tekobo

Really lovely food story from the weekend. We had a couple over for Sunday lunch and I was worried that the two small lamb loin chops that I had allocated for each person would not be sufficient. I bulked the meal out with Brazilian sides like coconut rice, farofa and beans. I also had a back up with a rather small brisket joint that I had untied and unrolled (they are usually roasting joints here) and put on the 21" early that morning. Well, that brisket became the star of the show. Our friend is in her 80s and from Brisbane and she said the last time she had eaten brisket was when her mother cooked it for her many years ago. There was no appreciation shown for my smoke ring but much love for the rub (coarse Dizzy dust) and the "crunchy bits" (burnt ends). Needless to say, there is no meat left but I have lots of rice and beans to eat up. Hurrah!

Hurrah! Show us more!

When I saw this I thought, @amusedtodeath has forgotten that I live in the UK. Why would I want to order a grill from the US with all the extra shipping and tax costs? Why indeed? Of course I could not resist going onto the korin site. Even with a hefty delivery charge and estimated UK tax of about 22%, buying a large konro from the US works out £100 cheaper than buying one here. Wow. I called up the korin folk and they say that the ETA for out of stock items is for customers with back orders and that new orders may not be fulfilled until the winter. I am willing to take a chance on that but I am still waiting on news of a refund from my non-responsive supplier here (they are based in the Netherlands). If that gets sorted I will be straight onto korin. Thanks for the tip, I think. No more shopping after this. Although your binchotan is so much cheaper than ours that I might sneak a little bit into my shipment. I really should stop reading stuff on this forum!

Yup, thanks. I hadn't cottoned on to the wooden skewer challenge. I shall now go back to look at the grills and decide what I really need. A little one would be available now and would be more practical for storage and portability. On the other hand, the urge to go large (extra) is always hard to resist.

Yes, it is an interesting site - good references from some of our more famous chefs too. Did you get a LG or extra LG? And when you say that the extra wide versions would force you to use a screen every time is it because you wouldn't be able to bridge the gap with a standard person sized skewer? I may well have to be patient to get the right one but hope to get a konro in time to try it out in the garden this summer. A step up from those nasty smelly portable foil bbqs that I hate sooo much!

Ah. I didn't know pork collar was also the famous secreto. It gets sold in high end restaurants here as the cut to have off an Iberico pig. I generally use pork collar to make delicious cold smoked bacon.

Thanks for asking the question @obanker. I am not mad about halibut given the range of other, more instrinsically tasty fish available. However I am tempted to give it another try with this range of recipes on offer.

Yeah, you are right, it is difficult to compare without being able to do a side by side comparison. I have not had the opportunity to use Dennis' cocochar but am happy with the cocoshell briquettes that I have found in the UK. One day, I might make it over to Indonesia or to one of your places in the US to see how the good stuff burns. As for binchotan, it still holds a mystical appeal. The fact that you can quench it in water after use may mean that it lasts quite a long time. I'll be working on that angle to justify value for money if I ever get to the point of buying some! We appear to have a similar back order problem here. I placed an order with a company that isn't answering my emails and I may end up filing for a refund through Paypal. There is another, more expensive, source here https://www.chefslocker.co.uk/konro-grill.html. They do have some interesting additional grill sizes on offer and so I might, in the end, bite the bullet and get one from them.

I agree with your husband, that looks fabulous.

That looks great @ckreef. Looking forward to seeing the final set up!

Based on previous questions about running a KK indoors, I sort of expected this response. I agree, it is logical to avoid starting a fire indoors if you don't have to. However I am still interested in the possibility. First thing is to get hold of a grill and see how much it smokes and how well my re-constituted binchotan dust briquettes actually work. We do have fireplaces indoors and keeping the chimneys swept and providing good ventilation is key to avoiding CO build up. I will take your counsel and look into getting a CO monitor if I do decide to try the grill indoors.

Well, the guy selling the grill said I could potentially light the fire outdoors and then cook indoors (under a hood I presume). It really depends on the smokiness of the coal and of the cook. Getting the coals to glowing before bringing them in could make all the difference. Imagine...indoor barbecuing in the winter!

