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Low and slow sauce making on the 32. The first is a simple beef ragu that I cooked for eight hours and the second is some soffritto that cooked for four hours. The latter came off the KK at close to midnight, too late for me to care about taking any more pics! And yes, there is a lot of olive oil in that soffritto. It takes on an amazing flavour from the vegetables and imparts a lovely unctuousness to the ragu di corte that I will be making next.

Had some family over for dinner tonight. Cranked out a Bistecca Fiorentina for the adults (each steak around 900gram)… sausages and burgers for the kids. Made some home made chips, salad, some no-knead bread… amazing. Everyone happy.

Collar butt injected and bathed in mango juice Sent from my SM-T835 using Tapatalk

The brassero is good for long/big cooks, especially if (like me) you're not good at estimating how much wood you'll need. I like my grill design over Santa Maria store grills since the high back and sides help block the wind while the fold-down front makes it easier to play with the fire and is handy for cleaning ash out. I'm not sure how much heat retention is helped by the fire brick since I've not cooked without them, but the grill definitely holds heat well. The tilted Argentinian-style grates are nice but do make grilling hot dogs more difficult! This is still my favorite way to cook.

Thanks @MacKenzie The ragu di corte turned out super tasty.

Yesterday loafs for friends. I’ve been eating a little less bread as I’m trying to keep my weight down due to BP issue 😵‍💫 But I typically feed my starter once a week and keep it in the fridge. These are just my standard loafs, nothing fancy.

Thanks @Tyrus. I looked up "burning olive leaves" and got lots of hits for Cypriots burning olive leaves to ward off evil spirits. That would seem to tie in with your view about acrid smoke - evil spirits are unlikely to like a cloud of smoke coming at them. I might just abandon that idea without ever trying it!

Sourdough English Muffins with 10% fresh milled spelt. No idea what these are called in England. Muffins? Crumpets? Little hunks o’ bread? I should look that up.

First I must compliment Jeff for the great pics and display for what his grill is capable of...good show and that's an understatement. On the flip side though I use mine for much smaller cooks or I'll have the Kamado helping me with another entree'. When I first started out looking I had in mind something smaller, versatile and capable of doing it all. I use wood, lump coal and briquettes depending on what I'm preparing, but generally I'm tossing in wood over the top in moderate amounts because my roof line is close & made of a polycarbonate overlap. I only use on most occasions one or two grate sections or a small fire centered below when using the roto, on some occasions I've used both...however nothing like Jeff is doing although if he'd let me borrow it for a weekend I know I'd love it too. So here are a couple of pics, they're self explanatory but show the roto and coal bed grate on mine, sorry I should have done so beforehand. So, they all acomplish the task, they get you to the finish line, just in different ways.

made some sauteed carabineros sauced in its own head fat and a5 yakitori's. the taste of these prawns is out of this world. it comes pre-seasoned from the sea, meaning you don't need any salt...

In KK Bread Making Tips and Tricks, @Pequod posted about his new Brød & Taylor Sourdough Home, a temperature controlled chamber for ideally maintaining a sourdough culture. That is a long and interesting thread, that devolves into speculation about my cannabis use and so forth. The Komodo Kamado forum has great advice from some very serious cooks, and sometimes that advice draws in visitors who decide to stay and buy a Komodo Kamado, and become valued compatriots. So I thought it would be worthwhile to start a new thread focused on the Sourdough Home. I bought one immediately. The short-term payoff is being able to feed one's starter less frequently without inducing a refrigerator coma, then get it nice and warm for making bread. My first bread this way was a technical flop but the best tasting bread I've made in years. This makes it clear that the long-term payoff is learning to bake with better controls. Sure, people have made wine for centuries before electronics, but they had access to stable temperature caves, and they adapted their methods to reliable conditions. Modern wine is arguably better, in part because one can control conditions precisely. I'm convinced that one can learn to make astounding bread by learning how to use the Sourdough Home to control conditions. The Sourdough Home is not silent, and even in sleep mode a brighter light source than all of my other LEDs combined. If you live in a studio apartment, you'll likely end up pitching it out the window. An internet search reveals that a 3/4 liter "743 Weck Mold Jar" with a wooden lid is an ideal starter container (Amazon). Remove the silicone lid seal, so gases can escape. I like mine. After briefly searching for a bread proofing chamber, I realized that dough for my single loaves should fit in the Sourdough Home itself, if I could find the right container. I got lucky, and found the Airscape Glass Coffee Canister (Medium 7-Inch) with a two quart capacity. It exactly fits the Sourdough Home, with a similar wooden lid and a silicone seal one removes. It looks like a matched pair with the Weck starter jar, as shown in the photos. I've never had much luck with refrigerator dough rises, but the Sourdough Home allows for intermediate bulk proofing temperatures. My goal now is to adapt the idea of Desem bread (as detailed for example in The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book; we already grind our own flour) to the possibilities of this equipment.

