tekobo

Converting your temps to Celcius, I think your 500F should get you crackled in about 30mins. Good to allow 1 hour but do check so you don't end up with burnt skin. I would then crank the top down to get the temp down to something closer to 350F for the rest of the cook to allow the inside to cook slowly. Which KK do you have? I would advise using a split basket or something to catch the fat to reduce smoking. Getting good pork crackling in a KK can be difficult because of it's tendency to keep food moist but your high temp start should improve your chances.

That sounds and looks like heaven - for some people! I'm sitting at the edge of this rabbit hole, tail twitching but not diving in!!!

Great looking kitchen @Basher. I hope it has been worth the wait. The meat is sure to be worth the wait. Looks soooo good. The recommended settings on my dry ager for aging meat are Temp 1.5C and 82% humidity. When I cure sausages I change that to 12-15C and 70% humidity.

Super cool that your 2006 KK is still going strong. I am in the camp that does not see the need for a controller. More things to plug in and more things to go wrong. I have found my KKs to be rock solid on temp when they are dialled in and if some variation in fuel or wind causes a fluctuation in temperature it is never enough to cause me a concern.

@Basher they live on the English side. Goodrich. The last time we visited was en route from Wales to home in England.

Hey, I like you @jonj. May the best team win. Hopefully it will be a good game.

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.