I'm really excited about your new grill @ckreef and it is, partly, @Syzygies' fault. When I was running through my KK purchase options Syzygies slipped in an off the cuff comment about buying binchotan if I was really rich. I was intrigued about a charcoal that required you to be rich and disappeared down the rabbit hole in search of this mystery coal. Way too expensive for me but it led me to yakitori and the konro grills. It seems like an amazing art, making binchotan and then cooking wonderful morsels of meat over it on the konro. Whenever there is a TV programme on BBQ and someone eats really good yakitori it seems like it is a tranformative experience. How far am I on the journey? Well, I have had some sumi bincho briquettes in our basement for some months now (poor man's binchotan at a tenth of the price of the real thing) and am still waiting for my konro grill. Hoping it will come in the next few weeks so I too can spend a leisurely evening eating meat over super-hot coals.

Tee hee. Cheesy Mac!

Lovely photo of the finished ribs. And yeah, foil is your friend when it comes to getting your ribs just right. Yum.

That method of hatching the skin looks good, must try it sometime. Looks like a tasty cook. How to solve the problem of not enough meat? Wait until everyone is out and eat it on your own!

Bruce, the name of the recipe is a bit misleading. It should really say tomato roast cauliflower. You only add 2 tablespoons of "hot" Turkish tomato sauce to 4 tablespoons of normal heat tomato sauce and the hot sauce isn't particularly hot. The swamp venom on the chicken was OK too. The Husband isn't as heavy handed as me with the rubs and the chicken came out with a gentle heat. Yes, working my way through my La Chamba purchases. Loving them and the food. I think the grill was over temp. Can't get to my MEATER log as the phone has run out of power but I remember that the temp was still rising at the end of the cook and had hit 268C. I didn't bother to throttle it back at that point because the cook was almost over. In future I will do more looking - I have started to rely on what the MEATER tells me and forgotten that you need to take a peep or two to make sure everything is on track.

Thanks, I hadn't considered using the upper grate that way. That will create more space on the main grate too, bonus. Yes, I would normally have softened the butter but ran out of time. The interesting thing is that some of the butter stayed liquid, trapped beneath the skin. It came out all nice and oozy, like that 80s favourite chicken kiev, when we cut into the chicken. Definite do again.

I am mining a rich seam of Turkish recipes from the cookbook Oklava at the moment. On the assumption that there are probably copyright issues if I simply type out the recipe, I thought I would look to see if the recipe had been published online. It has been, here https://myhungryvalentine.com/en/chou-fleur-roti-selin-kiazim-oklava/, in French. Translate into language of your choice. Here are my non-copyrighted photos. You rub large chunks of cauliflower in a mix of two bottled Turkish tomato sauces - one hot, one mild - and some olive oil. Alongside is a copy cat "road kill" cook in the style of @Aussie Ora. Two lumps of frozen tarragon butter under the skin and covered in Dizzy Pig's swamp venom. No sriracha stix yet @tony b. The chicken was cooked to the right temp but came out blacker than I would have liked. Any tips? Should I have oiled the skin? Maybe ambient temp too high? The cauliflower recipe called for blackening the cauliflower in a dry pan after cooking for 15 mins. I baked for half an hour in the KK instead and then browned on the grill bars. Add toasted pistachio nuts, parsley, onions and a sumac dressing. Super delicious.

I had a similar problem with my second pizza cook. I had got so used to being able to use a basket for more than one cook that I had underestimated the coal needed to get up to temp for a pizza. Having recognised this part way through the cook, I took out the grates, added more coal and all was well. I had read some advice from @ckreef before about max three turns to start and then down to two and that works for me. Using that method I haven't been in danger of running out of coal on an individual cook (just so long as I fill up at the start of the cook!). It is the best fun experimenting with pizzas on the KK. My recent learning is to remember to use my drug dealer scales to measure out the very small amounts of yeast required for some recipes. I was using old fresh yeast for one cook and overcompensated just a little bit too much with my yeast weight AND didn't use my small scales to measure it out. The resulting pouffy dough balls soon collapsed in on themselves when I tried to shape them. Still tasty though. Cheese, pig products and bread, what's not to like??

Wow. Have you tried them? If they are as good as they could be I am going to wish I invented that!

It looks great @Aussie Ora. I see a copy cat dinner coming up very soon. Butter under the skin, what could be better?

Wow. You got to do some really fun stuff Bruce. And I must say, you do look rather dashing standing in that aqua duct.

I don't like to say this but that was before I was born! Did you have digital cameras back then or did you get your photos digitised? Either way, that was a rather rude way of saying, yes, please post some pictures!!

Wow, 1966! I think you will find that things have changed a bit since then! It's a deal. Sounds like it's a story that will need at least a bottle, or two. Will start laying in supplies.