tekobo

I will respond as someone who recently received her 32. I have not cooked a pig on it yet but I went into a flat spin when I did this: Theoretically, this meant that I could only bake two loaves of bread on my new 32" KK! Should I have bought the 42? Aaaaargh! And then I realised that I was trying to use old tech to solve new problem. Super simple: using the single pizza stone and riser from my 23 KK I was easily able to fit three loaves into HALF of my 32 KK. So, if I buy the pizza stone for the 32 I should be able to fit at least six loaves on and, similarly, a good number of pizzas. Phew. In practice, the configuration below suits my needs because I use the pan on the right to generate steam by dropping ice onto it, as pioneered by @Syzygies on other threads. Entertaining for the masses should be a cinch with the 32. After baking bread and pizza last night I let the 32 cool down a little and then put this 17"/43cm pot in to cook overnight. Today's advice? Go for two 32's. V versatile.

This is a great view. All your fun stuff within easy reach. I like the way the KK sits right in, just like you always planned for it to be there. Congratulations! @BOC, don't sweat the ramp. If you end up with a double pallet I would abandon the ramp that comes with the KK and use a longer piece of ply, supported by planks or bricks along the slope, to create a longer gradient to roll it down. Says she who got other people to do that while she played with her new KKs as they rolled off the nice ramp that they built... Back to Mr and Mrs RD 🍻

Have fun!!!

0709 here in Southsea. I think RokDok was optimistic with his 0708 sunrise. Internet tells me we will get sunrise at 0738 here and that RokDok will see it in Dorset at 0743. That said, I bet you he is out there in the dark now.

Aussie made should make it easier and cheaper to maintain Basher. Looks good to me. If you did decide you were set on the German DryAger, it might be worth seeing if you can import direct. Suspect there won't be much in it and they may not want to do that in competition with their local distributor in any case.

Veeeery nice Jon. Much more sophisticated than Mac's!

One more sleep!!!

KK arrival day in December was super exciting. After all the excitement of uncrating was over, The Husband spent the next day breaking down the crates and saving the wood for different uses. This is where we have got to so far. The water collecting tank that we had rigged up on the allotment leaked and, over the years had destroyed a section of the shed wall. The Husband used the wood from the KK crates to fix up the side. He also offered one of the crates as a potential table for use on the allotment. I have found a better use for it. What is better than a free packing case as a table between two flashy new KKs?

I think you must! A new kitchen/pantry design is always great fun. I would go for a dry ager over a wine fridge any day. Looking forward to seeing what you end up with. The fun thing is that dry aging does become routine but never boring. You have this to look forward to. This is one of three fore ribs of beef on the bone that arrived two weeks ago After two weeks in the dry ager, the one that I kept looked like this. Anticipation.

Ha! You forgot the First Rule of Chile Club: Respect the heat, do NOT treat it like a rub. Good luck with that. Who is going to take you up on this offer when even you @tony b, couldn't take the heat?

Excellent. Do post! Looking forward to seeing how you get on. @Basher Most places I have been, restauranteurs or butchers use a cool room rather than a ready made fridge. One farmer friend did buy the commercial humidity controlled fridges for his charcuterie while another added in an extra ventilation unit into his cold room when he started to hang his whole carcasses for over 50 days. Happy to find out more from them if you decide this is the route for you.

