According to the dude from Mad Scientist BBQ, yes, there is quite a flavor difference. The proportions of the various length fats in the animal's fat gives you the porky, beefy, lamby, etc tastes, and dfifferent species give different proportions, but likewise, leaf lard tastes very un-piggy despite being from a pig, because the proportions are different comapred to back fat, which is very piggy. I would easily believe that wagyu tallow tastes different, but still beefy.

I'd be willing to try, but so far, not willing at these beef prices to go buy a chunk of brisket and some wagyu tallow to try with.

I just chucked a Meatloaf In the Oven. Mashed taters and baked brussel sprouts coming later.
It's that comfort food time of year.

Damn that was good! I ended up steaming the Brussel sprout's, forgot to get them in the oven in time to bake them.
No pics, if i tried i might have bit my own finger off.

Homemade Bbqd Curry Chicken thighs

Roast/char ‘em first, then, when you pull the meatloaf, throw ‘em back in for a few minutes...

#NoSteamedMiniCabbages

nice one log..



ham soup, bacon and a few carrots little onion

Ground Turkey Ragu Gnocchi

^ Oh yes please, I'd eat the shit out of that.

I've been working on this for a bit, but it's not ready yet...



In the jar, pai-tan pork broth, from the bones and a couple of heads of pigs that friends and I bought in on. In the jar labelled "A" is a shoyu, kombu and mirin tare, in the other small jar some mayu. In the square container is equilibrium brined 7 minute eggs, and in the bag is homemade ramen. tonight's project is "buy a small piece of pork belly, braise and bake it", along with making some soy-glazed mushrooms.

That's it. I'm just gonna cry and slink out of this thread.

ww .....what's the brine you using for the eggs? I'll patiently wait on the end results,looks damn good and will have to google some of the spices your using

No kidding.

Gonna show above to the wife. Predicted exclamation: "That's too much!"

Okay, I made it back to a keyboard, I can answer questions...



The brine is an equilibrium brine, meaning that there's the right amount of salt and sugar and soy that you can't overdo it - like with sous-vide cooking you can't cook past a temperature. It takes longer to hit equilibrium, but that's okay if you're preparing to store for a few days. So, you boil your eggs for the time you want (I did 7 minutes), cool them, peel them, zero your scale with a container on it, then put into the container the eggs and just enough water to cover them. Take 5% of that weight and use that weight of mirin and that weight of soy sauce. A little ginger and scallion ends in there too, if you want, and just leave it all in the fridge for a day or two. They're good for about a week.



It is. It's WAY more work than I wanted to put in to this, but I don't have a lot of time each night after the kid goes to bed, and making a good ramen at home is surprisingly hard if you're not taking shortcuts. We already had the pork stock, from the day we made 40ish pounds of sausage, so that was easy. Dinner one night this week was easy, so I had the kid help me with the kneading of the noodles before he lost interest before cutting them. They're better a couple of days later. Most of this is either "keeps for 6 months" or "needs to rest a few days in the fridge". That's how I get to spread this out over the week.



Ramen broth is prepared a little weird compared to western Europe style stocks which we're used to here - there's no salt. 3 things go in to the bowl - the tare (pronounced "tar-eh"), the broth and the aroma oil. The tare is where the salt comes from and some flavor enhancers. That's why it comes in 2 basic styles - "shoyu" (soy sauce) and "shio" (salt). There's usually stuff like kombu (seaweed) or niboshi (dried anchovies)/bonito flakes that have been steeped in it and then removed. Aroma oil is anything that'll melt and give a good smell to go along with it. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's the same fat as the animals in the broth, although that works. In this case I'm trying a garlic oil (the mayu thing), but I think I'll be making a backup of a scallion oil, in case it's bad.

One of the best English-language books about ramen is by a dude named Mike Satinover. He's done his research because he just fucking loves ramen. He's on reddit's /r/ramen as Ramen__Lord, and his book is just document on Google Drive that you can download for free. You can buy it, but I don't make enough ramen to have done that yet. If we start having ramen night once a fortnight, or something, then I'll buy the book.


Today I get to make the chashu. We're going to Costco anyway, I'll buy pork belly, take some and roll it for the rolled slices for the ramen, and turn the rest in to bacon.

Okay - so.. there was no pork belly to be had where we went grocery shopping, so that got turned into a chicken-thigh chashu instead. The seaweed slices were also purchased, and I didnt' grow the corn myself, either.

Tasted pretty good. Wife declared the mayu garlic oil as "worth the house smelling of garlic for 2 days", but I'm not allowed to make it again unless the windows are open.