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Cold last night so no outdoor photo. KK pork chops with Jamaican jerk rub.

Pork belly burnt ends and two slabs of heritage St. Louis ribs. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Don’t let all that great rendered duck fat go to waste. Parboil cubed potatoes then brown them in the duck fat. Yum. Our go to way to finish the breasts is to sauté shallots, deglace with calvados, add stock, sliced apple and several cloves, cover and cook until apples are tender. Serve the sauce over or under the sliced breasts.

Dry aged tomahawk turned out great! My first dry aged steak, definitely had a different flavor and texture. The steak was over 3lbs so needless to say it’ll be steak and eggs this morning! Y’all have a great Sunday!

Simple proof of the value of a sharp knife. The Husband is responsible for fish prep round here and he and I were delighted with how cleanly this fillet of brill came off yesterday. O

Gonna try to reverse sear a tomahawk ribeye tonight! Currently lightly glazed with olive oil and a decent dusting of Himalayan salt. I’m a little nervous and excited, fingers crossed!

Our food discovery of 2020 was just how much we like duck breast. While I was KK-less over the summer I found that cooking duck breast over my Solo Bonfire stove worked very well. There was limited smoke and what smoke there was stayed outdoors. The fat collecting channel also felt like a great innovation. It was so good that I thought this would be my go to method for all time. Then my 16" KK arrived and I tried the duck breast out in there with good results. This week I thought I would look up alternative recipes for duck breasts and, alongside a great recipe for blueberry mostarda, I found a great method for cooking duck breasts. It was in the book "Root to Leaf" https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0062283693/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_bi-cGbYZTK42X. Super simple. Put your duck breast skin side down in a cold pan. Cook on a medium-low heat for about 12-14 minutes, I did 15. Then turn over and cook flesh side down in the rendered fat for 2 minutes, I did 3. Rest for 5 minutes. So simple. No smoke. Indoors and warm. Done. My new go to method.

Australia Day on the 26th of January so I’ve tried making our national dish..... meat pies. Left over ribs And pork. With a few spuds, roast garlic Chopped up and boiled down with beef stock And this has to be the greatest thickener for any sauce. It basically dehydrated granulated connective tissue. Once cooled, all went into puff pastry crust- a filo crust would be better, but this was worth a try. And finally baked. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just wait! Some of the folks on this site have this weird superpower where they can make you spend money.

Looks brill! Scroll down. I know. I know. I couldn't help myself.

@BOC I see your KK is sitting in the harbor with my KK. It is terrible to watch the ship sit there moored going in circles and the draught stay at -13 m. My patience is being tested. Yesterday I bought way too many BBQ books and a brisket knife. I swear the longer I have to wait the more money I am going to spend. I am going to go broke at this rate!! What is your first cook going to be?

Thanks @tekobo, but I'm afraid my hopes to cook these legs your method have been dashed. Mrs RD is going to put them in a roasting tray with some rootish vegetables. To that end we've just come back from the allotment with parsnip and leeks. I did wonder whether they might need a little more fat though and was going to put them in with some clarified butter. Our raised vegetable/salad bed outside the kitchen is made with oak sleepers which have rotted after only ten years, and I am going to need to remove the soil, the adjacent fencing, the sleepers and embedded lighting, lay concrete foundations and then build the walls in brick. Mrs RD had only just given me the benefit of her building experience and wisdom of what I should and should not be doing with this project when I opened the fridge door and took out the duck legs to season and score them only to be told that that was not the way they were going to be cooked today. I think she feels sorry for me now and is quietly doing her knitting by the fire and I haven't been told off for anything whatsoever for the last ten minutes. I have just shown her the pictures of your duck and have now been informed (verbally) that I may purchase some duck breasts next week and attempt to cook them as you have. All is serene in the RD household.

I actually use shapton glass stones, they work beautifully. The TS Prof will use any stone for edge pro, so there’s lots of selection. Assuming an edge that’s not damaged, I go 1k, 2k, 4K, 8k, and then strop. I have a tendency to use a really shallow angle, about 12°, then micro bevel at 25°. This is for my carbon steel Japanese kitchen knives, for more utilitarian knives I stop at 2k and don’t worry about the micro. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Returned to the scene of the crime today for the release of the next beer in the series. Lunch was Vladimir Poutine (beef stroganoff with cheese curds on house made french fries) and Green Dragon (New Zealand Pilsner). Followed by "dessert" - Double Maple Coffee Gazprom on the left and Caramel Pecan Gazprom on the right. The Gazprom is a maple syrup infused Russian Imperial Stout finished in Bourbon barrels that the brewery has been doing for a number of years now and it's always released in January. These 2 beers are "one-offs" of the base with the addition of extra maple syrup and cold brewed coffee in the one, and; caramel and pecan additions to the other (first year for this one and it's amazing!) It's all part of Barrel-aged January at the brewery. The last one in the series is being released this Wednesday - Percussive Maintenance - Gazprom with shaved and toasted coconut (like a macaroon.) You KNOW that I'll be there!