Hey @tony b. Nothing makes me happier than sharing food experiences. When you said you had enjoyed the first lot of pepper soup mix that I sent you, I had to make sure you had enough supplies to keep you going. The only problem was that my supplies, brought to me by my father in Nigeria, were running low. I had never needed to go to a local African store before because my parents always supplied me with what I needed. Mr Google told me that I had at least three stores within five minutes' drive of my house. I called them up and they all had pepper soup mix. I made it to "Mama Lit" and found pepper soup and more. I have learned a lot and have been back since. She has plantain chips (delicious with or without chilli), palm wine (turns out you need that for making a favourite childhood roadside snack of mine, puff puff) and things I had never heard of - ogiri and iru. When I told my mother I had bought some melon seed for making Ijebu egusi she said I needed to find a fermented product called ogiri. Here I am in England, making Japanese inspired groundnut miso using a book written by some guy in the South and I never knew we had a culture of fermented foods in my own country. A whole new world of food has opened up and I am having fun. So, to your care package Tony: Northern Nigerian chilli mix - I have no idea what makes up this mix but it is good and hot and I like it. Makes me sneeze so I suspect it has a reasonable amount of black pepper in it. I use it for everything. Red pepper - go to heat amper for stews Pepper soup mix - ready mix for adding to stock and meat/chicken/prawns to make a tasty, super hot soup as you know. Our favourites are made with goat or chicken gizzards but you can use any mix of meats that you like. Ground hot pepper - you can never have enough Mystery packs are things I had never bought myself either. They are the makings of the pepper soup mix if you want to make it yourself. The lady in the shop gave me no idea what proportions to mix them in, just that that is what she uses. Noone measures stuff so I wasn't going to get any more help than that. I photographed here boxes so I would remember the names of each. The five ingredients you need are: 1. Wedeaba (calabash nutmeg) 2. Efom wisa (alligator pepper) 3. Hwenteaa 4. Esuru wisa (grains of paradise) 5. Cloves The first three are left to right in your picture. I didn't get you 4 and 5 because she said 4 were black peppercorns and I thought you could get both easily where you are. Over to you. I await the outcomes of your research and experimentation so that I can try this out myself once you have perfected the recipe. The jollof mix was new to me. I make jollof rice from scratch and there are recipes online. I usually make a stew using stock, water, bones, tomatoes and chillis to build a flavourful base for making the stew. That mix looks like a short cut. I bought some for me too. Will report back when I have tried it. Have fun!

I thought you were pushing it, getting your wife a konro for her Christmas present. You appear to have gotten away with that one but I am pretty sure she will notice someone building an observatory in your back garden. Is it your new home location that has brought all of this on or were you already into space photography before you moved? The whole idea of a time machine reminds me of how we represent the deep past in broken English in Nigeria: before-before. What could be older than before-before?

Really beautiful @Pequod. Thank you for sharing. That is, literally, a whole other world. And rabbithole.

Ha. I thought you had a cool room? You could work on getting the conditions right in there. Air circulation is key. So true. I wonder if any of the commercial offerings allow for that split. For avoidance of doubt, I am NOT buying a second one but I can vouch for the fact that making charcuterie is really satisfying. Just need to time getting the dry ager clear for charcuterie for a number of weeks at a time and make a decent sized batch when you do.

Phew! Mrs RD's response is typical. Just think yourself lucky that she said that AFTER it was a fait accompli. It is the right size to get. Very versatile. Now try to get some dreamless sleep in prep for the excitement next week.

What did you think of your KK when you saw it? Keen to get your first impressions @RokDok. Looking at the photo of your KK on the truck I got a sinking feeling. I might be partially responsible for your plight. When my KKs were being delivered I asked that the handler should not "double pallet" them i.e. not put a further pallet under the one that arrives with the KK from Indonesia. This was so that the integral ramp would work correctly. In practice they did double pallet it and we had to use our own ramp system instead to get the right slope to unmount the KK. I see that your KK was not double palleted. You are using the same forwarding company and, after my feedback, Dave will likely have told the delivery folk not to insert a second pallet underneath the KK. I think that if they had inserted the second pallet underneath it would have been a more standard UK pallet and their standard pallet truck would have worked. I explain all of this not as an act of self flagellation but so that others do not end up with the same issue. Let them put a second pallet under your KK and focus on getting it off using a ramp of your own construction. Here is to Monday!

I don't know what your other children will say about this.

A bit like cheese: late night forum reading and lack of your own KK leads to weird dreams. Soo looking forward to your KK arriving. I do hope you love it. I'll have it if you don't!!!

I agree, I wouldn't spend that much, particularly with all the relatively cheap commercial versions that I saw when I searched a couple of days ago. Worth having a look at them if you have the space. They may have additional features, particularly around food safety, that may be worth having.

!!!! you just sneaked that in, all casual like @Troble!!!! Tell us more. Now. Please.

