tekobo

That looks really good David. Food tastes so much better when you start with a good base like this. The Husband does the stocks here but he has never gone the full demi-glace. Might have to persuade him that it is not as difficult as it looks!

I bought a whole ex-dairy nanny goat and it arrived beautifully cut and just as I had asked. Most of it is in the freezer but I had a load of cubed shoulder (bone-in) and cubed leg to turn into curries. Had fun yesterday cooking four separate recipes. First I started by browning the meat for my Nigerian goat stew in the KK. Came out very well and with much less mess than browning in a pan in the kitchen. I missed a trick though. I should have put a touch of smoke on the meat at the same time to create the "authentic", cooked over wood smell from party food back home. I bought the Grill Rescue grate cleaner a while ago, as recommended by the KK shopping channel. I have not been hugely impressed in the past but it did work well for cleaning off the grates before the next stage of cooking. This is the Nigerian tomato and scotch bonnet based stew, cooked in a tall pot in the IDK. All the big bones are the stock bones that I left in to add flavour. Fished them out before packing into freezer containers. And three tasty dishes, cooked over 2-3 hours in the KK. Top left in the blue cast iron Le Creuset is the sauce for a goat biryani, to be layered in with rice and crispy brown fried onions. Bottom left in the green cast iron Le Creuset is an Indian goat curry with spinach added at the very end. To the right in the La Chamba pot is a deeply flavoursome West Indian goat curry. I normally avoid putting my Le Creuset stuff in the KK for fear of getting the exteriors blackened but using the KK as a large oven with a steady heat but no flames meant no blackening to worry about. And yes - all four dishes are super tasty. Most packed away in the freezer now, waiting to dispense joy at a moment's notice!

Welcome. As others have said, I am looking forward to learning from you once you get your hands on your KK. You won't be disappointed!

The concept that it is possible to max out a 42 is mind boggling. Well done Johnny. Sounds like a mountain of work. I hope your guests appreciate it!

Hi Paul. I don't like bitterness at all but I do not find this marinade or achiote at all bitter. I always do the recipe as per @Troble's video and as I noted in an earlier post here. The overall amount of marinade is significant and I find that I use what I need and then freeze the rest for using another time. Works really well that way as it saves the effort and mess of making this up each time you want to do a cook.

Yes, black pudding is what blood pudding gets called in the UK. There is a corresponding white pudding which is traditionally made with “lights” (pig lungs and other offal), groats and a nice touch of white pepper and spices like nutmeg. Both delicious. P.S. I like ketchup but it would be sacrilege to mask the taste of the black or white pudding with that strong taste!

Hey @Bunji I have all of those toys except a dedicated griddle. I can only blame the fact that I have been on this forum since 2017 and have been unduly influenced by my peers! If I was ever to be forced to slim down to just two, I would choose the 32 and my pizza oven. I use them the most @Tyrus. The 23 is great for smaller, quick cooks. You would think the 16 would be the best for small cooks but it is harder to light with the more limited airflow and proximity to the fire can be a disadvantage for some cooks.

Thanks for the video @jeffshoaf. The one big difference, I think, is that the PacoJet can be set to mill out just the amount of ice cream you want and leaves the lower layer frozen so you can put it back in the freezer unmilled. A book that I love and believe you have a version of in the US is by Kitty Travers and is called La Grotta Ices. It is my go-to and has some great seasonal recipes. Have fun!

I had a little bit more time than normal to cook lunch the other day. I beat up a pork chop, breaded it with Panko breadcrumbs before frying in butter and serving with black pudding and stir fry broccoli with oyster sauce. Yum.

Iberian pork presa with a simple smoked paprika rub. Delicious, just slightly pink. First time I had used my KK in weeks. What a joy.

Wow! That food looks fantastic @Troble. Like @Tyrus I'm wondering what damage that did to your wallet compared to, say, the US.

