Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff
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@Bones said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
Gents and gentesses, ham hock. Never cooked one before. Suggestions please?
I've used this pressure cooker recipe a couple of times - the 30 minutes on high pressure variation
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@Stockcar86 cheers but bugger! No pressure cooker.
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@Bones said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
@Stockcar86 cheers but bugger! No pressure cooker.
oops, I do 80% of my cooking using that
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@Crucial Nice!
I have one of these that fits inside the BBQ (mine is a gas Outback 4 burner). Gets to 500 degrees and cranks out a fresh pizza in about 3 mins, its awesome. Bought a Kenwood chef to mix/knead the dough as well so its all super easy.
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@TeWaio said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
@Crucial Nice!
I have one of these that fits inside the BBQ (mine is a gas Outback 4 burner). Gets to 500 degrees and cranks out a fresh pizza in about 3 mins, its awesome. Bought a Kenwood chef to mix/knead the dough as well so its all super easy.
Yeah, I've looked at those and the good ones seem to work well. I don't use that style of BBQ though so no good for me.
I also look at portability as a big plus. I do a fair bit of camping and the idea of a portable wood fired oven is pretty cool.
Anyway, the first flashing was reasonably successful. They aren't quite as simple to get the hang of as proclaimed. Getting the fuel flow and fire level constant is the big trick. It is quite easy to swamp the fire and it really requires a good licking flame to be at its best.
The firebox is understandably small and needs a constant flow of fuel at the right rate (which changes depending on if their is a breeze behind it) -
@TeWaio said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
@Crucial Nice!
I have one of these that fits inside the BBQ (mine is a gas Outback 4 burner). Gets to 500 degrees and cranks out a fresh pizza in about 3 mins, its awesome. Bought a Kenwood chef to mix/knead the dough as well so its all super easy.
Cool. Do the stones come out in case you have to clean them? Does it come with tools or did you get them somewhere else?
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@JC It arrives as stone panels and sheet metal, so you assemble the box and slot the stones into place. Therefore the stones could be removed by unscrewing it all. But the only thing that should come into contact with the stones is the floured base of your dough, so if your kneading/paddle skills are good enough you'll never need to clean it.
Obviously I've cocked it up and split sauce/cheese on the stones multiple times, but at those temperatures it just turns to ash in minutes. Then after its cooled down you can scrape it off with a metal spatula without having to take anything apart. The stones get so hot nothing sticks to them.
It came with a wooden paddle to assemble the raw pizza on, and a thinner long metal paddle for turning the pizza as it cooks. I also bought an additional metal paddle for taking out the whole cooked pizza at the end.
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@TeWaio said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
@Crucial Nice!
I have one of these that fits inside the BBQ (mine is a gas Outback 4 burner). Gets to 500 degrees and cranks out a fresh pizza in about 3 mins, its awesome. Bought a Kenwood chef to mix/knead the dough as well so its all super easy.
$198 at Bunnings
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We bought a Philips AirFryer XL about a year ago to try and wean ourselves off pan frying, to use as a potential substitute for deep frying and more importantly reduce the amount of oil we were consuming.
The idea was we'd use it for crumbed fish, chicken souvlaki / schnitzel, steak tips and maybe fries etc.
I've been really surprised at just how good it is.
Essentially, it's just a small convection oven with a turbo charged fan so I wasnt expecting much.
The drawer contains a basket where ones food goes however its possible to buy other fittings for baking etc.
It operates by way of dialing in the temperature and then starting the timer which means the default is "start and forget".
Its so small that it takes only 3 minutes to preheat to 200 degrees (I don't even bother preheating).
Everything cooks much quicker than in our convection oven - preheating our oven takes close to 10 minutes, and what takes 15 minutes in the oven takes 12 in the AirFryer (no preheating) which is great for when I get home drunk and want some spring rolls / crispy wontons / fries / pies.
Whats most important is the results and for our use, nine times out of ten they are better than what we would get from the convection oven (with the exceptions requiring a tweak to the recipe to get an equivalent or better result) and the cooking method lends itself towards very consistent results.
Generally speaking, the meat we cook in the AirFryer has a wonderfully browned all over crust and a moist juicy interior.
Crumbed Fish / Chicken is never soggy - its always perfectly crunchy and still really moist inside.
We cooked some cheap rump steak in it the other night and it was surprisingly good - as good as I could do in a pan.
I like my Sweet Potato Chips roasted until they are crispy with that caramel sweetness that comes out just before they burn and become inedible - 20 minutes in this baby with a slight shake at the 10 minute mark and I'm there.
