tekobo

That looks awesome @Basher. I would love to have somewhere like that close to me. That said, having a dry ager of your own spoils you for anyone else’s choices about how long to age and what you age. Hope your reno gets finished soon!

What fun! Welcome Lila. I hope that you and your husband love your new KKs when they arrive.

Nice week day lunch. Galician steak with sweet potato fries and salad.

Dennis, you posted this just as I was finishing my post above. Glad to hear the flipping the half grate is “approved”. Also helpful to be reminded that I could just go indirect on the lower grate over the splitter.

I’m not totally sure what you are talking about but I suspect you are talking about the half grate in the 32. If that is the case then I think I do what you have described by flipping the half grate over and having it on the right hand side of the grill when I want to be able to step down to the lower grate with the basket splitter in place. That said, @BOC opened my eyes to the fact that I don’t have to use the splitter at all and can simply pile my char where I want it. That makes things even more flexible. Sorry if I am not answering the right question but some pics to illustrate the problem would help. This is the config with the half grate flipped over and used on the right hand side of my 32. I too would like some advice from others as to how they do the step down with the basket splitter in place, if it is different to what I have illustrated here.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer my questions @Troble. Super helpful. Good to know that flipping the pig was not a big deal. I work out too but I think I might ask for some help if I go that route! I am hosting a friend’s 40th birthday party next week and have a little piggy on order. We are allowed up to 30 in the garden now and it feels like a great opportunity to have a great looking centerpiece like a suckling pig. Will hang it in the dry ager for a few days to help to develop the flavour a little. I hope you found that brisket place in San Antonio and that it was as good as they made it out to be!

Wow! Now there's an awesome sight. Looking forward to the uncrateing.

Cooked the secreto hot and fast yesterday. Was a lot like skirt steak, on steroids. Bought some more immediately. Salt, pepper, a bit of garlic powder and a coating of chilli vinegar. 10 minutes in KK, flipping every 2 minutes. KK was not heat soaked. Ate with chips, salad and a hot tomato sauce. Delicious. There is a Steve Raichlen recipe online that recommends romesco sauce.

Hey there @Troble. How are you feeling? Guessing you must have hit the drinks hard once you had got the pig cook and all of your food out for the guests. I would have! Now, lots of details required to inform future pig cooks: How did you turn the pig? Why did you take the eyes out? Aesthetics or some other reason? How did it taste and what did your guests think? What would you change, if anything, about the cook? How long did you cook for and at what temp? How much did the little piggy cost? Oh yes, and how did you serve it? Was it pulled or did you cut it? Thank you in advance! I have a party to cater for soon and am considering my options.

Looking good, looking great!

The day has come! We are all really looking forward to this cook. All your preparation looks like it is coming together nicely. Have a great day.

Don’t tempt me Dennis! Those terra pebbles look great!

Shaping up nicely @Troble. We are all looking forward to your meal now. That piggy looks like it is just the right size. Can’t wait to see it cooked in a couple of days’ time.

Aha! Yes, I have watched the series, I just didn't remember Rodney's name. I really enjoyed it, thanks for the reminder. Yes, of course I wasn't expecting you to take my "feedback" as gospel. I just wondered about the difference in the type and size of animal that Rodney is dealing with when compared to yours and the tools he has when he comes to turn his cooks. I'll make a point of watching it with my pork chop dinner tonight. Yum.

This sounds like a level of complexity that you could leave out if you wish. I do not know what Rodney Scott normally cooks but my guess is it may be a much bigger whole hog. In that case he will likely have a frame for turning the hog with and the injection is worth the effort. I think that the flesh of a suckling pig is so tender that you don't really want to be messing with it too much. Salt and pepper or a gentle rub of your choice applied the day before and then cooked on its belly, giving the skin the chance to crisp up would be my choice.

This working from home lark makes it easier to do mad things like this. Cooked a 500g batch of corn Tuesday morning, ground it to make wet masa yesterday morning and then left it in the dehydrator for a few hours. Trays below show the dehydrated results. Got back to it this morning and ground a full batch in my small spice/coffee grinder this morning. I did try the blender but the result wasn't as fine. 400g of masa harina from 500g of corn. Will store in the freezer to keep it fresh (as per advice from Anson Mills for their freshly milled products). U

She loves you for it, I'm sure. Looking forward to pics of the piggy when you get it home.

That piece of kit looks just awesome @Basher. Just beautiful. I look forward to seeing it in action. When is your birthday and will you get to cook with it on the day or has that "deadline" been missed?