Now, I thought that picture looked a bit familiar Tony ......

Hi @John T. Having never cooked duck breast this way before I wasn't prepared for the amount of fat that was rendered into the pan. I already had sides and sauce fixed for that day and so I did not take advantage of the lovely fat that came off the duck. Thanks for the tips. Next time! I worked in Yorkshire for about 13 years, flying up every week. Even the mention of Yorkshire makes me nostalgic. Different world now though. Less zooming and more Zooming. Mark and I sat smugly on our (now not so) new sofa and laughed at your description of life in the RD household. I have to say that I am pleased that he spends very little time on this forum. I dread to think how he would describe life in our house. Today I came home at about 1:30pm having been out running errands, filling up the hot compost bin on our allotment being one of them, to find him sharpening the Nth knife of the day. I gently told him he was in charge of fixing lunch today. I am not sure if his description of that event would be the same as mine.

Last night's dinner was an homage to Jon B - chicken thighs with Dinosaur BBQ - Wango Tango and Wegmann's salt potatoes.

You just had to ask! It's classic French method. You've probably figured this out but the classic French method to stop the breast curling (and cooking unevenly) is to put a heavy skillet on top of it to press it flat. If you have two slightly different sized pans, it works quite well at suppressing any splatter. I found this is less of an issue with the dry aged duck - the duck that I get from Yorkshire (when I do sneak an order in) looks almost cured so I know what you mean.

Thank you all. Thought I would share something I should have discovered way sooner than I did. Hey @Braai-Q, you should have told me before now!!! Yes, I dry age the duck breasts for about a week before cooking. The flesh side looks scarily like leather by the end of the process but it comes out great when cooked. The best bit about dry aging is the skin. It is lovely and dry and that makes it easy to make the fine hatching which helps render the fat. @RokDok, the idea of doing duck legs this way has potential but given the leg has less fat you may not get the benefit of the melting fat helping with the cook. Maybe add a bit of duck fat to the pan at the start. Certainly interested to see how you get on if you try it. I am pretty boring with duck legs. I generally confit them sous vide. It means I can keep them in the fridge for a while vacuum packed in fat. Great for a weekday evening meal. Cut bag, place duck leg in pan to crisp up skin and eat with lentils or some other satisfying side.

Looks great @tekobo This is my go to technique as well. I hot rodded the motor on our extractor hood (small children can get sucked in) and it was due to the smoke that comes from cooking things like this (I think lamb may have triggered the whole exercise come to think of it). Then I found the cold pan method and got my temps right with the fat (silent > bubbling < spitting). I find it's very forgiving and I think I do mine at 15m as well or thereabouts. Problem I have is that Mrs BQ doesn't like game. Have you dry aged yours? There is a butcher in West Yorkshire who does dry aged duck breasts and they're sensationally good. Given your setup....

Micro bevels are often used in low angle Japanese knives. Let’s say your sharpening angle is 15°. Once your done, set your sharpener to about 25°, and with your highest grit stone, make a couple of passes at this setting. The result is a stronger edge, with very little, if any different feel than a non micro beveled edge. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That reminds me of last summer. So thin it only had one side. J. https://1drv.ms/v/s!Av-gVB0imZQEtQkg71EBx9aLmeeD

@tekobo’s husband here. I’m getting to grips with the K03. I think I’ve done about 10 knives now, from a 10” flexible fish filleting knife (12 degrees sharpening angle) to a heavy, thick meat hatchet (27 degrees). The system makes it much easier to achieve a consistent, predictable, razor-sharp edge along the whole cutting edge. This will bring some expensive and much loved knives back to life for us, as well as making them safer to use. I have tried both the diamond matrix and smaller boride stones, both work well. The main difference I noticed was that the diamond stones worked faster on the coarser re-profiling cuts. Both were easy to wet by keeping the not-in-use ones in a tray of water and dipping a finger into the tray to re-wet every few minutes. I can see what @Syzygiesmeans about choosing how you want to miss, but when the stones get worn enough to make a difference, I reckon the angle adjustment (aided by the included digital protractor) is simple enough and fine enough to compensate very easily. Also, once I have the knives “dialled in” and have a note of their bevel angles, I won’t need to use the coarse stones for routine maintenance. There is also an adaptor to allow grinding of a convex edge which I have not yet investigated. So far very happy, and the paper-thin test cuts on a soft tomato, plus a couple of perfect fillets taken from a Brill this evening are making me smile. 😀

