consists of 80 percent yellow chilli pepper (scotch bonnet) extract and 20 percent olive oil. Hmm, how do you get an extract of chilli peppers? I found this site that explained how to extract pure capsaicin from chillis: https://italianchilli.com/en/content/22-how-to-extract-pure-capsaicin-from-chillies Yes, I know that capsaicin is murderously potent and has to be treated with respect but I could not resist the challenge. Started with some 95 proof alcohol that we bought in Italy in order to make limoncello. (Drop all your preconceptions, home made limoncello using Amalfi lemons is a revelation.) Per the recipe, I whizzed a load of chillies, mixed them in with the alcohol and let stand for three days. I then strained through a 250 micron and then 50 micron bag. They said to wait for the alcohol to evaporate. I soon realised that was going to take too long. I consulted some websites and found one that explained how to evaporate alcohol from tinctures of cannabis. Simple solution. I put the bowl in my water bath and heated the water up to 81C, just above the boiling temperature for alcohol. Here it is, starting to coagulate as the temperature rose. I now have this sticky residue. It is hard to believe that this is the fearsome capsaicin. It smells lovely and sweet, not hot at all. That said, I stuck a toothpick in and tasted the liquid off the end of the toothpick. It was very hot. Not to be messed with. I am planning to dissolve this extract in oil (1:15 is the only measure I have been able to find online so far) and then dispense it from little 15 ml bottles with a pipette. To build the flavour profile I'll use extra virgin olive oil flavoured by slow cooking onions, garlic and peppers in it this morning. All of that said, there is no way that a factory in a village in Rwanda went to these lengths to make chilli oil! This lady from Cameroon has a much more down to earth method which I will try with my next harvest of chillis.

homemade cured salmon and bagels. i would have smoked it on the kk with the cold smoker, but life got in the way and there's a typhoon outside so i couldn't do it. still tastes wonderful. if you want to cure/smoke your own salmon, there is almost no $ saved because a half salmon is just as expensive as one already smoked.. homemade bagels of course..

Did a pork belly last week, cured it then smoked on the KK Sunday and sliced it Mon. Today was the taste test. The morning of the smoke was perfect. I have 20 of these piles, 7 strips per pile. Taste test. Double espresso coming up.