tekobo

I can just imagine their chewy sweetness. Very nice. What cut of beef did you use?

As someone who only recently got her KKs, I can tell you it is an awesome feeling when you fire one up for the first time. And it only gets better from there on in.

Sounds like a meal that just keeps on giving. Tasty looking.

Oh yes! I now know how delicious that must have been, ring or no ring! Any verdict on the comparison with your previous, non KK brisket cooks?

Thanks all. I mustn't forget to give credit where credit is due. The interesting tofu, mushroom and scallop dishes came from a Japanese lady who taught me how to do sushi and cook Japanese. Her name is Reiko Hashimoto and she has since published a great book called Hashi so I no longer have to rely on my food spattered notes. The rest came from the Japanese Grill book that has been recommended elsewhere in this forum. It is a real eye opener and I look forward to exploring all the fun ways that the Japanese make grilled food good.

One of my best friends asked me to cook Japanese for her birthday. I know she loves tempura and that she wanted me to cook her favourite, black cod, but she got none of that. Instead she, and our other friends, got a KK adventure. It was fun to do and really delicious on the night. No plated shots and there would have been no shots at all but for the fact that one of our number is young and took these photos for one of those social media sites - Snapchat or Instagram or something. Started with a drink from my favourite bar tender, The Husband. It is from the PDT book and uses red pepper and shiso. Unusual and really delicious. Here's how to make tofu delicious. Smear it in white miso, add chopped shiso to some and ground up black sesame seeds to others and grill real hot on the KK. Throw in a bit of seafood. We live near the sea and the local fish market did us proud with some super fresh fish. We were going to try to do lobster sashimi but the weather had been too bad for lobster fishing so we got some langoustine instead - super sweet raw. I know this all looks expensive but it isn't in the small quantities you need for each course and when you get your stuff from the source. The Japanese grill book says to throw the clams on the grill. I wasn't so brave and used my tagine instead. So good. These baby squid were marinaded in soy sauce and we lost a couple as they dropped between the bars at the start. Cooked super fast - 2 mins each side - they were a delight. One of our number loved the charred one I was able to rescue from the coals! For the eagle eyed amongst you, the crud on the bars is from the prawn course that we don't have any photos for. Broke up all that fishiness with a bit of mushroom. And finally, a spicy sizzling scallop dish to finish. Thank you KK. It really was fun to do and eat. Everything had to be done quickly, reliably and on point and the KK did not let me down.

@Aussie Ora, your KFC chicken looks much much nicer than the soft pappy stuff that our local KFC churns out!

Ha ha. @Paul, didn't you know? Plating is so Americas 2017. We've moved on here.

I am sort of kinda hoping that the rest of the stretch stays unpredictable. Don't want what feels like the inevitable outcome of all of this. We have to stay up until about 3am to see the whole of the Superbowl so a bit of competition is needed to keep us awake. Oh yes, and good food!

Ha ha. I have not been to Franklins and so could not claim to be better but I have to say that standing in my kitchen with my husband eating home cooked brisket was a great experience. I have a rule that I don't eat out in places that don't give me a better experience than I get at home. The KKs might mean that I get to go out less and less.

@Bruce Pearson, none left! I yummed it all up! @MacKenzie, I used to snort at those pics where people would say "it looks dry but it isn't". Now I know they were telling the truth! @5698k, thanks for the referral to the Franklin video. Will try their simple approach to rub next. We were in Austin a few years ago and drove past the queue at Franklins. I remember they were handing out pink umbrellas because it was raining. We thought, "crazy Americans/tourists" and drove on. Thanks to the KK I can now get close to what I missed.

I am the start of my smoking journey. May end up with a cold smoker but am also wondering about going the other way - smoking without a pot. I may find I actually like the overpowering smoke flavours!

The Husband is compiling a list of things that you should be told when you leave home. It includes spending a bit more to buy commercial kitchen equipment - the kit is more efficient and lasts you forever. He added grilling sweetcorn in its skin to the list last year. He now has something new to add: eat slow cooked, smoked brisket, whenever and wherever you can. I have embarked on a journey to explore the American BBQ lexicon. We had pulled pork the other day. It was good, but it confirmed what I already knew. I don't like soft, slightly sweet meat. So I wasn't that excited about my brisket experiment. We don't do much with brisket here in the UK. It gets rolled into a joint and roasted slowly and that's about it. I normally get it to make salt beef and enjoy the novelty of a sandwich made with a thick warm slice of salt beef and pickles and things. My mouth is watering as I think about it. Anyway, this time, I got the butcher to leave the brisket flat so that I could try it on the KK. It came from a small breed of cow called a Dexter so it weighed in at just 2kg (approx 4.5lb). Here is the brisket with its beautiful yellow fat cap on. Trimmed up and ready to go. I followed instructions from the Meathead book for how it should look and House rub recipe from the UK Pitt Cue Co book. Here is the gorgeous baby after it had rested. You will have to take my word for it, I didn't remember to take a photo while it was in the KK. As you will see, there is no sign of the pointy end in this next photo. The Husband and I just stood at the counter and devoured it with our fingers. Awesome. We've checked in the freezer and we have one flat Dexter brisket and two rolled Longhorn briskets. We now know what their future holds!