While that rule only applies to cooks, I regret that we didn't take any pictures of the actual meeting over beers. But, I have witnesses! This will have to suffice, a picture of the goodies from Syracuse.

Wow, I'm on the brink. Just because I can sharpen freehand doesn't mean I should. I like precise control.

Not much different here. Got a custom knife coming...will certainly share on the knife string when received in a couple of weeks (20cv stainless). Got one for my wife too so she can do as she wishes with hers since we have some differing opinions on upkeep [emoji51] also bought a fire board pro...plan to get a pit bull from guru for the fan down the road if needed. My retail therapy is done for now. My first cook kind of depends on when I receive it. I still have to put the pavers in it’s permanent home and that will be sometime in March/April depending on when spring hits here. If I just get it before St Patty’s, it’ll be Pastrami. If I get it before probably brisket, and chicken wings...but I’ll be itching to give the rotisserie and early work out too. What’s your plan for first cook? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I hate to be the one to tell you but that's not going to change once your cooker is delivered. There will always be more cookbooks, specialized ingredients, new tools etc etc. Other forum members antagonizing you to buy this/that doesn't help haha. It's a good thing though. The experiences are priceless and so are the fruits of your labor [emoji4] J.

I try to avoid commenting on individual cooks in this thread because it seems like you are disregarding the other cooks that have been posted. All lovely cooks since this morning but I have to say...I adore the look of those giant pork chops @jonj! Happy Straya day when it comes @Basher. Thanks for the reminder, it is also a Sydney friend's birthday so I shall get on the blower on Tues.

Yeah, it seems like I feel a tug on my wallet every day reading this Forum! Some days I have more willpower than others! 😄

Jonj, those chops do look tasty.

I am. It came with a set of 6 boride 6” stones and a set of 3 double-sided 8” diamond matrix stones. Good enough to learn with. I have also ordered a lapping plate to keep them true.

Here are a few dancing girls to keep the rain away. Have fun. Try to get some pics!

Great looking piece of duck! Well done

My Sister and Mom live in the same town as Tony B. We have been trying to meet up for years. My Sister and her son's fiancée have met Tony before but not me. Two ships passing in the night!!! I would come into town and he would be off at a beer conference somewhere. Tomorrow I finally get to meet the famous Tony B.!!!!! I came into town Sunday to visit Mom, gave Tony a ring and we are meeting tomorrow at his local tavern (all proper Covid rules being followed) for the introduction of a new beer. I can assure you a few KK Forum tall tales and BBQ lies will be told!!!! A quick side story........About 4 years ago we were moving Mom out of her apartment into an assisted living apartment near my sister. My nephew's girlfriend (now fiancée) rode with me in my van while the nephew drove the moving truck. It was the first time I met her and we were making small talk during the hour and half drive. She told me she was a teacher but worked part time at a local brewery/tavern. I happened to mention having a BBQ buddy in her town who was was a big home beer brewer. Mention to her that his name was Tony. She looked at me funny and asked what Tony looked like. I had seen a photo of Tony that he had posted once and did my best to describe him (he looks like a young Tom Selleck). She filled in a few of the gaps of my description and when I agreed, she says.....I know Tony. He comes in with the local brew masters club every month. Talk about a small world!!!! Looking forward to tomorrow.

That looks a great method @tekobo. We are having duck thigh and leg joints tomorrow. I was going to fire up the Weber- but might decide to stay in the warm and dry and see how it goes with the joints - might need a little longer I guess... RD

ETA of Matt Black is Wednesday !!

Yeah what Mac said!

