BGT= Big Green Tandoor?

caliking

nolaegghead said:

Unless you live in a cave in the savannahs in the Serengeti, you've unknowingly eaten tons of meat glue.  It's in hot dogs and lunch meats.

  Don't get me wrong - I'm not on a crusade against meat glue. I'm sure I've eaten meat glue before, but I'm not such a fan of reconstituted/reshaped meat products. I think I ate 1 hot dog all of last year. I do eat some deli meats, usually Boar's Head because I like their meats and they are easily available at the Kroger near me. I just feel that if folks could figure out how to make seekh kababs stay put on a skewer centuries ago, then I should be able to as well.

Cen-Tex: Have you tried Shan Masala? Some of them are not bad and very easy to cook with. Just don't follow the instructions, like the ones that start with 1 cup of ghee. Very easy to find at about any Indian store... even Kroger has them in my area. That saag paneer stuffed chicken sounds so good - I might give it a whirl soon.

nolaegghead

@caliking - that's cool, I respect that.  The meat glue is extracted from meat, so, I believe it's not listed in the ingredients if the derived species of animal is listed.

I've made paneer probably a dozen times.  It's fun and easy to make and does taste great.  Stay away from ultra pasteurized milks when making any cheese, it doesn't form solid curds very well.

caliking

Experimented a little more with trying to use the BGE as a tandoor. 

So last night I came home with a mind to firing it up as hot as I could get it, to try a new seekh kabab recipe which was simpler than the one I did a few days ago.

Took 1.3lbs of ground turkey, added 3/4 tsp each of coriander powder, garam masala, cayenne, salt to taste, a dash of asafoetida, 1 tbsp of ginger paste. Also added a few springs of cilantro and 2 green chillies ground up in the blender. A tennis ball size onion was the last thing in the mix (not pictured) I drained and squeezed as much juice out of the grated onion as I could, then mixed it all up in the KitchenAid with a dough hook. 

For the tandoori chicken, I used a store-bought mix, 1 tbsp ginger paste, 1 tbsp garlic paste, 2 tbsp yogurt, 1 tbsp mayo and let it all get friendly for an hour.

I have had issues getting my BGE up to max temp because I am still learning how to cook with it. Filled the firebox up with B&B oak lump and lit a chimney full of lump to get a big fire going. I was using the lower half of the bag of lump and so there were a lot of small pieces, which ended up being too tightly packed i think to get a really hot fire going. Temps got up to 500° max this time - I want to go higher for tandoor-style cooks.

Lit up the chimney and got a big fire going:




Tried sticking the skewers loaded with seek kabab down the top vent, and in theory it sort of worked.  


The good news was that the kababs stayed on the skewer!! I think the difference this time was that the mixing with the KitchenAid made the meat a little pasty, and helped them stay put on the skewer


I tried to place the skewers loaded with chicken down through the top vent too, but again there isn't a lot of room, so I switched to just laying them across like I did last time. They cooked evenly, and I just had to turn once to get even char on all sides. I have 4 different kinds of tandoor skewers- round ones of 2, 3, 4mm (I think) and square ones, all about 40"ish inches long. The square ones work best with the BGE since the lid keeps them from rolling and you can easily turn the skewers to cook whichever side of the meat you want.




I was running low on time so cooked the rest of the seekh kababs horizontally too. 




Conclusions: Even though the seekh kabab recipe was simpler this time, I really liked the flavors. This will likely be my go-to seekh kabab recipe now. The chicken was not bad, but I didn't like the spice mix too much. This wasone I had lying around in the pantry and not the one I have used before. Next time, i will go back to making my own masala for chicken.

So the BGE can be used like a tandoor in theory, but it doesn't beatmy tandoor. For weeknight tandoori chicken, I'll light up the BGE, but for the real tandoor experience I won't be getting rid of my homebrewed tandoor.

I think I'm tandoor-ed out for now, so I might do a rack of pork or something this weekend to change things up a bit.

Thanks for looking.

Aviator

Thanks Caliking! Awesome pics and writeup. Have to get some of those long skewers. I ordered the flat ones and just got them delivered. Have to get busy. Kebabs tonight.

Eggcelsior

caliking said:

Eggcelsior said:

Or check a TTG IgA. At least you can see if you have celiac disease. That stuff, uh, keeps us stuck together.

Ha!. You're on a roll today ( I did catch the other one in the bourbon thread)   However, if you check only a tTG IgA you won't catch all celiacs.

True. Don't forget Endomysial Antibody IgA, DGP IgA and IgG, AGA and ARA.

If negative, let them down gently that it's just their superimposed functional bowel disorder.

I love talking shop!

Eggcelsior

@caliking,

Do you need Purple Rain to put out that purple fire?

 

alphacentauri

i hear you on being a purist, i just thought maybe i could throw an idea your way that you could experiment with since you were having trouble with the meat staying on the skewer, and how you could taste other binders if you didn't add the right proportions. 

in your latest pictures they seem to be sticking to the skewer just fine, looks great. 

caliking

alphacentauri said:

i hear you on being a purist, i just thought maybe i could throw an idea your way that you could experiment with since you were having trouble with the meat staying on the skewer, and how you could taste other binders if you didn't add the right proportions. 

in your latest pictures they seem to be sticking to the skewer just fine, looks great. 

Not bashing meat glue or anything like that. I appreciate the idea, and did think about it for a bit after you mentioned it. Heck, if I knew how to do everything there would be no point in hanging around a forum like this!

I think the mixing with the dough hook did the trick. Made the meat a slightly compacted, so I don't think I would do that for burgers. But it worked great for the kababs.

caliking

Eggcelsior said:

@caliking,

Do you need Purple Rain to put out that purple fire?

 

Only if I can find TAFKAP himself...

caliking

Aviator said:

Thanks Caliking! Awesome pics and writeup. Have to get some of those long skewers. I ordered the flat ones and just got them delivered. Have to get busy. Kebabs tonight.

Don't forget to post your cook! Enquiring minds want to know.

Black_Badger

@caliking & @Eggcelsior I'm not sure if you guys are physicians, celiacs, nerds or some combination thereof, but this thread has made me like the forum even more than I did before, which I didn't think was possible. 

I work in biotech down in San Diego, so it's nice to see some good old nerdy science popping up around here...

That having been said, I was curious about using meatglue for this application as well. Has anyone out there tried this?

Cheers -

B_B  

Eggcelsior

Black_Badger said:

@caliking & @Eggcelsior I'm not sure if you guys are physicians, celiacs, nerds or some combination thereof, but this thread has made me like the forum even more than I did before, which I didn't think was possible. 

I work in biotech down in San Diego, so it's nice to see some good old nerdy science popping up around here...

That having been said, I was curious about using meatglue for this application as well. Has anyone out there tried this?

Cheers -

B_B  

You don't happen to work for Prometheus Therapeutics and Diagnostics do you?

Food-wise, check out The Cen-Tex Smoker's posts on meat glue applications. He likes to use it to glue bacon or prosciutto to chicken breast and what not. 

Black_Badger

@Eggcelsior No, but I'm familiar with them. I work for a biotech focused on next gen sequencing for research and clinical applications. 

It was just those posts from Cen-Tex that made me wonder about using meatglue to hold kebabs together. That guy is awesome!

B_B