I promise you really, really need smell-o-vision for this one. I ordered 10kg of cubed goat meat and cooked a Nigerian stew on the stove and these two, low and slow, on my 23 and 32 respectively. The first is a Guyanese goat curry from Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible that I have made many times before and the second is a new to me curry goat by Andi Oliver whose family come from Antigua. It is from her Pepperpot Diaries book and contains lots of whole spices and some dark chocolate. I look forward to trying the latter for dinner today. And yes, that large pot is difficult to carry when it is fully loaded and hot!

I forgot to respond to this point about olive trees being expensive. Mine was free! A friend gave it to me many years ago because she thought it needed to be in a greenhouse. It was taking up too much space after a couple of years and so I planted it outdoors in the garden. It hasn't looked back and keeps reaching for the sky. Our escapologist cat used to tut at my husband whenever he pruned the tree to keep the kitties from using it as a bridge to the outside world. What's even better than home grown olive wood? Single varietal smoking apple wood chips, that's what! I had a good giggle, thinking about labelling up bags of apple chips with the name of the variety, the tree's pet name and selling them at a premium to people with more money than sense.

Even these upmarket supermarket muffins don't look anywhere as tempting as yours @Pequod. For reference, some crumpets. Great when dripping with butter.

Those are definitely English muffins @Pequod and they look delicious! I now have a craving. Will get you a pic of a crumpet when I next make it to the supermarket. Crumpet is also slang for a good looking lady but I won't be posting a pic of her!

@Tyrus You're welcome to borrow mine sometime, but it's over 800 lbs with the fire brick installed and is a pain to move unless it's on some sort of pavement! When I ordered it, I intended to cook with charcoal mostly and wood occasionally but that hasn't happened - I've used a chimney of charcoal to get a jump start on getting the wood started a few times but the vast majority of cooks have been totally with wood. The chicken in the pics with the stuffed peppers and skewered veggies was done over oak and was the best chicken I've ever had. Lots of excellent steaks and pork chops as well. I did hamburgers and hot dogs for a big family cookout a few years ago and had numerous attendees ask what hamburger I used and I was honest with them (frozen members mark burgers from Sam's Club, with Worcester sauce, salt, and pepper), but they thought I was holding out on them - the "secret" was grilling them over oak wood.

Yippee. Vaccuum sealing and fermenting chillis do go together, radically reducing the risk of taste tainting yeasts. So, there is a West African restaurant in London called Ikoyi and they have this recipe for fermenting chillis: Lacto-fermented scotch bonnet chillies (makes 400g) 500g scotch bonnet chillies, halved and deseeded 10g fine salt Mix the chillies and salt in a large vacuum-seal bag and toss well to distribute the salt. Make sure the chillies are evenly spaced out in a single layer. Seal the bag on full and leave to ferment for seven days at 24-28°C (75-82°F). If the bag has expanded too far, “burp” out the air by making a small incision and then reseal. Once the chillies have reached a sour, fragrant and meaty flavour profile, store them in an airtight container in the fridge and use within two months. I have tried it out and got these: They are tasty fermented scotch bonnet chillis that you can eat, sparingly, with your food. Their book also has a recipe for a hot sauce which will use these fermented scotch bonnets as an ingredient but you first have to ferment some blended chillis (I used longer, less hot chillis for this) for a couple of weeks. Watch this space. I am hoping for a delicious fermented sauce at the end of all of this.

I was inspired by @remi cook of my Peruvian polo a la brass so decided to make it tonight. Never disappoints @tony bi ate at a good Peruvian place yesterday and struck up a conversation with the chef who asked me where I sourced ingredients in San Diego…told him I grow my aji Amarillo and we got to discussing the Peruvian green sauce…the real stuff used a herb called Huacatay and I purchase a plant yesterday https://thegrowers-exchange.com/products/huacatay?variant=40098478522449&currency=USD&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&utm_campaign=gs-2019-12-19&utm_source=google&utm_medium=smart_campaign&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIj-iu7pTDhQMV0MzCBB1mJQ-HEAQYASABEgLDnfD_BwE I am going to make it my mission to nail down the authentic version of this sauce this year. The jalapeño substitute is fine but the real deal is so much better. This chef used jarred Huacatay but he asked me to bring him the real stuff along with my fresh aji Amarillo which I’ve already started growing this week….stay tuned for updates but I’m gonna figure this out this year….going to Peru for two week over Christmas so I will get this “Peruvian crack” recipe nailed down this year

We (my husband) did a severe prune on our olive tree last weekend. I rescued the larger branches and we ran them through the wood chipper to make chips for low and slow in the KK. We kept a few pieces to dry and use in the wood fired oven. Has anyone else got experience of using olive wood for cooking or smoking? From what I can glean from the internet it should be good for lighter meats like chicken and pork.

look what i found in my trash today. my neighbors olive tree 😂 i don't think this does well in jungle weather..

