tekobo

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.

I have had an air fryer for while, courtesy of the KK shopping channel. I am very happy with it but it does have the drawback that it has a rotating arm that tends to squish more delicate items. This ninja's extra functions could work well for me as I am looking for something for the apartment that we are buying in Italy. Kit will need to be multi functional and an air fryer/"smokeless" grill/dehydrator looks like an attractive option.

A local farmer about an hour's drive from us here in the South of England rears really tasty rose veal. He gets it butchered and sells it at a premium at farmers markets. I wanted to butcher it myself to get the cuts I like but, somehow, got the timing wrong and now have a whole hindquarter of veal in my house to cut up just two days before Christmas! I drove to the farm to pick it up yesterday afternoon and here is all 60kg of animal spread out on my kitchen counter last night. I could barely lift the leg and ended up cutting off the shin before stuffing the rest of the leg in our big commercial fridge downstairs. I got up early today to scrub, salt and wipe down my butcher's block. It's not been used for this purpose for years. The Husband arrived back from Sweden last night and was not impressed at the prospect of having to deal with a huge carcass over Christmas. I think I will do this slowly over two days and enjoy it. When I read about the Americans on the forum talking about the price of meat I am amazed at how cheaply you can buy it. I think that I do well by buying animals whole, or in the case of steers by the quarter, but I suspect you would think this expensive. The 60kg (including all the bones) cost £600 which feels super cheap at £10/kg. Anyway, off to start my adventure...

Good go David. I hope it tasted good. 3 hours sat in front of a pizza oven does sound too much like hard work though! I think this would work well in a KK with the skin jabbed lightly all over to help release the fat and crisp the skin.

Hi @Basher. I tried to use my Argentinian grill the other night. Really struggled to get the wood fire going properly and there was a lot of smoke. Gave up and cooked the steak in the KK. I do love the Argentinian grill for the way it drains fat away from the fire but I need to get back into the rhythm of building a good wood fire. @jeffshoaf thanks for doing the research. Keen to see your next try at the fries. It's not a cheap piece of kit so will want to be sure it does fries well too before investing.

I hate to say it but that is actually a funny joke @Poochie

Hiya. Not aged that long. Probably about 60 days. Twas yummy.

Self indulgent cook for one. My husband is not so keen on heavily aged meat and I like my meat rarer than him so him being away for work was a great opportunity. Dry brining in the fridge Cooked indirect on the 23, with some parsnip poutine and whole beetroot in foil in the foreground. Anticipation Happiness. I finished the poutine under the grill in the house with pecorino and soft gorgonzola. All my favourite things. And the meat cooked just right for me.

KK shopping channel strikes again! The combination of this ninja piece of kit being a grill, a dehydrator and an air fryer is very tempting. Will you be trying its capabilities as an air fryer @jeffshoaf? More reports of how you get on using this will be very gratefully received. That said, we have a break in the cold and wet weather today and I am hoping to get out there and do some fire cooking after a break of quite a few weeks now. Cold and the risk of slipping on wet and/or ice has made outdoor grilling distinctly unappealing this so far this winter.

Looking good so far...

Hurrah! That looks good @Troble Glad to hear that one is winging its way towards you!