It's 7 am here so no pics of freshly made ice cream but here is my set up. As Jeff says, once you make and freeze your ice cream or sorbet mix in advance it is very easy to just reach in the freezer and present the perfect ice cream every time. One really fun combination that we like is fennel ice cream with a chocolate brownie cake. Never fails to please. Papaya and chilli sorbet does mess with your mind, especially when I used a particularly hot Borg 9 chilli in the mix. The PacoJet fits neatly into a small corner space in the kitchen. The canisters of made up ice cream/sorbet are stored in a tray in the freezer. The frozen mix looks like this. Magic just waiting to happen.

I have a PacoJet. We bought one off eBay in 2020 for a third of the list price, still within guarantee. It is an awesome piece of kit and makes the BEST ice cream and sorbet you have ever eaten. It is a great way to preserve beautiful summer fruit. You make your ice cream or sorbet mix and then freeze solid. Milling just what you need when you need it is a restaurant trick that means you get fresh made ice cream every time. I can't recommend it highly enough and if Jeff's new toy is even half way as good I am sure it will be worth it. There are a whole load of savoury applications of a Pacojet that I am yet to explore. So little life and too much fun food to eat!

"That's basically the whole plan" I like a simple plan. Can't fail. I made the same mistake as you, not buying the KK I should have first time around. I am very happy with my current 32, 23, 16 combo but I should have listened to the advice to buy the biggest I could afford instead of going for the 21, 23 combo that I did buy. That said, you have the opportunity to pick a different colour and...move over to the dark side and choose tile over pebble.

Ahh. I get it. Thanks for the explanation @Tyrus. No Zonks here. Nice skewers @David Chang. I realised two things after I posted my picture. 1. All OCD folk will be horrified by my jumble of skewers. This (insufficiently) OCD person now wishes she had arranged them neatly, all facing in the same direction. 2. I now realise that I have accidentally achieved the holy grail, as espoused by our long departed friend, @ckreef. The skewers can be rotated and precisely positioned in four different positions using the slots in the grid. Awesome.

I'm hoping to get one soon. I can imagine doing tandoori skewers on it. At least that is my excuse for having yet another BBQ accessory.

You got me! Who is Zonk?

So, I finally looked at the instructions. Who does that??? I now know that you can see the UV light (when you have worked out how to turn it on!). I have replaced both the filter and the light now. They are meant to last a year. On my list as a maintenance item now although I will likely run them for more than a year given I don't keep the dry ager on continuously these days.

I had fun re-visiting this thread just now. Some old friends are still around, others have moved on to pastures new. All good. In the hood. As @Tyrus would say. So...a cooking programme here called the Great British Menu has these new style konro grills called kasai being used by the chefs who come on to compete. I was curious because, up until last year, they were using the traditional Japanese konro grills. It turns out they are British made and had some fun new accessories available. They are not sized the same as the traditional konros and I found that my medium konro approximates to their Little Kasai. What a treasure trove of fun accessories! https://www.sousvidetools.com/japanese-bbq-s I could not resist and am now the proud owner of a heat mat, a 50:50 plancha and a skewer rack. I can't wait to use them!

Gosh, I am so sorry to have missed all your kind wishes for my birthday. @MacKenzie - a whole pork belly, no less, in my honour. Thank you! I took the tack of starting my celebrations a week early and am due to finish with a party tomorrow. It has been huge fun, meeting up with small groups of friends every day in the name of my birthday celebrations. All the 5's this time!

Now that's interesting...

As steam escapes 😤 from the nostrils of fans of all of the thirty other teams in the league. What fun! A date it is, sometime in the next three years I reckon.

I know the feeling Jon. I was all jittery before the game started. Had wings here but no pics. It was a great game, shame about the ending for my Eagles. I do like Mahomes and the Chiefs so it was difficult to wish them ill but I do hope that we will meet again in a future SuperBowl and that we come away with the victory. Same time next year?

That's great @Bunji. Dennis has pretty much always thought the design through, it just isn't always obvious to mere mortals 🤭 It would be good if you could close out this post with a photograph of what you ended up doing so anyone with the same problem has an understanding of what they need to do.

You are right, it’s difficult to drop the temp if you have heat soaked your KK. However, if you get it up to high temp quickly, crackle the skin in half and hour and turn the cap right back down, you can lower the temp without snuffing out the fire. That said, it sounds like @C6Bill has got good results using his method too.