tekobo

So looking forward to your photos! Welcome to the cobalt blue club.

Tonight's mystery meat suya cook was fun. First I had to skewer lots of meat. At the top was calf's liver, middle left was pig's kidney and the rest was goat loin. Lamb's kidneys from New Zealand via the freezer section at Waitrose. I went easy on the rub as my mother-in-law doesn't like the heat. I pressure cooked the Italian chicken gizzards for ten minutes or so to avoid a chewy skewer Gizzards all skewered up First batch of skewers in the obligatory on KK shot. The now obligatory @amusedtodeath-day-lily-in-the-background cooked meat shot. The white bowl contains extra suya rub for people to add their own post cook. Hotter cook for the second batch which turned out just perfect. Dad loved his calf's liver. Don't tell him I am a Daddy's girl. P.S. It all tasted good but I am now certain I don't like pig's kidney!

Lovely cook @_Ed_. Can't tell you how happy this makes me. I hope this helps to build your son's curiosity and enjoyment of suya and all the other fun things from our home countries. Absolutely! The Husband is in the middle of making up some goat stock. He does this in the expectation that I will turn up at some stage to turn it into goat pepper soup and maybe even his favourite, chicken gizzard pepper soup. Beats chicken soup for clearing a cold hands down!

Hi Bruce. Yes, suya is usually pretty spicy but you can taste and reduce the amount of rub you use to suit your palate. I did that this evening as my mother-in-law doesn't like so much spice and it worked well. People who want extra spice can add it as they wish.

Great that you were able to find suya spice all made up Bruce. I do hope you like it. I think it is funny that you are deferring to me about advice on cooking suya when all my experience of suya has been buying and eating it, save for cooking it this Saturday. That means I have the same experience at cooking suya as @Pequod and @tony b A combo of their methods works - a bit of salt on the meat first for a little while and then the suya spice/pepper/rub with some oil to spread it around and help with the cook. Worth tasting it first to judge the heat and the amount that might suit you. Cooked fine with direct heat low down in the KK but I suspect it could be very good with a yakitori/konro grill.

Yes they are very very beautiful. I have a couple of varieties that look dull by comparison!

Ha ha @_Ed_. That is really funny. My family situation is the opposite. The Husband and his father were both in the forces and have eaten and drunk their way across the world. Both my parents, returning to Lagos with post graduate degrees from Stanford, were much more circumspect which is why I never got to eat the most risky (=best) street food when I was a kid. Boo.

Looking forward to seeing the results of your cook. I have the in-laws coming tonight and have gathered a load of offal to try out suya style. When I was a kid I only ever eat plain beef suya and thought the mystery meat sticks were weird/potentially bad for you. Looking forward to a grown up try-out.

Nice to meet you @_Ed_. Also nice to know that you know how it feels, waiting for the suya to come off that stall holder's grill, onto the paper and into your mouth. Sounds like you were in the oil delta - not that safe a place to be sometimes.

Oooh, that looks interesting @amusedtodeath. What do you mean when you say you "put up some peas"? In my world that would mean planting them but am I right in guessing you have vac packed fresh beans and peas to freeze?

I am starting to get paranoid about this. I genuinely don't know why my KK walls stay white. Maybe the coco based fuel I use?

Way hay, that's pretty cool. The wonders of modern technology. Looking forward to more suya cooks being added by me and others. My dad's favourite meat is calf's liver. I think he will think he has died and gone to heaven if I manage to make a good suya version. Fingers crossed!

Cool. I was going to suggest that you don't serve the Nigerian version at your 4th of July do. It is pretty hot and might leave your guests with dicky tummies if it is their first try. There is a children's chant from colonial times which goes: "Oyinbo pepper, if you eatee pepper, you go yellow more more". I think we thought white people going red (or yellow) after eating hot stuff was an interesting design flaw. As it stands my (white) husband and my father are both fine after eating a load of hot suya last night but I am feeling less good. Go figure.

Do you know, I was so mad that swearing wasn't good enough when I heard the key drop. I don't think the neighbours knew what to make of my wailing...

Way hay! That looks fabulous. Won't sue you over chiffonaded basil but might try charring the tomato next time with a bit of extra rub. As for teasing me about trying the authentic rub, the tracking says your consignment is in New York. You never know, you just might get it in time for July 4.

Fab! And no, you don't need to start a separate thread. "Nigerian suya" does not have to be cooked by a Nigerian. Would love to see yours and other people's cooks on this thread. I just started this so that it would be retrievable in future.

Tee hee. I think we all do other things that are a lot scarier than dropping allen keys down the back of KKs. This forum is a great place to share our experience of Dennis' engineering and our appreciation of our very special toys.

