[capozzoli]

This place has them. scroll down about half way. http://www.hungariandeli.com/Cookware.htm

You can maybe find them cheaper. I got mine in Slovakia it was about the equivalent of $75 there. Thats like a half a weeks pay for the average Slovakian.

Nics pot is pretty slick looking.

Tri pod is real easy to make with a welder. Just weld on som chain links. It can be done mechanically with a drill a few bolts and shackles or those dog leash things. .

[nicneufeld]

I went the complete cheap route...that pot was around 11 bucks on eBay I think and the tripod stand was probably around 30 some bucks at Cabelas.

http://www.cabelas.com/p-0009522512974a.shtml

[capozzoli]

Nice, thats pretty cool. So did you get the grill thing too. I remember you posting something about that German grill. Cant remember what it was called. That thing looks just like it.

I got the a really big one cause mostly we are doing it for large groups of people. And we take it to the local Slovakian club where they have pot lucks.

[nicneufeld]

Yeah I'm just cooking for a small family.  I do have the grill though.  Don't use it though, my weber kettle grill would do the same thing a lot easier!  Mainly I don't use it because the sycamore wood I get isn't really good for direct cooking.  If I had plenty of cheap oak or apple or hickory, I'd probably use it! 

I believe the German grill is called schwenkbraten, swing-grill or something like that.  Mine is functionally identical but basically is a cheap lightweight camping tripod.  I think at the time I paid only 20 bucks as memory serves, instead of the 35 on cabelas now.

[beerocd]

we take it to the local Slovakian club ...

They let you in? 

[beerocd]

Tri pod is real easy to make with a welder. Just weld on som chain links. It can be done mechanically with a drill a few bolts and shackles or those dog leash things. .

I could just be way cheap and put the dutch oven right on the coals.

What would I weld? Wouldn't that make it unportable, or even worse unstorable? Sorry, just don't have the welding imagination going for me just yet. I think in right angles at the moment. 

[capozzoli]

You could just put the pot on the coals,but the idea of the the tripod is that you can raise and lower it to adjust the heat. Raise it to the top and it will stay warm throughout the gathering. Plus its way cooler.

The welding works great. Take three pipes or square tubes about five feet long. take a length of chain with six links. Tack weld a link to the top of one of the tubes then skip a link and tack the next one to the next length of tube and do it again. After that tack the links together. This makes the tri-pod collapsible as well as strong enough to hold the weight of a giant kettle of stew. Then get a long enough length of chain to hang from the links above to the ground. Get a couple carabeaners or other link thing that you can work with your finger. hook one at the end of the chain to attach to the handle of the kettle. keep another one on the length of chain and use it to take slack out of the chain as needed to raise and lower the kettle.

You could use just about any pot that you can hang from the handle as long as it is stable when stiring or serving. Dont wantitto be top heavy or tippy.

[nicneufeld]

I will not let this thread die!!!

I've been experimenting more with frying lately.  Picked up some wonton wrappers and egg roll wrappers.  Last night I cooked a rack of ribs semi-Chinese style, with a marinade paste of ginger, kecap manis, sriracha, garlic, and five spice powder.  Smoke-roasted with hickory for about 90 minutes at highish heat, 350-375.  Came out perfect, nicely browned but not yet burnt, and very tender.  A sweet sauce with all of the above plus sugar and hoisin sauce went on the ribs and sizzled down until nicely thick and bubbly on the meat.  Then I made a simple egg drop soup, and fried up some homemade king crab rangoon (in the wonton wrappers) and some spicy chicken and cabbage egg rolls.  Nice little assortment of dim sum-ish chinese-american food!

Going to cook a chicken paella tomorrow on the grill, with mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes.  I'm not sure what rice I should use...I have short grain sushi rice and long grain basmati.  I don't have any spanish style "bomba" rice....any recommendations on which rice of the two I have I should use?  I'm more inclined to use the short grain if its a tie otherwise because we eat the basmati with other stuff all the time and the sushi rice has just been sitting there, unused.

[beerocd]

It's not dying - it's just BBQ season. It'll pick up once the harvest comes in.

[bluesman]

It's not dying - it's just BBQ season. It'll pick up once the harvest comes in.

+1

It won't die. Trust me on that!

[nicneufeld]

Didn't MacArthur say something like that...old threads never die, they just fade away.

[beerocd]

(no pics)
Gyros.

I had some ribs that had to go, maybe two pounds(leftovers already smoked/cooked). Plus 1 pound ground beef. A spanish onion, half a head of garlic from the garden. Obliterate the onion in the blender, strain out the juice and add it to the meat. I finely chopped the ribs, and mixed it all in the blender, a snowball size at a time. The spices are a tablespoon of marjoram and a tablespoon of rosemary, salt and pepper. I threw in a handfull of greens from carrot tops (big garden). Any italian spice mix will do, but I believe marjoram is key to getting the right flavor. Just throw it all in a meatloaf pan and bake for 80 min, uncovering for the last 20 or so minutes to give it a crust on top.
Pan fry the pita with some water and oil to get the separation, cut em in half. Whip together a cucumber sauce, add lettuce, onion, tomato - voila!

Oh yeah....crumble some feta on top. (btw: I use bulgarian. at $4/lb pretty hard to beat.)

[euge]

The approximate Shwarma blitz on the leftovers and what's available is very much like the cooking sometimes at Casa euge.

Is it finely sliced like shwarma or more like a slab of meatloaf? Or was the meat's texture more homogeneous and paste-like before cooking?

[nicneufeld]

Yesterday I cooked the paella over charcoal...quite nice in the end.  Got a good fire on the weber and then started frying onions in bacon grease over it.  Lots of garlic, then added chicken cubes with sweet paprika, oregano, salt and pepper.  Added diced green pepper, mushrooms, and sun dried tomatoes, and some more salt and pepper, with crushed red pepper, fennel, and thyme.  Then I hit it with a shot of some homemade achiote oil as a sort of saffron substitute (we think my wife may be allergic based on her one experience with saffron), and added a good measure of sushi short grain rice.  Continued frying, then added the homemade chicken stock, covered, and let roast (with some hickory putting out smoke) for about a half hour.  Very nice "soccarat" crust on the bottom.  Had some cheap sherry on hand, which was actually semi decent, being dry.  Cheap dry sherry is so much better than cheap port, I'd have to say!

[beerocd]

I used the vitamix blender to get the meat to a paste like consistency. With the spices it's actually very difficult to tell what meat is or isn't in the mix. Last time I used lamb. So I ended up with a well seasoned meatloaf that I used a bread knife on, to slice fairly thin (1/4 inch maybe - anything less would crumble) and line up some slices on the pita bread before loading up the toppings.