The Turkey is done!

[4given]

Cured and Smoked Turkey! Breast meat has a nice rosy color from the cure and smoke. The dark meat looks and tastes like premium ham! Thanks for the help everybody!

[Saber 4]

Nice job, I got mine done today also, have it resting in the fridge to carve up and vacuum seal to take to my uncle's Christmas open house.

[iceman]

Great job!

[Smoker John]

Lookin' tasty

[Northern_Smoke]

What method did you finally go with? I have been wanting to try this after remembering as a kid eating a turkey drumstick that reminded me of ham.

[4given]

What method did you finally go with? I have been wanting to try this after remembering as a kid eating a turkey drumstick that reminded me of ham.

Using a 5 gallon white food grade bucket I submerged an 18 pound turkey in 2 gallons of brine containing:

4 oz Cure #1
1 cup Canning salt
1.5 cups white sugar

Left in in the brine for 6 days then rinsed thoroughly and let it dry for 12 hours in the fridge.

4 hours smoke at 150 then turned up the temp to 225 and cooked until the breast was 165. Probably could have gotten away with a little less smoke and cooked at 225 the whole time.  I might try 1/2 cup of cure #1 in 2 gallons of water next time because I was told that It would taste a bit more "ham like". Actually the legs were pretty "hammy" at this concentration so I don't know if it will be better or not. This turned out pretty good!

[Northern_Smoke]

Thanks for the info. I am going to get my bird ready to go for a swim :)

[4given]

Thanks for the info. I am going to get my bird ready to go for a swim :)

Let us know how it turns out