My 'practice' smoked turkey thread

[hornian]

Well, it's either going to be roaring success, or a blackened hunk of poultry when it's all said and done, but I'm going to document the process regardless.

My practice smoked turkey (first one on the tailgate smoker, to get a better feel for it so that I can do it right on Thanksgiving at the tailgate spot) is officially started... almost 2 days before it goes on the fire.

First things first, I'm brining this bad boy (or girl, I guess).

Let's make sure I have something that my 12 pound turkey will fit in...

That looks good.

Now, to make sure I don't over fill it, I filled it with water, then took the turkey out, and marked the level the brine needs to get to:

Next, gather up the brine ingredients:
Apple Juice (I actually used 2 gallons)
Kosher salt - 1.5 cups
Sugar - 1.5 cups
Brown Sugar - .5 cup
Maple Syrup - 8 oz
A couple of small oranges
Cloves

Mix it all together (I know it's below the line, I'll fix that later - didn't want to spill when transferring into the fridge):

Add the turkey, breast side down. I threw the neck in there for good measure. Gobble Gobble.

Now, transfer to the fridge. Add some ice. Hmm, still not full. Welp, I'm adding a secret ingredient. Say hello to my friend Jack:

Then, I put a large clean pot on top, and lowered the shelf above it in order to put pressure on it and fully submerge the turkey.

It'll stay like this until tomorrow evening, and then I'll take it out and let it air dry in the fridge for about 12 hours before it goes on the smoker.

 

[HornGrandioso]

Updates?

 

[dlatin]

Thanks Hornian, can't wait to follow this. I want to do a turkey soon.

 

[hornian]

I just took the turkey out of the brine, rinsed it off inside and out, and patted it dry. It's in the fridge now until about 8 or 9 tomorrow morning.

I'm uploading pics now, will post them in a few minutes.

 

[hornian]

Alright, single pic update. Not too much to comment on at this point.

Took the turkey out of the brine, rinsed it off (inside and and out) and then put it in a pan with a rack to dry. The rack is important so that the entire turkey dries, as it allows airflow - or so I'm told.

That's in my fridge right now, it will be there until 8 or 9 in the morning.

Total time in brine was a little over 25 hours. It should be able to air dry for 10 - 12 hours or so.

See everyone in the morning with further updates.

 

[l00p]

While it is impressive that you have what appears to be a four beer selection of tastes in addition to some Ginger Ale, you need more. Shame on you for having more Butt Lite than others. Shame on you for having it to begin with.

These picture threads are so allsome. You need a show on Food Network or something.

 

[HornGrandioso]

Save the neck for me, Clark.

 

[FattyMac]

This has the makings of an allsome thread.

 

[hornian]

Woke up about 8:30 (it's nice being able to sleep in on a Saturday) and got the fire going with the help of my new favorite toy, Mr. Propane Torch. I put about half a bag of charcoal in the fire box (I usually use wood only on this pit, but for this short of a smoke I decided to cheat a little) and then kicked the tires and lit some fires. Say hello to my little friend:

While the fire was getting going, I pulled the turkey out of the fridge after drying overnight for almost 11 hours. It's hard to tell from the pic, but the skin is a lot different than it was last night.

I assembled a few accouterments for the bird. Oranges and fresh rosemary for the cavity, and for my "rub" paprika, pepper, and sage.

I quartered the oranges, and stuffed the cavity with them and the rosemary (ended up only using three of the oranges):

Then I dusted the bird on both top and bottom with my rub ingredients and rubbed it in with my hands:

After that prep, I went back and checked on the coals. They were good and started, so I took the torch off and added some mesquite logs:

I closed up everything and let the chamber warm up to close to 300 degrees and put the bird on (it's leaning towards us because of a slight incline in my yard and the difficulty of balancing the bird on its breasts) breast down and legs towards the fire:

Bird went on at about 9:20 am or so. I'm going to flip it over so that the breast side gets some good color in another 20-40 minutes.

I'll keep you updated.

 

[hornian]

Alright, I turned the bird.

A somewhat funny side affect of my lopsided turkey is that it's got a very uneven "tan" at this point. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Here's what it looked like after about an hour and fifteen minutes in the smoke:

And here's a couple of pics of the unevenness of the smoke:

I might have to foil tent only half the breast at first so that it doesn't get too uneven, but as long as it tastes good I'm not too worried about it.

 

[hornian]

Alright, here's the final pics.

This one is right before I put a foil tent over the breast. I guess it was about 45 minutes to an hour before I pulled the bird. I didn't take a picture of the foil tent, because that seemed a bit redundant. The breasts weren't uneven at all, I was worried for nothing:

And this was right before I started to carve. No pictures of that, I never get pictures of the sliced product, I'm too busy and my hands are too messy to operate a camera. But, as you can see, it turned out great:

All in all, this was my best smoked turkey to date. The brine worked wonders, it was amazingly moist and tender, and it added a noticeable sweetness that was countered by the slight rosemary and citrus flavors. Awesome, all around.

I'm glad I did this practice run though, I found out that when keeping my tailgate pit up around 325 it is a HUGE fuel hog. Hopefully the work I get done to it this offseason will help in that regard, but I'm going to be sure to watch it closely at my Thanksgiving tailgate.

 

[dlatin]

That looks great! Thanks for the post. I'll try to get a pictorial when I get around to my turkey.

 

[Luke Duke]

I'm having deja vu.

 

[dlatin]

Hey Hornian,

Can you post the final stats - pit temp, hours cooked, and internal temp when pulled off the pit?

Thanks
-D

 

[elguapo]

Awesome thread as usual, thanks hornian.

Everything I know about BBQ, I learned from Hornfans.

 

[l00p]

Did you peek at the Turkey? Thanks for sharing.

 

[Sooner-Tuf]

Fine looking bird Hornian.

 

[MeaHorn]

Hornian:

Why'd you cook it in a foil pan? I always just set it on the grate.

 

[hullabelew]

The pan does several things....all of them good.
1) You can save the drippings for gravy.
2) you can also put aromatics in the pan, which adds a little to the bird, a lot to the gravy and keeps the bird from sticking to the pan
3) the pan helps slow down the browning process so it doesn't turn into a charred hunk of great tasting meat. It doesn't affect how much smoke the bird gets, but it does slow down the browning. As you can tell from the pics, his came about perfectly browned.
4) makes the bird much easier to handle putting it on and taking it off the smoker.

 

[MeaHorn]

Thanks Hulla... I will try that next time.

 

[hornian]

In reply to:

---

---

 

[Ag with kids]

How did the skin taste?

My youngest daughter's favorite part of T-Day is eating crispy, tasty turkey skin.

I haven't decided whether to pull the trigger this year and smoke the turkey. This is pretty much my deciding point...