As an emigrant from my home country and an immigrant here in the UK, I find that street food is one of the things I miss the most and love to eat when I get to go back to Nigeria. Cooking suya on my KK has been a dream cook for a while but I have been nervous about not getting it right. Thanks to you all pushing and encouraging and trying it out yourselves, I finally got around to making my own suya tonight. For the back story see this thread for the weirdest segue from marmite to Nigerian cooking: Today's cook started with the suya rub that my father, who is visiting from Lagos, brought over for me. It is from our family's favourite suya stand. Had to pay homage to my dad, here is his ever neat handwriting on bottle one of the four that he brought for me. Even though investigation by my mother revealed that the primary cut of meat used for suya is the hindquarter (sirloin, rump, top rump etc), one of my favourite cuts of beef is skirt and so I used that. Here it is all trimmed of membrane. I cut the meat thinly, parallel with the grain, and marinaded it in salt, dry rub and oil for a few hours. Here it is all skewered up. The first cook was at 225C for 8 mins in total. "Plated", with extra dry rub sprinkled on at the end of the cook. You would normally get a portion of this in newspaper with your choice of raw red onion and tomato. The second cook was better at 300C for 6 mins in total. The Husband was happy with the crunchy bits on the latter cook and my father, who had been out for a walk but made it back just in time for the second batch, declared it "better than the original". What more could I ask for? I know a number of you have your own suya cooks planned. That is awesome. I look forward to seeing how they turn out and what you think of our food.

Really helpful post @ckreef. I adjusted the springs on both of my KKs today and I am looking forward to the lid opening and stopping just where I want it. Hurrah! Some notes for people like me who don't use tools much or do this sort of thing very often: 1. Take heed of Dennis' advice and use the long T allen key for this job if you have a larger KK. I had stored the key separate from the rest of my KK spares and thought I needed to use a small key like @ckreef. Suffice to say, much fun ensued with me dropping the first small key down the back of the cover and then tying a string to the second to avoid a repeat. 2. To get the lid to rise more slowly, turn the wrench clockwise. 3. If your ground is uneven it is a good idea to move your KK into its final position to check that you have the lid opening as you would like before you replace the back cover. 4. I chose not to use any tools to tighten the bolts when I replaced the back cover. I figured that finger tight is good enough and will make it easier to loosen the bolts when I next want to do the job. Given this post is intended to be helpful please correct me if I have said anything that would lead others astray.

Yes, a lot of authentic Nigerian dishes are time consuming. I characterise cooking from my childhood as "first catch your goat".

I had to admit to @tony b earlier in this thread that I didn't know that suya pepper included peanuts/groundnuts. I now know that kuli kuli is required for the suya rub and that it is made from nuts. See this text from the recipe from @Aussie Ora's link: Kuli Kuli (also Kwuli Kwuli or Kwili Kwili) is groundnut (peanut) cake. To make Kuli Kuli, you simply grind roasted groundnuts, squeeze out the oil from them with a paper towel or napkin, press them into any shape you want and deepfry them in vegetable oil till brown and dry. Never use roasted groundnuts for your Nigerian Suya spice without first of all processing it into Kuli Kuli because there's too much oil in peanuts and this will form a paste instead of powder when you grind it. The second bullet point is looks like a good tip. I think that @tony b may have ended up with more of a paste than a rub but it sure sounded like it was tasty nonetheless.

Just spoke to my mother. She said she has "triple sourced" her information about the part of animal used. All three sources said "itan", because that where there is a lot of meat to cut. "Itan" literally means thigh. I suspect that is what we call a haunch and, looking at the picture of a cow, it looks like round, rump or sirloin. Take your pick! The good news for me is that my mum is due to visit in August and is now on a mission to find me the ingredients for the suya rub so I will get those and the recipe too.

Sometimes I feel like a bear of very small brain. I set myself up to start the Pizza Bible Neopolitan yesterday evening only to find that I first needed 18hrs to create the poolish. So pizza night was pushed on from Friday night to Saturday night. Tonight I met timetable to start the dough only to "discover" that the dough needs 36-48hrs in the fridge. What was I reading/thinking when I said the total lead time would be 18hrs??? Oh well, Sunday night is now pizza night. In the meantime it would be good to get some advice from @Pizzaiolo about cheese. We heard reference to dry mozzarella cheese for pizza and settled on buying some scarmorza (some unsmoked and some smoked). Is that OK for Neopolitan pizza or should we be using the wet buffalo mozzarella?

OMG. What have I done? Instead of everyone quietly ignoring @Pequod's faux pas with baked beans it has now taken over @ckreef's blueberry post AND some of you are even going to try it out for yourselves!

That sounds gross. Can't believe you hate marmite so much but will eat baked beans with apple pie filling. And no, dropping a load of cayenne in won't convince me that this is a good idea.