Did another 20+ pounder for Thanksgiving. One of the best turkeys I have done so far. Did an 18 hour brine using two gallons water with 2 cups salt, some maple syrup, pepper corns, and the juice from half a lemon. Took the turkey out of the brine 2 hours prior to smoking, rinsed it well and let it air dry. At 5:00 AM, put some olive oil and Famous Daves Rib Run on it - I usually only put rub or seasoning on the skin, never under it. I think leaving the skin intact helps seal the mousture in the bird - may be wrong, but.......
Put the turkey in the Bradley at 5:00 AM with 4 hours of smoke using Maple pucks. Bradley was set to 210, but it never quite reached that temperature during the smoke - usually sat at 198 - 205. Had a power outage at 6:30 for about an hour. Power came back on and back to smoking we went. The cabinet got down to 62 during the outage. It was about 25 degrees out.
The turkey hit 165 at 5:30 PM, and since I had 14 people here that were expecting dinner at 5, only did a 20 minute rest. Turkey was tender, very moist, and as one guest said, he can go back down south and "spread the legend" in reference to my smoking and Thanksgiving dinners ;D Four hours of smoke, especially with something light like maple, is not overpowering for a turkey. The skin, as usual sucked, but I would rather have moist breast than crisp skin, so no oven for the bird. Plus, my oven sucks.
Other dinner goodies included pecan pie, homemade butter pecan ice cream, buttermilk bread, eggless-milkless-butterless cake, roast vegetables, corn, gravey using the turkey drippings (great gravey!), some really good potato soup, and a few other things.
So, try a 20+ pounder!
(http://idv8.org/images/cooking/Thanksgiving_24Nov11_DSCF0899.jpg)
(http://idv8.org/images/cooking/Thanksgiving_24Nov11_DSCF0951.jpg)
(http://idv8.org/images/cooking/Thanksgiving_24Nov11_DSCF0957.jpg)
That is a nice looking bird!
great looking byrd
Big bird, nice job.
Nice burdy. :)
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Nice looking bird.
Did you crap your pants when the power went off?? :o
Lumpy
Yes Sir !!! I would have stood in line in the rain for some of that dinner...looks and sounds wonderful...
Lumpy your question made me laugh out load. Too funny.
Quote from: lumpy on November 25, 2011, 02:48:01 PM
Nice looking bird.
Did you crap your pants when the power went off?? :o
Lumpy
LOL - actually, I was napping. Power outages are a common here so we all are sort of used to it :D In fact, we just had a 22% increase in electric rates, so now we get a 22% increase in power outages - and that is not a joke!
Looks delicious!