tekobo

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.

I looked at the book on Amazon too. The video is good but it doesn't always tell you how to avoid the problem, just how to recognise it. However, at £38 for the book I thought I could probably experiment more cheaply with my 25kg of 00 flour. With you and @Syzygies working through the book I expect to get good insight from people who actually know what they are doing with pizzas on a KK. Fresh yeast may be overrated given the way it varies between batches and over time if you keep it. The thing is, my best pizzas were made with fresh yeast so I am going to give it a try again.

Wow! Those ribs look awesome @BonFire.

I am just hoping that the pictures won't have to be captioned with "problema numero quattro", "problema numero sei", etc. Won't be expecting to be authentic. Will be delighted to find a crust and bake that The Husband and I both like and can practice with. Will be using the classic Margherita toppings for all of the pizzas to see how they compare. Just need to wait for the local Polish shop to open so I can get hold of some fresh yeast.

Happily, I gave in before you so mine will hopefully be with me in September/October. I gave up on the European company that was more expensive, didn't deliver when they said they would and wouldn't respond to any emails until I got PayPal on to them to get my money back. I still didn't get any emails from them but I did get my money AND one of those automatic survey emails telling me they cared about me and wanted to know about my experience of buying a konro from them.

Great timing, thanks @ckreef. I have had a few disappointing pizza cooks, saved only by the toppings, and can see evidence of what went wrong in this video. Having been almost moved to tears by some of my disasters I decided that I would hedge my bets and use three different pizza dough recipes for this Friday's pizza night. That way I will get to compare and build confidence in the recipes that work for my environment and ingredients. This week it will be The Pizza Bible Neopolitan (18hrs lead time), Forkish (10hrs) and Nancy Silverton (approx 4hrs). Looking forward to getting at least one of them right!

Fantastic! It's great when a new thing turns out to be a good thing. I look forward to your updated recipe. Am I right in assuming that the smoking did help to make it the best ever?

I thought I had hit the jackpot today. I was in London and happened upon a food court where suya was advertised. I dashed up to them and asked them what cut of meat they use. They looked at me blankly and said they don't serve suya at lunchtime. When they realised I was odd and genuinely wanted to know about their beef cuts, they told me "ribs". I am pretty certain they don't serve ribs and my Chinese friend guessed that they might mean skirt or flank i.e. flaps near(ish) the ribs. Anyway, I have now realised that I should not have bothered with all that internet "research". I asked my mother in Nigeria today and she is going to ask her friend's son, who has a suya business, a) what his rub recipe is and b) what cut of meat he uses. She recommended "fullay" but agreed there wouldn't be enough fillet to go round if that was the standard cut.

Yes it is. Keen to see if/how KK and fruit combo will work. I love gooseberries and rhubarb and always stock up in the summer, cooking and freezing packs for use in pies, crumbles and fools through the winter. This year's variations could well be smoked sauce for pork if @ckreef's experiment looks promising and sous vide berries. On the latter I am keen to see if I can keep the berries whole in the vac pack for freezing for later use in things like clafoutis. Yummmm.