@jeffshoaf that looks good. I took a quick look round the options online and there seem to be many more at an affordable price than when I bought mine. Worth taking a look at the features on the one I ended up with to see if any of the features are worth seeking out in your current choice or another option. I started off with a cheap wine fridge but moved up to this as a more reliable and safer option. The funny thing is that now that I have one, I know that I would like another to run at different humidity and temp settings for salami making. No-one needs two dry agers in their life so I am using our enclosed porch to age a proscuitto and a cool basement room to age salamis. Wow, I just looked up a US site for my German made dry ager. The US price is off the charts. That's funny. We usually find that you get stuff much cheaper than us in the US. Nice that it is the other way round this time. Here is the link so you can see the features https://www.dryagerusa.com/products/dry-aging-fridge-ux-500 @Basher answers to your questions: Are you melting animal fat then painting it on as it cools? Yes, it is a bit tricky to get the right balance. I only just melt the fat and I apply it to cold meat to avoid heating up the meat too much in the process. Is there a preferred fat to encase your meat? I use dairy cow fat simply because I have some from mincing and then melting down the lovely fat that came from the dairy cow meat that I bought a while ago. I froze the fat in blocks and defrost one when I need it. Also, all our poultry here has to pass through a mild chlorine/ bleach wash to stop salmonella here, and then rinsed. We rarely ever get salmonella sickness as a result and you can’t smell any traces of the wash. Is it the same in the UK? I started off by trying to find out what happens to chickens in the UK to prevent salmonella but gave up when I couldn't find anything quickly. In any case, I figured the question that you were really asking me is whether I think it is safe to dry age chicken. The answer is that some sites tell you that you will die, instantly, if you dry age chicken and eat it. Others are more relaxed. I can only rely on my and my various mentors' (suppliers and restauranteurs) experience. Using good kit with the right temps and safety features and maintaining good hygiene practice means that I have not had any issues to date.

Tease! I have my asthma and diabetes under excellent control but I am hoping my diagnoses will help me get vaccinated sooner rather than later. We may be visiting you sooner than you think!!!

Hi @jeffshoaf. The best thing that I can say about dry aging at home is that it has become routine and exciting at the same time. This photo illustrates my point: The cote de boeuf at the top went in last week Monday. No fuss, just sitting there and we will probably have it with chips this Friday night. I asked The Husband to pick up a chicken from the supermarket today, something that we almost never do apart from to mince up for our cats. I want to see how/if aging will make a supermarket chicken worth eating. We will probably eat it sometime next week. And at the bottom is the three rib sirloin joint that I coated in fat at either end and started to age in September. Smells just fine and there is no sign of any sort of mould because of the fat painted on either end. So. On to your questions about whether to age small pieces or not. I was unsure about how best to use my dry ager until I visited a great restaurant in Wales last year. They kindly let us see their aging operation and these are the notes that I made afterwards: Mackerel - guts out cut flat underside. 7-10 days. Duck crown - ideal 10 days absolute max 3 weeks Fat encased joints - 8 months and more Chicken - max ten days Lamb fat trim - 6 months before making butter Tuna - 5-10 days Turbot (big) -10 days Their confidence about these timescales and the book "The Whole Fish" gave me more confidence about using the dry ager to a) improve tenderness and flavour and b) improve the dryness and crispiness of skin with a whole range of meats and fish. I was starting to lose confidence in my plan to age the three rib sirloin joint for 200 days, ala Lennox Hastie. Last week I dropped at note to my mentor at the Welsh restaurant and he came back to say he had gone up to 300 days but would advise I stop now unless I want a really "cheesy" taste. I like the blue cheese flavour so I will likely wait until my birthday in late Feb to break it out of the fat. You never know, we might be allowed to meet people by then. We have many friends who love to experiment with us. I hope you do too. It will be lots of fun.

@RokDok, I realise I was in a Bolshie mood this morning. As always, your story was fun. We spent a few years butchering our own meat the Hugh's "Pig in a Day" DVD was our handy guide when we came to butcher pigs. I am pretty certain Ray would have been the butcher in that video. One of us always had to have a clean hand free to press play and pause as we arrived at the next bit of the pig where we required assistance and instruction.