My husband, also known as @Sharky, is in the middle learning his way around this piece of kit as I type. The whetstones are sitting in a bowl of water and he also moistens the whetstone that is in use at intervals. I read your post out to him @Syzygies. He has some thoughts and says he will post later. I think he is having too much fun to stop now. I started this journey because @5698k's post about the TSPROF was the next one up when I logged back on to the forum that day. It caught my imagination and I passed the details on to The Husband who dived head first into the rabbit hole. It also helped that @Braai-Q said he had been considering TSPROF as his next choice. Choices. We looked at the cheaper Blitz model first. It had some limitations but was initially The Husband's preferred choice. When he provided a position report I really liked the idea of being able to sharpen other tools, using an adaptor, on the K03. He totted up the cost of buying the specific options that we wanted and found a) that it was quite high and b) that a number of the options were not immediately available. We had originally laughed at the sales blurb that read: "Cannot choose between all TSPROF K03 sharpening systems, but still looking for the best expansions, sharpening stones and accessories? If so the K03 Expert Complete Kit is the best choice for you!" Ridiculous! We thought. The fact is, the complete kit wasn't much more expensive than assembling the options that we wanted and all the parts we wanted were available as part of the complete kit. So we bought it from these guys in the Netherlands: https://www.knivesandtools.co.uk/en/pt/-tsprof-k03-expert-complete-kit-sharpening-system-ts-k03200410.htm Yes, Mark did hear about the Kadet but it not available yet and we were happy with our choice. As I said to @Braai-Q yesterday, our problem is that we have no adult supervision in our house. All good.

That's a beautiful kit. I'm into water stones (and their feel just after "cleaning" by flattening with a diamond stone). I'd be seriously interested if the TSPROF was compatible with keeping a water stone wet. There's a logical trap you can easily avoid, by tweaking the angle control as you work. The assumption is that knives need to be sharpened at a fixed angle, and that people are no good at keeping a fixed angle without a guide. The risk here is that the guide is too good at keeping a fixed angle. A standard question in virtually all situations is "which way do you want to miss?" I learned this as a kid: One bushwhacks towards a camp on a stream by aiming to one side, so when you reach the stream, you know which way to turn. Here, on the finer stones, you don't want to roll away from the edge of the blade, polishing the shoulder rather than refining the edge. It is however ok to roll a tiny bit forward onto the edge. For a high end wood plane like a Lie-Nielsen, one sharpens so frequently that people favor two angle steps as a matter of efficiency. The idea of a primary bevel and a secondary bevel is explained in their Sharpening Instructions PDF. Woodworking is more demanding than cooking; it's always interesting to learn from communities where the ideas really matter. When people sharpen free-hand, we do it by feel, a multi-sensory version of listening. We have no idea what's really happening to our angle control, but chasing the proper feel as one progresses through finer stones works in practice. We're all riding a bit up onto the edge, rather than polishing the shoulder. This is the real reason I like to flatten my stones so often: a ridiculously clean stone has a feel that provides better feedback. Ok, so what happens using a TSPROF, if you're not tweaking angles like a guitar player bending notes? At first, you're not riding up onto the edge at all. This is more work, but the TSPROF is so good at work that you won't notice. But over time, the coarser stones wear more quickly than the finer stones. They'll look the same thickness but they're not! Geometry question: Which way does this miss? Will you tend to ride up onto the shoulder or the edge as you move to finer stones? This becomes clear if you imagine exaggerating the effect. What happens to angle as the stone gets thicker? One can offset this by tweaking the angles as one works. There doesn't have to be a 5 degree difference in bevels, like for wood planes. A small fraction of a degree makes a big difference.

I am very pleased to have benefitted from your collective experience on this thread. After a couple of days of research and debate here we dived in and bought the TSPROF K03 sharpening system. The constraints on length of blade with the cheaper options and the fact that this system can also be used to sharpen our secateurs, chisels and my sewing scissors clinched it for us. The kit arrived in a neat box yesterday and The Husband got it out to use immediately. My crude assessment is that "all" that this does is a) helps you to choose the angle at which you will sharpen your knife and b) locks your knife into position so that you are able to apply the whetsone across your blade at that consistent angle. I think this means that you don't develop the skill and feel required to sharpen a knife by hand on a whetstone without any assistance but it does free you up to focus on your knife, the specific results you want and how to achieve them with the various stones and angles available to you. The Husband practised on an old Kasumi knife that we had consigned to our knife drawer in the basement. It came out beautifully. I used it to cut up a pile of post juicing orange shells for the compost heap. The ease with which the blade glided through the rubbery skin and thick shells was just amazing. Very little pressure. It made me realise how much effort I had previously been using to cut things up in the kitchen, even with my regular use of the steel. Do we really need this piece of kit? Probably not. We could have achieved something that was close enough if we had only used the whetstones that we already had more often. Am I pleased that we bought this piece of kit? Absolutely. The absence of effort when it came to cutting stuff up felt life changing. Not planning to buy any new knives here. Will be looking to get to know the ones that we have better. And yes, I am scared of my now very sharp knife. I need to relearn how to handle it in use and when washing. Super happy.

