tekobo

Chicken in chicken stock in sous vide. Game changer, thanks @Syzygies. Was intrigued by this method but didn’t want to lose gorgeous juices into a stock pot. This way the enriched stock will make an even better sauce. Thanks for the intro to this cooking choice @David Chang, definitely going to try it. @Braai-Q has access to some great local chicken. Trouble is, it’s local to him and about three hours’ drive from my house. Will have to wangle a visit soon.

Hmmm. Those potatoes look good. Going to try that for sure. Thanks @Troble!

When I first read this I thought, "but Richard doesn't have any paying guests". And then I worked out @Tyrus' sense of humour. Yes, the piggies do have to check out to make it over to my plate. Tee hee. I thought, "I've played cricket there", how very Australian to denote a place by the fact that you had played cricket there! I did a quick search for Pig in my photo album and found that my birthday visit to the farm was in Feb 2012. Picture of sleepy mama pig to follow.

By coincidence I just received a regular mail shot from my friend Richard Vaughan with a video about his farm and the Middle White pork he supplies. We have been buying from him for about 20 years now and have visited his farm a couple of times over the years. One was a birthday treat for me but he wouldn't go for the challenge of picking out a piglet that was born on my birthday and sending it to me when it was old enough. In spite of not indulging me I will still give him 5 stars for customer service and an awesome product.

P.S. A little German gets you a long way. Or at least to some meat porn on the Schwabishe Hall website: https://shop.besh.de/unsere-spezialitaeten/fuer-den-grill/vom-schwein/P23/C387/O418

Hi @tony b, I looked up the Swabian pig. Here in Europe it seems to be that you can only get hold of it if you are able to buy direct in/from Germany. Haven't checked the others out yet but I was indignant when you said my rare and special Middle White was a Yorkshire and is widely farmed/husbanded(?) in Iowa. Well, you were pretty close. Your Yorkshire appears to be a Large White pig. Guess where the Middle White comes in? It's a cross between the Large White and the, you guessed it, Small White. Every day is a school day.

Keeping my feet dry on this one, no thanks to @MacKenzie! The KK shopping channel still works on me but my current interest is @jeffshoaf's Ninja combo grill and air fryer. Another few months of resistance and I will feel I deserve it when I finally get my hands on one.

Really interesting @David Chang. I have never dry aged pork for very long, just a couple of days at the most to dry the skin out. That said, I do buy pork that has been hung by the farmer for 55 days before it gets to me. What breed of pork was that? Do you have access to Middle White pork? I understand that the Japanese value it too so you might be able to get hold of some where you are. It is simply the best pork I have ever eaten. That said, I haven't tried many other breeds since I found Middle White. I will try aging in the dry ager next time I have a suitable piece.

That must be a record! Full marks for pulling so many people into the pool and for finally jumping in.

That looks gorgeous @David Chang! How did it taste?

Ooooh. Yummy looking cooks all round. Making me salivate! Your daughters look so proud @Troble. It is great to have this time with them and even better that they are learning to handle dough so early in their lives. I keep thinking that I should get into the habit of just making and playing with dough every week, just to start to get the feel and confidence that real bakers have. Football cook this weekend owed a lot to the forum. Small stack of chicken shawarma and a couple of octopus legs, both marinaded in @Troble's al pastor marinade. Chicken drumsticks using rack from the KK shopping channel with Yardbird Rub as recommended by, I think, @C6Bill or @tony b. Smoked with pecan wood chips in @Syzygies smoke pot. Delicious and kept me going through the whole weekend of games. Fly Eagles Fly!

Interesting Tony. I followed your link and found, as usual when you post a link, that the item is sold out. Who else have you been telling about this yellow crack?? I like the fact that they are very proud of the fact that this seasoning was created in a laboratory in 1959, eschewing the pretence of the "home made" modern sell. I also like the fact that I am not allowed to do any online ordering this month. Although I have somehow managed to save this item for later in my Amazon UK cart. Let's see if it looks as interesting when I get back to it in February.