Or perhaps just keep the "warding off evil spirits" project separate from the "cooking food" project...

Halo 4B is amazing you will love it. It’s a lot more than just a smash burger and breakfast maker. We just last night used it to blacken some swordfish steaks and wife said the best she ever had. Enjoy 😉

I just had my Ha!o 4b delivered last week and converted it to natural gas last Thursday - I've had my Fontana pizza oven for several years now. Looks like we're about synced up!

@jeffshoaf @Tyrus thanks guys for all the great info. Your cooks look amazing. We are building and my wife strongly suggested we wait until our new home is completed. She’s right the rental we are temporally living in has enough stuff to cook on. KK, 4B Halo, Fontana Pizza Oven. Isn’t is amazing how the cooking bug bites and we can’t get enough. Keep sharing and keep smoking!

I think you are right about the olive wood that we chipped @Tyrus. I will keep shaking the bucket and it should be dry quite quickly. As you can see from the picture above, the wood that we harvested is a relatively small haul. Just one cook's worth I reckon. I was going to throw away the leafy twigs on the right but I am wondering if they would do well on the fire once dried. I love the idea of food flavoured with a wonderful, gentle Mediterranean smell.

Have you a chop saw/miter saw? Slice the pieces to 1/2 in and keep them dry and allow air to flow around them. You'll be using them this summer,

I've used grape vine cuttings, and fig (a bit odd) but not olive wood. Here's what ChatGTP-4 said:

Light and delicate is what I hear. Could be a smoke pot experiment? It's the tree that keeps on giving, why not smoke it..in the KK that is or maybe those leaves hmmmm

I've not made it from true scratch, but I buy the Wagyu tallow online then cold smoke it in the KK. Lots of uses - like cooking potatoes (looking at you @tekobo) and slathering it on steaks instead of butter! And, it's "original purpose" - to smear on briskets when you wrap them in the pink butcher paper - ala Franklin BBQ.

i am trying the 2 guys and a cooler shelf stable tallow recipe. apparently, the key to making it shelf stable is to add no water (as opposed to many recipes that call for added water)

That's an interesting idea with the Airscape container. I'd thought of doing something similar for pizza dough, which would benefit from long, slow ferments at above-fridge temperatures. I've also considered something like this with a bit more capacity: Amazon.com: Cooluli 20 Liter Mini Fridge with Temperature Control - Black: Home & Kitchen I don't know anything about that particular model, but it's an example of a portable, adjustable fridge. @tekobo - see what I did there? I saw @Syzygies container and raised him a fridge!

Always good to benefit from your research @Syzygies but I see what you have done here. You have upped the ante. @Pequod suggests one cool thing to buy and you find another two to add to the list. Well done. Let's see if anyone bites. I think I have a sure fire way of swerving this purchase. I have made a promise that I won't even consider getting a Sourdough Home until @C6Bill gets one. I think I'm safe.

@Syzygies thanks for the info. i think my dual zone wine fridge can replicate these temps adjustable from 5-18c. it's handy to keep prefrements at different temps and bulk fermentation at higher than normal fridge temps, but i've always kept my starter in the normal fridge.

what is your keep temp for once a week feedings and what is the warmup temp?

