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Put together some leftover cooks today, took my chances and it all worked out fine. Previously cooked chicken thighs, summer squash, garlic and tomatoe sauce using tomatoes from the garden, pasta shells, ricotta, Monterey Jack, and diced Jalapeño from the garden, a few spices and when done sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and chives. It turned out to be a winner.

Done some beef ribs love my ribs Sent from my SM-T835 using Tapatalk

Decided to have a little birthday feast today I forgot to take a pic of the marinated 3 bean salad but between the tomato salad au gratin potatoes and 4 and a half pounds of steak there was hardly room for the ice cream cake !!! I've been using the top grate upside down right on the firebox and have been really happy with the searing 👍

Keep it simple, just use your double bottom drip pan and set your temp at 235. You’ll be fine. The less you open the KK the better, don’t open it to add wood, just add your smoking wood when you build your fire.

They look perfect, Tekobo.

Made beautiful tortillas yesterday with my current Premier mill. It was a bit fiddly to get it running smoothly and I could not help thinking of the upgrade that @Syzygies talked about. I guess I will appreciate it even more if/when I buy it. In the meantime here are some very tasty tortillas, made with fresh masa.

My other favorite part of this upgraded stone holder is better yield. The corn is inexpensive; I'm perfectly capable of accepting waste rather than fussing over scraping ever last bit of masa out of the original stone assembly. Nevertheless, masa is religious food. Just as the synthesis of ammonia and thus nitrogen fertilizer a century ago is the reason half of the 8 billion people on this planet are even alive, the invention of masa extended life expectancies in this hemisphere by a decade. People used to die when their teeth wore out. I'm spiritual but not particularly organized-religious. It just doesn't seem right to waste food in this particular instance. The new assembly comes apart completely, as shown, It is simply not frustrating to achieve a high yield, minimal waste.

grinder.MOV Ok, we're thoroughly blown away by the upgraded wet grinder, intended for chocolate refining. I've never handled masa this smooth, and I didn't need to add masa harina to a too-wet mixture. The grinder handled masa as advertised, as if it were a nut butter. I can't say this is unattended, just less frustrating. I poked at it in fascination, to encourage better mixing. After years of daydreaming about a better stirring mechanism, I've discovered that someone with a harder problem designed one. I can't explain (yet) this success. The motor? The stirring? Better tension control? My next experiment will be to try this roller hardware in my old wet grinder, to see if that motor is fine driving this upgrade. They sell an upgrade kit... When I bought my first food processor, as a grad student in 1980, I made various dubious experiments. One was to beat an egg for ten minutes, before making an omelet. The completely denatured result looked like a piece of wet suit, not exactly the ideal omelet. One could wonder the same thing here: Just as some believe one can rinse nixtamal too thoroughly (residual cal is thought to help the tortilla), one can perhaps mill masa too smoothly. This has never however been the question at home: People will try any available tool such as a VitaPrep, fix the too-wet results by working in masa harina, and declare a partial success. These proclamations of partial success are more a testament to one's psychological health than a testament to the merits of a method. Now, too smooth masa is within reach. Consider the needs of chocolate; they're beyond the needs of masa. It would be a logical error to assume that hand grinding nixtamal on a metate stone is superior to any modern method. Still, one needs to recognize that expediency plays a role in modern equipment. I have a hard time believing that any equipment that passes nixtamal briefly through spinning stones can possibly be the equal of a long metate session (surely people were at least as obsessive centuries ago), which this duplicates. In any case, the major expense here is the time. To be continued...

My favorite kind of problem solving is to figure out who has a similar but harder problem, and to appropriate their solution. For my most recent batch of masa, I recognized that my basic wet grinder is tuned for wet dosa and idli batter, so I ground masa that wet, drying it later in my convection oven's dehydrate cycle. It was wonderful being able to run the wet grinder unattended. However, the skins formed drying the masa never dissolved away while kneading, and I still ended up adding masa harina, in fact overcorrecting. The second night I mixed back in some water, for more tender tortillas. Huh! @tekobo and I keep debating by messages whether to buy Masienda's Molinito. I finally saw one at an artisanal Mexican restaurant in Oakland, CA. It isn't that big, though I worry about cleanup. The ladies in the kitchen were fascinated by my interest, marveling that I made masa for friends but didn't own a restaurant. Back at my table, there was unanimous agreement that my tortillas were better, clearly same Masienda corn. Two possible explanations: It could be that the original metate is indeed the best way to grind nixtamal, and one pass through even a state-of-the-art spinning mill is no match for careful use of a wet grinder? Or I now recognize, they make their masa too dry. One ends up with the tortilla equivalent to hippy bread: It screams artisanal for those who might otherwise miss it, but is far from delicate. I can see this choice being one of convenience in a busy Mexican restaurant kitchen, just like the pervasive choice to undercook tortillas by my tastes: They need to get product out. Just as North Carolina BBQ joints have managed to convince customers that ropey, overcooked pulled pork is the breed standard, taco joints have managed to condition their customers to accept undercooked tortillas. Easy to work with masa, same story? My most delicate tortillas from wetter masa are more challenging to transfer from the press to the griddle. So perhaps the Molinito is a suitable solution, and the differences are all in execution. I went down a rabbit hole after reading some vendor responses on my wet grinder: The basic model is less suitable for nut butters. They make a higher end model for chocolate refining. Chocolate refining is hard. Ding! Ding! Ding! Diamond Custom Machines has a division Melangers dedicated to chocolate refiners. They answer their phones, if you want to discuss any of this with them. They surmise that these machines would also excel at masa; they're tuned for more viscous mixtures. They import their home models from India, made by the wet grinder manufacturer Premier. They upgrade their top home model with their own stainless steel retrofit, swapping out plastic parts for better tension control and stirring. This model has a better motor drive system than the basic wet grinder, and can be left running all day, as chocolate can require. The basic geometry, stone wheels and container, is identical to the base model I own. Perhaps masa will still need tending. I do keep staring at the stirring system, wondering if I could improve it for masa, and perhaps they have. Certainly a better motor drive, stirring system, and tension control, could help. I took one for the team and ordered one. I'll report back. I'll either move the basic wet grinder to my New York kitchen, or rehome it to someone just starting out.