So, I decided to try this recipe with chicken wings to go with this weekend of football watching. I marinaded the wings for a day in a vac bag and added a tiny bit more heat to the green sauce. They were a real hit!

Lovely day with my KK today, dodging the rain showers. I tried to maximise the use of fuel so I toasted some nuts and refreshed some frozen baguette in the KK while it was warming up. Then I roasted some veg and this veal chop. No time and not the weather for any basting and clinching, just old fashioned throw it on the KK, move from warm to hot zone and eat!

Good advice @Syzygies. While the big steaks I cut look impressive I would really love to have been able to cut that lump of T-bone into thin slices of about 0.75cm thickness at most. I discovered the joy of super thin chops when I stood behind a South African at my local butcher's counter and saw them slicing lamb or goat chops on the bandsaw for him, all thin and lovely. I copied him and found them to be delicious. Quick cooking succulent meat with lots of surface area to take the rub. Do you have a recommended blade and saw combination for cutting meat that thin? I could freeze the meat beforehand if that would make it easier.

Super happy about that. The splitter (and the chicken!) looks great. I still have my own home made splitter so won't be buying one of these but I am so glad to finally got your hands on one and like it. Your timing with the recipe update could not be better. I was looking at my jar of aji amarillo paste this morning thinking that I really ought to use it up. I made up 3x your recipe and will freeze the marinade for future use. Just one question: you refer to "vegetable oil for marinade" and separately there is some olive oil to go in the marinade. It's a lot of vegetable oil so I left it out but wanted to check if it was for basting when cooking or if you really meant it to go in the marinade. Thanks as always for sharing your recipes.

Yes, thanks @tony b and @MacKenzie. 2023 has started off well. I have banned myself from ordering anything at all online for the whole month of January in an effort to break the "add to cart" habit that I have developed. So far so good.

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!

Happy New Year from the south of England. The weather here was awful so no KK action for our New Year's party but we did have a good spread of Venetian cicchetti.

Nice looking result @KK787 Like you, I love Adam Lang Perry's Charred and Scruffed book and use his methods and standard rub whenever I can. He layers flavour in a really good way.

That looks good @David Chang. I love to put fish in for a couple of days, just to dry out the skin and make for a nice crunch when you fry it. Aged belly tuna is also great.

Another option for you to consider Poochie: before you put the meat in the KK you could give it an all round blast with a blow torch to get it all attractive and brown from the start. I think that a) has less risk of over cooking the meat at the edge because it will be cold at that stage and b) removes the need to jack the KK up to a high temp at the end of your cook.

I was so glad when @jonj turned up with photos and long experience of having cooked one of these. Didn't want to chip in with: I've never done one but you should do it this way... or else. Well, you have a quality cook to beat @Poochie. Good luck!

Merry Christmas all! Awake and restless but know now is not a good time to be playing with knives so I thought I would post instead. First things first: this meat tastes fantastic! The last time we bought veal from this farmer was in 2016 and we had forgotten just how good it is. He hung it for me for 4 weeks before I picked it up and the flavour is great without any additional aging. Would I do this butchery thing again? I don't know. It's a lot of work but I have enjoyed the exploration. @Paul, we are still figuring out the "value" of having a tool for sawing bones. I had a brainwave - instead of buying something we will only use once in a while, why not ask a local meat shop to do the sawing for me? That didn't work. They only cut their own meat and, in any case, they only do halal. Not surprising and 'twas only a delaying tactic en route to buying something. I did seam out the leg yesterday. The guy in the video I watched said it took him 25 minutes. It took me just over an hour, in between doing a few other jobs. I now have a bunch of interesting muscles to clean off and decide how I want to use them. The irony of all of this is that, after all that careful work to separate out individual muscles, some of this will just end up in my mincer. The good news is that all that cutting gave me time to work out a plan for new year's eve. Polpette (meatballs) made of a mix of veal and pork mince are a lovely snack served in bars and are just plain delicious. I will make them and bunch of other cicchetti (Venetian equivalent of Spanish tapas) so people can graze on the day. Here is to happiness! And to the Eagles getting to the Big Dance. From this: To this: If you want to see a better and more expert approach look no further than:

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.