tekobo

Pressure canner arrived from the US today by the magic(?) of Amazon. Will read the instructions carefully before I dive in.

Good looking clams @Tyrus. I would normally be a purist and want to eat them with minimum additions but I suspect that, at this size, they are intimidating "au naturel" and on the flip side they are large enough to stand up to the added flavours. If only there was a way to taste cooks online!

Yes, to pour on the chicken and brat kartoffeln that went with it. That is the most delicious chicken fat you will ever eat!

Chicken dinner, always a winner.

I feel bad ignoring Birbal kumar's kind message but, given it is his first message on the forum and in response to a very old post, I wonder if he is a real person or a spam product. Birbal, I look forward to hearing more from you about grilling and your KK/plans for one.

I don't think I could have carried the coins required to buy that beauty. Everything is bigger in the US. My allotment neighbours would look at me in horror if I tried to reverse that down the dirt track to my plot!

I realise now that I should have said I was freaked by savoury porridge not savoury grits. Will take the leap soon, I promise!

Hey @Pequod. Breakfast grits with egg? Blew my mind. But why not? I have just started making breakfast smoothies with tomatoes and today's with tomato, a chilli, basil, salt and flaxseed actually tasted nice. I think savoury smoothies are the way to go and will try savoury grits too soon. Thanks!

I remember your recipe from here: And a bit lower down in the thread I actually made the recipe and said I enjoyed it. I think I was telling the truth at the time but a few bowls of polenta later I am back in the not keen corner...

I am so pleased my memory served me right on this one. The recommendation came from @amusedtodeath in 2018 But ever before I joined the forum I see that @MacKenzie had already blazed the trail here in 2016: It's a great little device and mine folds flat for storage. Hey @Tyrus I have clean grates and a dirty car. I like it that way round.

I know it is sacrilege but I can't get on with shrimp and grits even though my Texan friend swears they are delicious. Grits bread may well be the way to go with my grits supply.

Looks good @David Chang. Certainly much lighter than my Famag so no need to give it permanent space on a counter as I have had to.

I found the video below which includes a couple of UK homesteaders' helpful description of the traditional approach to canning which does not address concerns about botulism. They also have a recommendation for a canner to import from the US. They do say that items with significant amounts of oil will create problems in the pressure canner, including interfering with the seal. So it is back to the drawing board for my recipe for beans in oil but this exploration has led me to understand that shop bought shelf stable veggies in oil generally also include some vinegar to lower the PH and reduce/remove risk of botulism. If I never make or sell a thing I will have learned a lot from the process of trying!

So... the good news is that this piece of kit works. It has significant capacity and you can stack the bottles two high if you wish. I had just one layer for this experiment. The less good news is that it is not a pressure canner and will therefore only heat water to 100C, not hot enough to kill the bacteria that cause botulism. So, it is great for acidic foods but not for my test case of broad beans in oil. The other factor I have to consider is the impact on taste and texture. The jar on the left in the picture below was not processed in the canner while the one on the right was. Will try a taste test soon. The weird thing is that pressure canning does not appear to be a "thing" here in the UK or the rest of Europe and so the kit is not readily available. Maybe there is a different approach to reducing the risk of botulism. More research required. Like you @jeffshoaf, I was looking forward to making some tomato passata and processing the jars in this piece of kit. I am not so sure now that that will make them shelf stable. That said, they will be fine in the fridge for months once processed in this way.

OK...so, I am still alive. I suspect the reason I have not killed anyone with my canned goods is because I seal and then store them in the fridge as an extra precaution. That said, I am thinking of starting a preserved food business and am currently experimenting with different recipes. I will need samples that are shelf stable and I will need to be sure that I am not going to kill anyone, so I invested in this dedicated canning pot: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07Z3JMTX2?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details It goes up to 120C for items that need that level of heat and it has significant capacity. Best of all, it did not cost too much and had good reviews. Will feedback when I have actually used it but so far so good!

Oh yes! Olive wood smoke works well with chicken!

I am sooo jealous of all of your bread games. Bravo! @David Chang, if you are in the market for a spiral mixer you could look at Famag. After much research I got an IM8-S a few years ago and it is great for pizza dough.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference between cats and dogs. My cats sit and watch me scrub all that bbq goodness off my grates and then demand their own food. Latest battle is Sindbad deciding that he no longer likes pheasant and will only eat home minced raw chicken thighs. When I die I want to come back as a cat!

What he said. Beautiful!

Have meat hanger, will travel. My husband and I drove the 2.5 hours from our house to visit with @RokDok and his wife Helen this last weekend. I wanted to show him the hanger and I also wanted to try a hot and fast cook. I took one tandoori marinaded chicken and one suya marinaded chicken with me. The marinade from the Tandoor Cookbook by Ranjit Rai includes papaya and I remembered others' warnings that leaving meat too long with this tenderiser could make your meat soft and pappy. Sooo... on the first evening we tried the tandoori marinated chicken. @RokDok has exactly the same colour and tile(!!) 32 as I have at home so we didn't miss a beat. The book recommends 250C temperatures and a very quick cook after slashing and marinading the whole chicken. The recommendation was about 10 mins for the first cook, out to rest for 5 mins, baste with ghee and then cook for another 10 minutes. In practice the whole cook took about 45 minutes. The legs did get burned but the meat was generally juicy. We followed the chicken with duck legs gently cooked in fat in the KK with lovely roast potatoes. Ain't nothing wrong with double protein unless you object to being so full you can't fit in dessert! I wanted to improve on that chicken cook so, the next day for lunch, I positioned the suya marinaded chicken higher up on hook to get it further away from the fire. We also heat soaked the KK for longer so that the breasts would cook a bit faster. Main lesson learned? You need a shield to stop the lower extremities burning in a hot and fast cook for something that takes as long to cook as a chicken. I should have cooked the chicken away from the fire for the first 30 minutes and then moved it over the fire to crisp it up at the end. That said, this was a mighty yummy cook and between us we picked the carcass clean! Dinner was this yummy steak with more potatoes. We all had a lovely time and Paul has now ordered his very own duck/meat hanger. Hurrah! I suspect that skewers will be a really good use case for a hot and fast cook on the hanger so I will try that next. I hesitate to do this but hey... @RokDok got a local farmer to bring him a squirrel which he proceeded to skin, cut and cook on a skewer. I refused point blank to taste it but it did look good and he and my husband professed to enjoy it with their beer.

Hey there @Bruce Pearson! It's great to hear from you. Good to make decisions about how you want to live and great that your daughter can take on your beautiful 32 and cabinet. I hope you will get to visit in Hawaii. Hugs from across the water.

Yay! Nothing beats a good bangers and mash meal. Except, maybe, toad-in-the-hole!

Rotisserie chicken. Tasty.

Wow, that is beautiful @Pequod!

Super cool! I am guessing that all this expense means that you won't yet be allowed to add a pizza oven to your collection. Or are you pulling an out-of-sight-out-of-mind trick on your wife by moving your expensive kit to New Mexico?