I've made countless experiments over the years, including attempts to adopt ideas that have worked for others. I keep coming back to cast iron. One can find arbitrarily small cast iron pots with effort. The most common mode of failure I've experienced is a breach, where either the lid displaces or a space opens between the lid and pot. Now convection burns the wood in the way we're trying to avoid. Thin steel deforms easily. An unsecured cast iron lid usually stays on, but smoke pots can tip as the fire shifts. I don't care how small the chances are here, I would find it unacceptable to lose a cook, particularly if it's for an event where others are depending on my BBQ. The flour paste seal for a cast iron lid is easy once one establishes a routine, and reminds me of the romance of using questionable pots in Moroccan cooking. I've never actually seen my three 1/8" holes clog, even though my wood could be in contact with the holes. A single hole would probably work, but one never wants to build a bomb, and three holes is not a liability. Do the holes need to face down? This was based on watching how one makes charcoal, where the exhaust becomes a self-sustaining flame at temperatures well above low & slow. Dunno how important "down" is, but down is better than up, and I have to point the holes some way. (I came up with the smoke pot idea after some ill-advised experiments at making charcoal...) If I had investors for a state-of-the-art BBQ restaurant in Manhattan, I'd design a method of heating wood in external chambers, and feeding the gas produced to a modified standard gas oven. I'm surprised that no one has tried this. Usually when people are unhappy with smoke pots, they're having trouble getting them going. I like starting my fires with a weed burner propane torch. For low & slow one wants a fire in one spot, so the fire doesn't run away. If one lights that spot under a smoke pot, one can arrange to get the smoke pot going too. This is fire tending, not fundamentally different from any other form of fire tending. One learns with practice. I don't give up. Alternatives? A mandatory PSA is required here, not all metals belong in a smoker. Galvanized metals in particular off-gas toxins one doesn't want near food. The poster kids here are Alaskans that fermented in seal skins for centuries, then saw Homer buckets and said "Why not?". They died of botulism, Alaska contributes a big slice of the pie chart for botulism deaths in the US. Never break with tradition without understanding what one is doing. Long ago, others followed my smoke pot experiments by building "pipe bombs", stainless steel threaded pipes with caps, with multiple holes along the bottom edge. These were expensive, but avoided the flour paste lid sealing ritual. For a bento box one would want a smaller pipe, bringing down the expense. Could one use other metals? See above. Texas oil rigger BBQ recycled job-site drums. I'd just go with stainless steel, to be sure. With several holes and ordinary wood as filler, I can't imagine sufficient pressure building to create a bomb. On the other hand, in math we observe that lack of imagination isn't a proof of anything. It was popular at my high school to pack match heads into a similar pipe, for a homemade pipe bomb. I had two classmates who kept one hand in a pocket for their senior year. I knew someone later who used better materials for an experiment at the end of a street. They survived uncaught and uninjured, but were astonished at how many nearby houses lost windows to the explosion. A reasonable design principle is that you can never design something not to break, but you can and should design how it breaks. Would pipe caps really need to screw on, or could one rig something that slid together, perhaps with enough overlap that there was no need for flour paste? Try multiple ideas, with care!

😍

Those muffins look almost as sad as the ones my wife typically buys. I made these to show her a real muffin. Problem is…I think I just signed myself up to a new weakly (not misspelled) duty. 😳

@Tekobo, WOW! My mouth is watering.

I've always used wood chunks or tiny splits stacked inside the MSR, all thats left is charcoal pieces, have never used any screen and it's never clogged. Maybe with pellets because they have little continuity and once consumed only ash remains. Good luck

will this work as a smoking bento box or am i dellusional? the red caulk is high temp silicon there is a divider in the box to keep the pellets from covering the holes. the divider does not hit the ceiling of the lid. there are two 1/8” holes on the empty side

Great looking muffins you have there !!!!

No olive wood here but I have used grape vine too. I lay some in the middle of the lump and it catches gradually throughout a long cook. I typically add it for long cooks like pork butts along with peach wood. If you add a lot it smells really nice in the yard , I think it smells like a really really light version of apple😁

I suspect you have taken off more fat than you need to @David Chang. I tended to have a bit of a fat cap left on the few briskets that I have cooked and that helped with the taste too. I just did a search for an Aaron Franklin brisket prep and he cleans the underside off well but leaves a fat cap on top. Is that the same for you or are both sides of your brisket clear of fat per your photos above?

Don’t think you understand. It’s not a question of whether you’re actively making bread. It’s a question of…do you have this toy, just in case. 😈 Here is today’s loaf of 40% fresh milled white sonora which will be going to my wife’s co-worker. She happens to have prolific chickens, so we’ve been the recipients of excess eggs. Quid pro quo.

Early anniversary dinner, screw going out. 8 times out of ten I’m thinking I could have made something better at home. Only thing is the cleanup, I’m exhausted! Those oysters were monstrous and delicious. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Flat iron, carrots, air fryer potatoes

Couple of racks of baby back pork ribs. 225F for first 2hrs. 275F last 2 hrs. Pulled glazed and wrapped in foil. KK smoke worked great and used my rechargeable pump . Yeah, someone will see in this cook setup, I used the stones for indirect deflectors. They are far enough away from firebox on lower grate, I have not noticed any difference compared to foil and pan. Will do some beef ribs and a 7hr cook and try the foil and pan at 300F and see if there is any difference. IMG_1986.mov

Did some drumsticks on the KK this evening and I bought an order of fries from a fast food place when I was in town this afternoon. Heated the fries up in the air fryer. They were good but not as good as when fresh from the fast food place but better than frozen fries. This one is for you, Tony.

Rotisserie lamb, dirty rice, Mediterranean salad, tadziiki

My parents are visiting us and the kids from interstate. Whipped up @Troble’s Polla a la Brasa on the Roti, with pickles, coleslaw, roasted smashed potatoes, salad and green sauce. A big hit as always! IMG_8326.MOV