Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff
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i know a lot of people who have had ceramic for ages and never seen one crack.
absolutely amazing at holding temperatures
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@duluth said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
@canefan said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
I turn from ceramic for the same reason. Metal eggs have the best of both worlds, and generally cheaper than the Weber spirit
Which one do you have? Akorn? which model?
I have the akorn biggie. Best value for money and will do all but as good a job as a ceramic. Easy to clean up, light and manoeuvrable. I've had no issues with build quality or rust, but I store it under cover and use the supplied cover as well. About $700 at Bunnings or a few BBQ shops sell them. Not sure if they come with the cover or the smoking stone deflector shield but you need both
https://www.bunnings.co.nz/char-griller-akorn-charcoal-bbq_p3180332
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@mariner4life said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
i know a lot of people who have had ceramic for ages and never seen one crack.
absolutely amazing at holding temperatures
They are less efficient than steel, which has pros and cons. Steel means less fuel usage, faster to heat up, but more skittish. One of the big ones for me is they are cool to the touch, so no real burn risk with kids. Also lighter and more portable.
Ceramic is more traditional though, so each to their own
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@nzzp said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
@mariner4life said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
i know a lot of people who have had ceramic for ages and never seen one crack.
absolutely amazing at holding temperatures
They are less efficient than steel, which has pros and cons. Steel means less fuel usage, faster to heat up, but more skittish. One of the big ones for me is they are cool to the touch, so no real burn risk with kids. Also lighter and more portable.
Ceramic is more traditional though, so each to their own
my ceramic doesn't get hot either?
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@nzzp said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
Two or three cooks and you'll be confident in it - and there's lots of advice/support on the interwebs (including here of course).
I'd read a few reviews that I think were overstating how fiddly they were. What you said, 2 or 3 cooks to get used to it seems to be the consensus
I'm primarily interested in smoking but I keep seeing variations of this comment that @hooroo made:
Anecdotally I've heard of more people ditching their pellet smoker for a Kamodo/Weber than the other way round.So fuck it, I'll go for a Kamado
Now my upper max would be somewhere around $2000. So that for a Kamado Joe I could get a Classic I. However stock is really hard to find.. probably not improving anytime soon
Big Green Egg? In that price range I can only get a BGE medium. Cooking size is only marginally bigger than a Kamado Joe Jr.. so that seem like terrible value
I did look at the Akorn. I'm sure it does a good job but I saw it at a store yesterday and wasn't happy with the build quality
Does anyone have suggestions for options for something better than the Akorn but lesser than the KJ/BGE?
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@duluth said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
@nzzp said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
Two or three cooks and you'll be confident in it - and there's lots of advice/support on the interwebs (including here of course).
I'd read a few reviews that I think were overstating how fiddly they were. What you said, 2 or 3 cooks to get used to it seems to be the consensus
I'm primarily interested in smoking but I keep seeing variations of this comment that @hooroo made:
Anecdotally I've heard of more people ditching their pellet smoker for a Kamodo/Weber than the other way round.So fuck it, I'll go for a Kamado
Now my upper max would be somewhere around $2000. So that for a Kamado Joe I could get a Classic I. However stock is really hard to find.. probably not improving anytime soon
Big Green Egg? In that price range I can only get a BGE medium. Cooking size is only marginally bigger than a Kamado Joe Jr.. so that seem like terrible value
I did look at the Akorn. I'm sure it does a good job but I saw it at a store yesterday and wasn't happy with the build quality
Does anyone have suggestions for options for something better than the Akorn but lesser than the KJ/BGE?
If you buy the Summit, the warranty is very very good and it will make me very envious of you
Buy right and you only buy once!
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@duluth i've got a classic. the medium size, and it's way big enough. Don't get sucked in to getting the big one, that thing is catering size.
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@duluth I'd make sure what size you really need. When I purchased my Kamado I thought BIG as a result I rarely use it as I don't cook that volume of meat at once very often. Plus chew through a lot of fuel.
However I concur. Once you get the hang of controlling the vents they are not hard at all. They all seem different though. My partner has a BGE and it has different hot spots to mine. So fire up whatever piece of kit you end up buying a few times and use your thermo to understand where the temperature variations are within.
