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I spend way too much time on smoking, grilling, and pizza-making forums plus some time on YouTube and find several things that people do and say that really irritate me; I try to limit any response I make to constructive and/or educational comments (unless it's an attempt at humor), but sometimes it stresses my restraint... Assuming most folks have some of their own pet peeves, what are yours? Here are a few of mine: Calling charcoal "coal" - since there is an actual substance named "coal" and there are coal-fired ovens, this can just lead to confusion. Also, an appropriate term for burnt wood that hasn't been reduced to ash is "coals", opening another avenue for confusion. Calling pizza "za" - I don't have a logical reason for not liking this but it really irritates me.

Count me in on the "za" thing. No idea why but it bugs the hell out of me lol

Cooking with EVOO reduces stress.

No worries! My KK is scheduled to arrive next week, so I may have some results for you soon, we shall see

That's customer obsession right there. Thank you so much for doing that @DennisLinkletter. For the record, as I was about to to set it up, I bailed on the rotisserie because of the large circumference. I probably could have used a bunch of twine to make sure it stayed together, but I thought maybe as tender as the KK cooks things pieces of a bird that big might come off. I may try it next time. I didn't take pictures the last time I did chickens but I'm really starting to get rotisserie chicken dialed in on the 42. The last batch had crispy skin and was so incredibly juicy. Best dang chicken I ever ate.

The store opened in January; it's name is actually US Chef'Store. I'm disappointed in the prices for supplies and tools but they have some pretty good prices on some fresh and frozen meats and some very good prices on others. They also have some meat cuts I've not seen locally before. Prices on deli meats and cheeses are pretty good too, but you do have to buy the chunk and not slices. Some example prices on fresh meat: Whole chicken wings: $42 for 40 lbs Chicken wing drummettes and flaps: $47 for 40 lbs Chicken drumsticks: $23.55 for 40 lbs Whole chickens: $1.69 lb Beef brisket: $2.65 lb Prime beef brisket: $4.39 lb Beef eye of round:: $3.75 lb Beef shoulder clod: $3.55 lb Ground chuck 81% lean: $2.55 lb Pork butt: $1.29 lb They also have prime grade brisket and other beef loins at competitive prices. Local grocery stores have pork butts on sale pretty regularly for 99¢ lb but I don't know if there's any quality differences.

Costco FINALLY, after a several months' absence, got a few Prime briskets back in, so I grabbed one and am doing it today (photo of brisket, trimmed and rubbed). As an additional positive note, this one started out as 13.9 lbs- the ones I had been getting last spring were mammoth, like 18-19lbs, and took forever to cook. I trimmed it last night and took a little more than 3 lbs of mostly hard fat off it, so we are now somewhere in the 10-lb range. Ironically, we just had brisket Monday night, a Christmas gift from a friend, sent from Perrini Ranch: at the ranch, they do their briskets old-school, over an open pit, with coals from mesquite logs shoveled under the briskets, like in Lockhart. I think I prefer the Austin-style, using indirect heat with the hot air current passing over the brisket and infusing smoke, but the Perrini Ranch product was VERY good- nice mesquite smoke, heavy black pepper, EXCELLENT quality meat: though a little firmer and maybe drier than the Austin style? In any case, we just finished having brisket on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (main course, on salad, as tacos, in that order), so my daughter's family can be excused for declining this brisket, and two of my neighbors on the block will be the beneficiaries/ test audience. We achieved 250* around 8AM, so I project it will come off somewhere around 4-5PM tonight. Updates to follow.

Well, I am pleased to report that it came out REALLY well. (My two neighbors who got 1/3rd each think so, too.) Photos attached. It cooked for a total of 9 hours, 40 minutes, most of that at 250 until the last 2 1/2 hours, when I built an aluminum foil "boat" underneath it and left the top open- I got this idea from a recent article in Texas Monthly Magazine by Daniel Vaughn. It worked pretty well. I raised the temp to 275 and later to 295 for the last hour. It all came out pretty great. Used a heavy rub of coarse sea salt and coarse pepper and a lighter coating of Dizzy Pig Dizzy Dust. The result was a nice, crunchy, salty, peppery bark.

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...

Bread was done in the oven. I'll give it another try in the KK one of these days.

Explains a lot! 🤣

@tekoboi must apologize….I finally made this again finally and I looked at the recipe I posted and I had some of the measurements off….I had combined a few recipes into one and I made two chickens so what I posted was a recipe for TWO chickens…..it was way too much liquid, oil, beer, etc for 1 chicken.. I edited the recipe so it should be good now….sorry about that I put my brand new rotisserie basket splitter to work tonight. Absolutely loved it. Chicken turned out great

I managed to evade the temptations of the KK shopping channel, for once! I put @Paul's suggestion of a sawzall to my husband and he wasn't sure about being able to clean it properly between uses. I then did extensive research into bandsaws. I came up with a blank every time. Not many online reviews and the ones I did find were frankly awful - mostly regarding the suppliers and after sales service. @MacKenzie kindly(?) found me a video with a guy using a Scotts meat bandsaw. It has some awesome technology that stops the saw when your hands get too close to the saw while wearing a pair of special blue gloves. It was also huge and likely to have a price tag to match! Finally, I came upon a company that had been trading for over 30 years who had what looked like a standard meat bandsaw for a sensible price (about £600). They were off for the Christmas period so I had to wait for a response to my email. That was a good thing. I had a cooling off period, decided I do not need a meat bandsaw cluttering up my life and set to with a normal saw this morning. I was not looking forward to it but got all of these cut and sawn in just over 20 minutes. Hurrah! And the rump steaks came out well too. All done!

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.

I had my staff make up a 30 lb bundle. The wrapped bricks were not centered so it wobbled a bit (a turkey will be uniform and balanced) and a low-quality Chinese motor still spun it easily.