Since we bought ours, our uncles / aunties and grandparents have all followed suit.
I find we dont use our convection oven nearly as much as we used too and our electricity bill has gone down too which is a nice bonus (our usage dropped 5-10% which I imagine is a function of operating a smaller, more efficient electronic appliance for a much smaller amount of time).
We still do roasts in the convection oven as we typically do shoulders which wouldn't work well in an AirFryer however I have seen folk do Pork Belly / Butterflied Lamb Legs with great results.
I cant say that its a perfect deep fryer replacement however we now dont find ourselves wondering whether we should buy a deep fryer.
My only gripe with it is its a bit on the small side for a family of five (and we have an xl model). We could probably do with two if we had the space however Im happy to cook in batches as we can do the kids first and let theirs cool down whilst ours is cooking.
Having joined a facebook page where people share their recipes and usage, its been interesting to see just how people are using them. Theres a reasonable number of mobile people who take them with them so they can cook on the road as its easy to use for eggs (come out similar to poached), bacon, chops etc and many use them as they dont have an oven.In Summary:
Pros- Fast
- Great consistent results
- Reduced electricity consumption
- Reduced oil consumption
- Easy to clean
- Moderately portable
Cons
- Could be bigger (but would impact portability)
- Can be expensive (We got ours for $60 but they generally go for $300ish)
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@canefan said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
$198 at Bunnings
$149 including some pizza tools today (on special).
I have purchased the Bakerstone and the Phillips airfryer XL @phoenetiaI am actually trusting you buggers with 2 purchases (not wise I know).
Obviously pizza and chips for dinner. There will be repercussions if my dinner is shit. (Well I'll just whine a bit in this thread but you guys should be scared - a bit nervous - well you won't give a toss and I will feel like an idiot for listening to a couple of blokes on the internet.)
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@phoenetia O.K. You both get a pass. Chips from airfryer were actually bloody good - perhaps not the same as ones soaked in fat but crispy , possibly healthy, so a definite win.
Pizzas were the best that I have ever made and seriously quick. Cheated a bit and didn't make my own base this time but the Bakerstone box is the business. Was walking out of Bunnings and a woman stopped me to tell me how good they are and what a great purchase I was making! I didn't tell her that it was recommended by some bloke on the internet.Anyway thanks guys and a good thread to keep alive.
I can also recommend Kenwood chefs as @TeWaio mentioned. I was given one as a present about 10 years ago and have every conceivable attachment for it (there a lots - from potato peelers to standard blenders and food processors). Expensive to start with but does everything and you only have one machine on the bench (shitloads of stuff in the cupboards).
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First decent Saturday so I finally got my new Akorn Kamado out to season the grill. Brushed it up with flaxseed oil, as per some "expert" on the web and it looks great. The most exciting thing was my new Tip Top Temp, https://tiptoptemp.com. The device is essentially an old fashioned thermostat.
This isn't mine but you attach it onto the top vent of your weber/akorn/green egg and once you dial it in, using the very helpful online temperature chart as a guide the rest is a piece of piss. I got the grill up to 400F for one hour by leaving the lower vent wide open and dialling up the TTT. Once it got close to target I adjusted to get it just right. I checked it periodically over the hour I was seasoning and the thing barely wavered. Amazing, I think this will transform my slow cooking experience. Only problem Mrs CF will wonder why I need to stay outside for 6 or 7 hours when the TTT holds temperature perfectly.....
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@canefan looks pretty good. Those Akorns are good wee cookers.
I trialled a big new offset yesterday - smoked up a couple of racks of decent meaty ribs, and two pork shoulders. Went surprisingly well - it's really old school smoking, but I was cautious on the smoke and it needed more.
Having used a cheapo offset, and the more expensive yesterday, you can see where the $ goes. Chalk and cheese - offset smoking is not for me, but if I had to do it I'd be using the decent, heavy gauge steel.
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@canefan said in Recipes, home grown goodness, BBQing and food stuff:
@nzzp Sweet. As you say you can feel the weight of the steel on a more expensive cooker. Did you use charcoal or go hard out and use wood?
Charcoal. I don't have a good source of hardwood for smoking, so wood only is tough. It was very pleasant - an afternoon beside a fire, in the sun, with smoke, beer and a book.
Edit: I liked it so much I tried to like my own post
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Wagyu short rib trimmed last night. Dusted with salt and pepper and put on grill using ezilite lump charcoal from foxton which is big chunky and excellent. 7 hours 30 minutes and the meat was the most tender and moist I've ever cooked. Cooked sausages indirect for 30 minutes and they were brilliant. Never had a sausage with a smoke ring before