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That classic would be perfect.. I just can't find it in stock
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@duluth said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
That classic would be perfect.. I just can't find it in stock
i got mine in late 2020 and i had to wait a fair while. just no stock coming out of the States
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@duluth Nah she's got a small which is good for anything the two of us want to cook or for entertaining 4-6 as long as it's just one protein.
I made the mistake of getting a 24 inch grill diameter which is too big. I think a Classic would be the way to go.
Trade Me has a Classic (used), but looks in good nick, for $1,500 - in Taranaki.
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@duluth said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
That classic would be perfect.. I just can't find it in stock
Call your local bbq shop. Only advantage of the kamados is fuel economy and superior temperature control. This steel keg is apparently built better
Broil King Keg 5000
The Broil King Keg is a double steel walled and insulated kamado style smoker and convection grill that comes fully loaded right out of the...
I can only assume the price difference with the akorn is down to build quality
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I had fish stew in Portugal last year which I think is one of the best meals I've ever had. Been trying to replicate it and this is pretty close. The key thing is the shellfish stock. If you can buy a good one, it saves a heap of time & keeps the flavours the same. If want to make your own though, I think the difference is roasting the shells / prawn heads etc first for about 10 -15 mins. then boil with usual stock veg, thyme and some white wine for a bit. Some recipes use tomato but no real need here as the stew has plenty of tomato already
Estimated quantities / ingredients:
1/3 chorizo, 1 onion, 1 red pepper, 4 cloves of garlic, 1-3 chili's, 1 TBSP paprika, 1 TSP Cayenne, 2 tins tomatoes, 500ml shellfish stock, 1/2 glass white wine cup rice.
Whole prawns, firm flesh white fish (skin ON), any other seafood you like, lemons, parsley, salt, pepper, sugar
Mehod:
Fry off some chopped chorizo in olive oil to get the oils going. Then add an onion to soften. Then throw in a chopped red pepper & about 4 thinly sliced garlic cloves (not crushed) & some red chili's (to taste). Stir that around for another 5 mins, then add some spice. I use paprika & cayenne. You can try smoked paprika if you want but I think the chorizo does the work there. Stir it all around a bit then add tinned tomatoes, white wine & the shellfish stock. Add a bay leaf or two here as well. Get it up to the simmer, have a quick taste and then season to your preference as the flavour profile of stocks are so inconsistent so you'll need to work this one out for yourself. It'll likely need some salt (but not much as the salt in the seafood added later will help out here), definitely pepper & maybe some sugar. If you like your food a bit more acidic then it's a good time for some lemon juice as well.
Wash some rice (not risotto, just normal rice) then add into the stew. Slowly cook this out and just before it's ready add your first batch of seafood (the slower to cook stuff - mussels, squid etc). Once this is in and stirred, make some small wells in the stew for your showpiece seafood.
Whole prawns and strong flesh white fish. Monkfish is best (not sure of NZ equivalent), but Haddock works well too. All the recipes say skin off, but the one I had in Portugal was skin on & it was much better for it. Key thing here though is not stir until serving. You want the seafood to steam over the last couple of minutes and have the stew naturally bubble over the fish/prawns.
Serve it in a bowl with some fresh flat leaf parsley and lemon wedges / chili flakes.
MajorRage tip - left over stew is awesome, but left over fish / prawns are terrible. If you have too much, then use the fish / prawns you need and serve up less stew. Then reheat the stew and do the last step again using raw fish/prawns. Trust me on this one. After cooking this your house will smell fucking epic too, but if you then try and reheat some prawns fish, it'll be the opposite.
I know it seems a bit of a faff but you can choose how long you want to spend making it by taking some shortcuts with store bought etc. You can make it in either 2 hours or 25 mins if you want.
No pictures because I was too busy eating the last time I made this.
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At our local Portuguese restaurant my mate went for the steak sandwich with cheese. What could go wrong? Much as it turned out. Decent enough piece of steak but overcooked. Put in between two slices of white bread with a pavement of burger cheese over the top. This is then placed in a bowl on top of a spicy sausage and covered in thin gravy which makes the bread soggy.
I had a nice curry in Portugal once.
