tekobo

So, where are you with your debate on 32 v 23 @buzilo? Will you definitely move your 21 on or might you keep it?

Welcome @mstang1988! I would say all of those considerations are things worth buying. The one that some never seem to use is the double wall drip pan but I can see it coming in very handy for either catching juices or just stopping flare ups from fatty foods. I am straining to remember what I picked for my matte black 32 and the only thing I did not get was the side shelves/wings.

One of life's great pleasures is to eat in Italy when a particular ingredient is in season. When white truffles are in they are (relatively) cheap and are used generously on eggs, steak, pasta, anything and everything. Don't judge truffles by the overpriced stuff we get in our shops. Getting truffles direct from the man who went out with his dog to find and dig them up the day before feels like a drug deal and gives you the same high. Note: I am not advocating drug taking but I do advocate that you don't pass on truffles if you get to eat them close to source.

I didn't respond to @buzilo's question when I first saw it because it confused me but I didn't know why. On reflection, just before I went to bed, I thought that the answer must be "it depends". Happily, @Pequod agrees. I have my 32 in a permanent half basket config for two zone cooking. That half basket is probably equivalent to a 23 basket and, as Pequod said, you can generate more airflow through the 32 and so it lights very quickly. Therefore, for a hot and fast cook the 32 is quicker and for heat soaking to cook bread or pizza it is slower. No precise timings here because...it depends.

That looks great. I really enjoyed the video @jeffshoaf. Congratulations. My only reservation is about the mild steel. Shelter and a cover I think will be important. We had a mild steel barbecue for a few years and it was a PITA trying to keep it from rusting. We ended up painting it a couple of times. It was in a sheltered alcove but we didn't have a cover. It was a waste of the £600 we spent buying it in the end.

Congratulations! Looking forward to the photos.

Nooo. In this case, don't second guess yourself. If you really think the 16" pan is better for your needs then get it. I like the fact that you know what you want. We all do. Want. Everything. You may well get the larger pan down the line if you find you really need it.

I second everything everyone else has said about the pizza stone. I deliberately did not order one for my 32 and almost immediately regretted not doing so when I started to bake on my 32. The cost of getting one shipped out to the UK on its own would be prohibitive but, super luckily for me, @RokDok appears to have two and is going to let me have his spare one when we finally get to visit him and Mrs RD. And yes, we have discussed it and the spare baking stone does not appear to be a heat deflector but rather a production "second".

So @Forrest, I used to wonder if this forum was just one great big cult dedicated to a hippy guy called Dennis. I am now a believer and I can't help but say - experiment but don't mess with the fundamentals. Dennis knows his grills and his design. He will have sized the double drip pan so that it works well for the size KK that it is in. Air flow will happen efficiently around the sides of your pan and up and out through the chimney. Others will tell you how the air flows and where the eddies are. I will just say - believe.

P.S. I asked the same question about grout and Dennis told me that there is only one colour.

We are patient here on the tile side @Forrest. I started off pebble and then moved to tile after two years so I know what I am talking about. They will turn your head, the marrying kind, you'll see. In the meantime, enjoy your hot love affair with pebble.

Welcome @Forrest. All good decisions so far, apart from the one to go with olive gold pebble. Come over to the dark side. Tiles cook so much better!

Now there's a big kitty! Good looking piece of kit and lovely meat @jeffshoaf. I hope you like the results in X days' time.

Super Bowl is the only time that the UK press report in any detail on the NFL. It would be super irritating to hear the result before I'd watched the game and so it is worth staying up, if only for that reason. The most surreal Super Bowl was the one I watched the year I was living in Sydney. It started around 10:30am on the Monday morning. Weird or what???