Thanks for all the advice. I thought of buying chunks but I have eight packs of the small chips so I persevered and arranged the chips so that they would not block the holes. I then sealed the pot and heated it in one KK and then transferred it to the lower temp KK for smoking. That worked. The chips were burned and the meat came out nice. Don't think I will go to the trouble of lighting two KKs in the future unless I need to. Will try heating up with a torch next time.

I think they knew that already! Yeah, similar here, limited range of potatoes available to buy. I have to grow the different varieties of that I like. I have grown Yukon Gold before and they are different to the Mayan, latter cooks quicker and is generally smaller. You've reminded me that I liked the Yukon Gold for baking. Must try a baked potato in the KK next. Going to have to ramp up my exercise regime too...

I've not seen steak tips before. More surface area for crunchy goodness. Looks yummy!

Ha. Of course, I meant Jaguars-Steelers. What a weekend. @Tyrus, I have followed Philly since Randall Cunningham was QB and thought this was our year with Wentz doing so well. The team is holding up, you never know, we might just make it to the big game. Whoever wins, I'm loving the competitiveness of most of the games this post season. I wonder what a plot of where we all live would say about the distribution of "mad" in each of our countries? Yup, this post is in that sous vide section. I hadn't used my water bath in ages. The option to combine it with KK cooking should bring it back into use. I'd like to pretend that I know but the convention here is to use goose fat and so I've never seen or tried duck fat for potatoes. I can't imagine there is a huge difference. What makes the real difference is the type of potatoes that you use. The ones in the picture were called Apache (blotchy pink and yellow skin) and I have also found Mayan Gold (golden yellow) to be very good. We call them South American varieties here so, you never know, you might be able to get hold of them.

Yeah, me too @Bruce Pearson, I thought of titling the post, "ad for flat basket". I plan to use to for lots else. Red mullet is really delicious. I live near the sea and clear out our local fish market whenever they have some in.

Lots to respond to. Will do so tomorrow. In the meantime, am watching recording of the Titans-Steelers game. "Any given Sunday". I love it when the pundits, and I, get it wrong. Let's see if the Titans hold on!

I have not rigged up my rotisserie yet but have been dying to use the flat rotisserie basket that I bought from @Keith OctoForks. The basket depth is adjustable and so could imagine using it to hold and flip fiddly chipolata sausages and small, delicate fish like these red mullet. Here they are, ready to go and in the basket. At the end of the cooking period I lowered them down directly above the coals to get a bit of blistering on the skin. These peppers got a little bit closer earlier - they were actually cooked on the coals for ten minutes to get the skin black and ready to peal off. Delicious Sunday lunch! Did I say I was loving my KKs?

When you all were giving me advice about my KK purchase, a few of you said you mainly use your ODK and not your IDK and so needed more than one KK to deliver a total meal. I'd read your posts out to The Husband and we'd tut about the mad Americans. I now know you are not all Americans but you are certainly mad and I seem to have joined your number. Here I am, in an English winter, cooking most of my meals outdoors! On to the business at hand. When I was googling to find out about the relative collagen content of different types of meat a couple of weeks ago I came across this recipe for 48 hour cooked beef https://www.washingtonpost.com/recipes/48-hour-beef-ribs/11890/?utm_term=.28849b63b32b. I was willing to devote my oven to this experiment for two days but wondered if I ought to try it out in the KK. And then I remembered that this sort of cooking is what the water bath does best and so I googled further and found this sous vide recipe: http://www.instructables.com/id/Beef-Ribs-Cooked-En-Sous-Vide-135-F-for-48-Hours/. It was easy to do - file the short ribs in your water bath and forget for two days. I didn't have the opportunity to eat them straight away so I kept them in the fridge, still vac packed, for a few days. I thought it would be fun to cook a "typical" English roast dinner in the KK and so started with some veg in a Chinese clay pot and potatoes rolled in goose fat. Here they are part way through cooking. While they were cooking, I warmed up the vac pack with the ribs in warm water. Here they are in their "boil in the bag" format. I cranked up the KK to about 350 degrees C to brown the ribs quickly - approx 3 mins in total. They came out nice The cabbage with red onion was good too A very brown but very satisfying meal. The sauce was made with home made veal stock and the juices from the sous vide bag - very rich. And just perfect for watching the Philadelphia Eagles, against all the pundits' predictions, beat the Atlanta Falcons. Hurrah!

Really? That's not what I've heard. Only teasing. I don't actually drink beer. Just use it for cooking. Beef cooked with Guinness and mushrooms is another great recipe. I do like to drink what you guys call hard cider though. Oh yes, I also like champagne but I have to ration that!

Tee hee. it is actually a mash up of a US recipe for buffalo wings and a Vietnamese recipe for grilled wings. But don't use any of your weak beers! A good brown ale in the brine gives the chicken a really nice flavour and, if you weren't greedy, you could eat them plain. Hard to forgo the sticky sauce though. Nice one @MacKenzie

Yum. I think it is chicken for dinner tonight, again! I think I see the nice honey, chilli and oyster sauce glaze on the last picture. @MacKenzie did you put that on after you took the chicken off the KK? I add it on in the last couple of minutes of grilling - to get an extra, slightly burnt crunch. Yum, might have to bring chicken forward to lunch

I'll try it out. And this time I will hang around to watch for the smoke!