Smoked deep fried turkey

[whitetailfan]

Forgot to post last week.  Every year since about '95 the wife and I have thrown a Christmas party for friends.  Started out as a get together for all of us before we headed back to the farms for Christmas during my University years.  Anyway the event got too big for a sit down meal, and now we just run an open house on a weekend day - come and go as you please sort of thing with food available.

Anyway I have been reading and dying to try a smoke/fried bird for years, but never wanted to be responsible for ruining Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner.  I figured this was the perfect chance to give this experiment a whirl.

To top it all off - proof that the stars were aligned - I received a collector recipe card for smoked deep fried turkey in the package of apple pucks I used to make smoked cheese the other week.

Simply smoked the bird for just shy of 4 hours, no brine or other prep, and into the fryer for 45 minutes.

This is possibly the best bird I have ever tasted.  Everyone made a big to do about it without prompting and there were next to no leftovers....the ham and roast beef however - I had to get out the vac sealer to take care of those.

What was the sweetest part of the whole thing was the smoking.  I wanted to hang the bird, not use a tray, so while I'm racking my brains for how to do it (I'm pondering kitchen string around the legs) the lightbulb goes off in the ole noggin, and I say - hey this thing has a contracption to put in in the oil and it as a loop on it to pull it out with the coathanger looking hook.

So I put the bird holder in the bird, and run one of my sausage sticks through the loop and suspend it on the top shelf.  The bird is about half to one inch above the drip tray.  No touching, plus with the cold smoke I'm not worried about the V-tray heating up.  Worked awesome.

I got some picks of the bird in the smoker I need to download and post on photobucket to share, just tough to get the time with Christmas chores piling up.

Anyway the results are wicked and the process is super easy.  To top it off, I figure the whole process was about 5 hours, therefore it's equal or less to roasting time.

[iceman]

Good job whitetail. I do the same thing only I've gotten into the brining then injecting with cajun spiced butter. TO DIE FOR as Ann would say. I baked an extra turkey the other day just to have some lunch meat and asked Ann if she wanted any. Well the look I got was just shy of go jump in a lake buster, I only eat the smoked cooked birds now! :o :D
Those smoked, deep fried birds are top notch for sure.

[LowTide]

I agree!

I am a SoCal native but back in the early 90's my parents were living in Houston.  They sent me a turkey frying rig before you could by them out here.  For at least the first 3-4 years I would mention fried turkey and everyone would wrinkle their noses and say Eeewww!

Fact of the matter is everyone, I mean everyone who has had my fried turkey say it's the best.  I was a little hesitant my first time too, so we cooked one in the oven and fried one.  Had 16 guests over and before the wife and I could sit down the entire fried turkey was gone, oven bird wasn't even touched.  We had to go trim what we could off the carcas!  Since then I have never cooked another bird in the oven, nor will I!

We go to the desert every year for Thanksgiving and I always fry 2 birds for the 20 or so of us.  This year, I did the cold smoke just like in the Bradley recipes - salt/sugar cure then smoke, then injected with the Creole Butter injection marinade we always use and then fried as usual.  I didn't think it could get any better than the fried turkey like I have been doing for the past 15 years, but it did - It was truly awesome and will be doing 2 for Christmas the same way!