Thoughts or suggestions - get one if you have the space and the inclination to try something different. What do you like or dislike - I love the V shaped grate bars and the fat collection tray. Great for grilling fatty meats without flare ups. I like also the finer control that you have for grilling delicate foods and the active participation in fire management, adjusting the distance between the fire and the food and just generally playing around. I also like the plancha style option for grilling things like baby squid and other seafood. Could probably do breakfast eggs too but I have not tried. Any changes I would make to mine if I could - we used to have one with a cover and I think that made it more versatile. The Argentinians use these grills for larger hunks of meat using a lid and I struggled to cook a large porchetta on a spit without a cover. That said, I would probably do that in my new 32 now. The brand I bought had the option to have two sections on separate wheels i.e. you could have one side higher than the other. That option introduced a central post that reduced the continuous grilling area. On balance I think I made the right choice but it could be helpful to be able to have food at different levels. Finally, I did not have space for a separate fire box. If you do have the space I would go for a fire box to the side that allows you to create embers to keep the fire topped up. You can build the fire in the base of the parilla grill but it is difficult to replenish during a long cook. I use my 16 to do that work now and I was very happy with the 16's performance as a, very expensive, chimney. Do you stick with lump or do you use wood - I use lump because wood smokes too much for where I live. I don't know what a brasserros is... Links - this is the UK company I bought mine from: https://www.oxgrills.co.uk. Sorry, I bought it for The Husband not for me, Freudian slip! Worth a look just to see the various designs they have built to give you ideas about what you might want to specify. They appear to mostly be bought by chefs so they have all sorts of different modifications to suit them.

All hail the GOAT. The Bucs had a great game plan and executed it to perfection. All credit to the team and to Mr Brady for making such a difference in just one year. Looking forward to next year and hoping some of these young bucks give him more of a run for his money. Let's go!!

Thanks Mac. The real challenge is staying awake for the whole game and then getting up for work tomorrow. It starts at 11:30pm here and doesn't finish until about 3am. Going to try and get some shut eye now. How 'bout those CHIEFS.

I am so excited for the Super Bowl tonight. I have rooted against the Patriots for many years but I just have to doff my hat to the GOAT. A huge accomplishment, getting back to the big game with another team in the weirdest of years. Not sitting on the fence. I am rooting for the Chiefs but I won't begrudge the GOAT one more win if the Buccs are the better team on the night. Yay! Lots of wings, maybe some ribs, blue cheese sauce and sweet potato fries. Happiness is...

I am liking your tomatoey interpretation Charles. I am also getting to understand that grits are like polenta. I always dismissed polenta as tasteless pap but there is a lot more to making it and enjoying it than meets the eye. More grits (and polenta) cooking to come. I succumbed to product placement by Sean Brock, broke and ordered a bunch of stuff from Anson Mills. Once I am through this batch I will look into milling my own. A new, mini, rabbit hole.

It has taken me a year to get around to it but I finally made shrimp and grits for the first time ever. We enjoyed the dish even though I forgot to add the hot sauce recommended in Sean Brock's recipe. Used Anson Mills grits as recommended by @tony b Do again, for sure.

My friend got COVID in early December and thinks her taste is mostly back now. The advantage(?) of the loss is that she now likes chillis. We shall have fun when we can visit again. The dried shrimp and chilli oil is just oil, dried shrimp, chilli paste and chlli flakes. Super delicious. I cannot find his recipe online but I could see others. Looking at the ingredients for XO sauce, it looks like an amped up version of that chilli oil.

Tee hee. I logged on to tell @RokDok just that. It is a tip that I learned from you Tony and it is great for monitoring without having to get up close and personal with your KK on a wet or cold day while you are waiting for it to heat up. Congratulations Dok! I am so happy that you and Mrs RD are happy. It is a mad and all consuming obsession but I am sure that you know that and are up for the journey.

Hi Tony, it is a riff on a bengal gram and gourd curry. Vegetarian and very tasty. It was a labour of love, prepared over two days starting with soaking and cooking the little brown chickpeas that form the basis of the dish. It is an annual tradition to use up the big winter squashes that I grow at the allotment. I normally cook it with a friend and found it much harder work on my own this year. The Husband joined in and made it a little easier but I did miss my friend. She will be picking up her portion in a day or so.

Wow! That's awesome. I am really looking forward to seeing how you get on. I have found it to be such an interesting exploration of how time changes the nature of meat and fish.

@tony bis this stuff the same do you think? If so, I shall have a good laugh with my best friend. She is Welsh and doesn't particularly like chillis but two weeks ago she sent me this photo and said, "Have you tried this stuff? Gosh its good." I thought a) it can't be better than the chilli oil with dried shrimp that I make from an A.Wong recipe and b) what do you know about chillis anyway? If it turns out that she was ahead of me on this one she will die laughing. Good thing is, she didn't die of COVID when she caught it and in fact just got better self-isolating at home. The side effect is that her temporary (?) loss of taste means that she is now up for eating more chilli!