Hey @Troble, it is great to be feeling like I can advise you on the strength of one suckling pig cook of my own. I think your time and temp should be fine for this young animal. I cooked mine slightly hotter 150C (300F) and it took approximately four hours in the roti basket. Don't worry about needing to saw the trotters off. Once the pig is cooked they will either fall off or be easily pulled off. How are you planning to get the pig off the grill? I guess you could actually lift out the grate if you don't have an alternative holder in place during in the cook. I didn't have the issues with juices running out that @Basher described but we will learn more when you try it out.

Thanks @BOC. It never occurred to me not to use the splitter! Still not sure if my tidy gene will allow me to do that regularly but I will give it a try very soon.

Interesting that you should ask. I didn't think about the serving bit before I started cooking mine and I was a bit daunted when I started to cut into my cooked pig. In particular, I had no idea how much meat there was overall and so I was a bit parsimonious with the first few sandwiches that I made. I think I ended up in the pulled pork space but I might have preferred to separate some of the joints out and to make a deliberate mix of different parts of the pig for each person. Whatever you end up doing, don't sweat it. It'll be the best roast pig your guests will have eaten - that day, if not ever.

Yesterday's tacos. "Hand" of pork and a few purple sweet poatoes, waiting to go into the KK first thing in the morning. Covered in salt. In the KK after about six hours. Broken out and shredded Taco with purple potato mash at its base and pork, sauce and coriander layered on top. Yummy!

Nixtamalisation report - A+. It is well worth diving down this rabbit hole. I have done this twice now and the second time was even better than the first. In reverse order: Every tortilla in the batch bubbled to order. Not @Syzygiesfull tortilla rise but enough to get me whooping for joy. We tried some tortilla in the hollandaise sauce from the previous course. A combination to die for. I wrote to Tony at Masienda after my first cook and he advised me to use plastic bags to line my tortilla press in place of the grease proof paper that I normally use. Big improvement. Peeled off so much easier. I also asked him about needing to use masa harina (dried masa flour) to get the wet masa to the right consistency. I felt like a pregnant mum who had wanted a natural birth but ended up screaming for the epidural. He reassured me that it was perfectly normal. I didn't want to have to ship more masa harina over from the US and so I asked if I could make my own. He said I could dehydrate my masa and then grind it myself. Here it is, with the bonus that the masa harina is made from the same corn as the wet masa. Fresh masa straight from the grinder, ready to go in the dehydrator. Dried Ground No pictures of the front end of the process but this is what I did: Cooked 500g of corn with 2000g of water and 15g of cal. It took about 1hr and 15 mins for the bolita amarillo corn to get soft(ish) to the bite on the outer kernel while keeping the heart of the kernel hard. Heated slowly and it didn't read over 90C until after 45 minutes. Didn't let it get to boiling. At the end, overall weight was down to 2000g. I decanted the hot mix - corn, nixmatal and all - into a fresh container, added 500g of ice and placed in a sink full of cold water and ice. Once cooled, I left the mix to rest for 24hrs at room temp and then stored it in the fridge without grinding. One recipe that came with the corn said never to put this stuff in the fridge and the other said it was OK to put in the fridge for a couple of days or so. Latter much more convenient, given the need to use the masa within a couple of hours of grinding. When I was ready to grind, I washed the corn in lots of running water (some recipes say not to be too vigorous with your cleaning, others say to be thorough). The Premier grinder is awesome. It comes with rudimentary instructions and I watched a Gujerati woman on YouTube before assembling and using the kit. Dead easy to use and you need to judge the amount of liquid you need to keep the ground corn going round smoothly. A few interventions with spatula needed during the process but it works pretty well on its own for 40 minutes. I suspect I could have stopped at 20 minutes but twice as long was good. I added in my powdered masa when I came to make up the balls and all was good with the world. The Husband said he could understand why Mexican chefs would cry when they tasted tortillas made with fresh masa made from good corn. The best compliment came from one of our guests when he said what a difference it was to eat a tortilla that was not just a tasteless conveyor of its taco contents but a player with a stake in the game. Thanks @Syzygies P.S. No I am not mad and this is not difficult. I cooked the corn two days before I needed to use it. All of the process on the day fitted into the prep for a four course meal that was cooked fresh on the day in a total of three hours active cooking time. I continue in search of the perfect tortilla but, in the meantime, this was pretty damn good.

@Buzilo - you may want to update this now that you have decided to hang on to the 21.

A 21 and a 42 - a great combination. How do you decide which to use and do you divide up the fire basket in the 42 or burn a full basket every time? I am feeling my way with the extra space in my 32 trying to decide if I keep it in two zone configuration for most of the time or not.