Believe it or not it’s raining in San Diego. Supposed to rain for most of the next week and we may get double our annual rainfall for the year in one week. Can’t wait to see fat it does to my plants that being said I moved my cook indoors so it’s a non KK cook, but good old fashioned roasted chicken. Rubbed with melted butter, olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic & rosemary cooked over red, yellow & purple potatoes with carrots and sweet onions. Dusted with truffle salt, pepper, thyme, garlic and rosemary started it off at 425 for 30 minutes then brought it down to 350 for 60 minutes. Looks great, house s sells great. I’ll use one of the extra chickens to make some chicken soup tomorrow to eat during the rainstorms this week

I'm surprised you were not tarred and feathered for the Bud Light. I always threaten my father in law with Fosters Lager or something like Coors Light if he makes any rude remarks. Living dangerously!

It's like Norad's Santa tracker. But for adults. And better.

Got back late last night from Iowa. Didn't have time to take a photo of Tony's care package for me but it was full of homemade beer and BBQ goodies. We met at the Lion Bridge Brewing Company for the introduction of a new beer. A bunch of Tony's brewing and BBQ buddies were there and stopped by to say hello. Great conversations and great tasting beers!!! Brought Tony's care package into the bar in a Bud Light box, It was fun to hear all his brewer buddies and the server giving him the business, thinking there was Bud Light in the box. Only spent a couple hours together. Looking forward to meeting again. Tony is a very interesting guy!!!!!

@tekobo - I've been hugged! Was fun finally meeting Jon. His sister came along, too, whom I've met several times before. We had some tasty beers and a good long chat. For a short time, the lockdown was shoved into the background! @Jon B. - way too generous with the cooking supplies. But Thank You for the largesse!

The short answer to the ts prof question is the blitz is limited to blade length of roughly 200mm. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I have quite a few knives and I guess it's like having an expensive car, ownership becomes a lot less 'care free' as the price increases and you're more careful where you park and so on. It's not that I don't take care of what I own at any price point but I'm a lot less inclined to hunt someone down who broke the tip of an expensive Japanese knife getting the lip of a tin opened. Yeah, it happened and I'm still sore about it. I think there is also a law of diminishing returns at play where performance improvements are perceptual. Recommending a knife is quite personal and there are certain knives that my wife doesn't like that I love and it probably comes down to hand size above all. I tend to opt for knives for purposes but the paring, chef's knife and bread knife combination given by most chefs is good advice. I like Shun knives and have a few, I also have a Global Santoku knife which I tend to use for chopping herbs which has a lovely balance and action. It fits comfortably and while I have better blades, I have an affection for that in particular. Take a look at Victorinox Swibo - I very rarely see butchers without them and the plastic handles mean they're as hygienic as you'll get. Not expensive either. I have some exotic Japanese knives but they probably don't fit your brief or budget and I think Robert is our Japanese knife authority judging by his tastes. Roland Lannier makes some fun knives which are good. I particularly like his Luchador for the fun of them. Blenheim Forge make some interesting knives and I have a Nakiri from them which is superb. I just wish they'd take the corner radius of the top edge down. I never cut myself on the blade but always nick myself with the tip. (I know it's designed for splitting but I get myself every other time). Bryan Raquin also produces some very lovely knives but they are very difficult to get hold of. They have a very large chef following. The brisket killer is a really lovely blade and I have been trying to get one after I tried it. I didn't end up buying it at the time because I was flying and I would have had to have checked it into the hold but didn't have a bag. I'd gone over to Paris for a meeting and flew (unusually) and the shop wouldn't do mail order. For sharpening, I use Lansky but TS Prof has been on my list to look at as the Lansky system does have some shortcomings. Without knife craft skills, a better blade won't make you a better chef. I always recommend learning techniques and how to manipulate a blade. Makes you safer and better and some of these high quality blades can do some serious damage if mishandled. If you use the wrong blade and lose control... There are a few books that I found helpful or YouTube is always handy. I'm not saying this applies to you but I think if you've ever been in a professional kitchen and seen how a good chef despatches an onion, you instantly know where you can improve your own craft and blade choice is a part of that. Hope this helps and let us know what you go for.