Leaderboard

Komodo Kamado greetings from Enn Tobreluts, BBQ Entertainment Ltd, Estonia! BBQ is a great lifestyle, not just for fun!

Wet brined smoked turkey with salt, lemon, thyme, black peppercorns, garlic powder, butter started at 200 for an hour, then 250 for an hour and then rest of time at 290 honeybaked bone in ham creamed spinach mashed potatoes sweet potato mash stuffing roasted green beans gravy fruit cake & chocolate cake from Porto’s (LA)

Pork loin cook using the new Ninja grill's "roast" function.

Merry Christmas all! Awake and restless but know now is not a good time to be playing with knives so I thought I would post instead. First things first: this meat tastes fantastic! The last time we bought veal from this farmer was in 2016 and we had forgotten just how good it is. He hung it for me for 4 weeks before I picked it up and the flavour is great without any additional aging. Would I do this butchery thing again? I don't know. It's a lot of work but I have enjoyed the exploration. @Paul, we are still figuring out the "value" of having a tool for sawing bones. I had a brainwave - instead of buying something we will only use once in a while, why not ask a local meat shop to do the sawing for me? That didn't work. They only cut their own meat and, in any case, they only do halal. Not surprising and 'twas only a delaying tactic en route to buying something. I did seam out the leg yesterday. The guy in the video I watched said it took him 25 minutes. It took me just over an hour, in between doing a few other jobs. I now have a bunch of interesting muscles to clean off and decide how I want to use them. The irony of all of this is that, after all that careful work to separate out individual muscles, some of this will just end up in my mincer. The good news is that all that cutting gave me time to work out a plan for new year's eve. Polpette (meatballs) made of a mix of veal and pork mince are a lovely snack served in bars and are just plain delicious. I will make them and bunch of other cicchetti (Venetian equivalent of Spanish tapas) so people can graze on the day. Here is to happiness! And to the Eagles getting to the Big Dance. From this: To this: If you want to see a better and more expert approach look no further than:

A local farmer about an hour's drive from us here in the South of England rears really tasty rose veal. He gets it butchered and sells it at a premium at farmers markets. I wanted to butcher it myself to get the cuts I like but, somehow, got the timing wrong and now have a whole hindquarter of veal in my house to cut up just two days before Christmas! I drove to the farm to pick it up yesterday afternoon and here is all 60kg of animal spread out on my kitchen counter last night. I could barely lift the leg and ended up cutting off the shin before stuffing the rest of the leg in our big commercial fridge downstairs. I got up early today to scrub, salt and wipe down my butcher's block. It's not been used for this purpose for years. The Husband arrived back from Sweden last night and was not impressed at the prospect of having to deal with a huge carcass over Christmas. I think I will do this slowly over two days and enjoy it. When I read about the Americans on the forum talking about the price of meat I am amazed at how cheaply you can buy it. I think that I do well by buying animals whole, or in the case of steers by the quarter, but I suspect you would think this expensive. The 60kg (including all the bones) cost £600 which feels super cheap at £10/kg. Anyway, off to start my adventure...

happy holidays steak frites for xmas breakfast

So far so good. Got my tools laid out. I started with the prime cut - the sirloin on the bone. Simple job there to saw it in half so it would fit comfortably in the dry ager. The little trim at the bottom of the pic was for me to fry and taste the meat. It was delicious. Next came the rump. It was still on the bone and I was tempted to keep it to roast on the bone. It would have made an impressive centrepiece for our New Year's Eve party but I decided it would be a show offy waste when we could eat it over a few meals as steaks. So I embarked on the job of getting the bone out. It's one thing to watch folk online but it is quite another to get your knife in there and try to figure out where the bone ends. At times I felt like I was literally butchering the cut, and not in a good way! Whole rump on the right ready to go in the dry ager. I was disappointed that it did not look as impressive as the ones I normally buy but remembered that this is from a veal calf and not a full grown cow. The Husband will use the bone to make stock and that eye piece at the front will make a nice, tender roast. And now for my favourite bit. The flank/skirt. We don't tend to get these pieces in the UK - they get minced into things like Cornish pasties. I love them and approached this one like an old friend. It did help that I had re-watched this video before I started: Mine looked like this to start with I had fun seaming out the muscles and managed to get out, from left to right, the matambre, two bits of bavette/vacio and the flank. Up top were the miscellaneous bits of skirt left over that I will use for something like fajitas. Working my way round the muscles and silverskin was useful practice for the job of seaming out the leg tomorrow. My last job for today was the hardest. I had to cut through the shin for osso bucco. It was hard work and I eventually called for reinforcements in the shape of a new blade and a husband who is better at sawing than me. I was grumpy and would have loved that bandsaw that you talked about @David Chang! I will age the sirloin and rump for a week or so and will enlist The Husband's help to break them down to steaks and Italian cotoletta.