Smoked Turkey for the Holidays Good as Ham

Here is the brine for a turkey / grouse or any wild Bird you would like to brine, cure and then smoke. Store bought turkey will work just fine also.

1/4 tsp cure
7gal water
5 lb salt
1.5 lb sugar
Large turkey soak 5 days
small turkey soak 3 days

smoke for 12 hours

Inside temp of meat should reach 160 before you remove it from smoker.

 

Woodhick

At what temp do you run your smoker?

We have done legs and breasts which require much less brine and smoke time. I would like to try a whole bird just because it would look pretty neat when presented.

With long smoking times, do you replenish wood after it is used up or will that make the smoke bitter tasting?

We have a well insulated, temp controlled electric smoker that only uses a few ounces of wood for each 10 lbs of meat. We only put wood in at the beginning of the process but we have never smoked for more than a few hours.

Thanks

 

[LFord]

I use a barrel style smoker with an off-set firebox and a mix of hardwood charcoal and either wood chips or chunks. For turkey I try to keep the temp around 200, this usually works out to 190 to 210 over the course of 12-14 hours. There is no tried and true rule for how much wood to use as it all depends on the style of smoker,the type of wood, the cut of the wood(chips, chunks, dust, or biscuits), and how smokey you like the taste. If your smoker has any type of vent, I would add more wood but if it is a sealed unit I would try the first time with just the initial load. Experience is the only teacher when it comes to this type of cooking, if it doesn't have enough flavor the first time, try adding wood every 2 to 3 hours on the next attempt. One thing to keep in mind is that everytime you open the door, you add anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes to your cooking time. I don't know what kind of wood you use, but here is a basic guide to the diffent flavors you can get from various woods.
http://www.homebbq.com/duportal/services/woods.asp

 

Thanks Les Ford

I have tried all kinds of wood but apple chunks are my favorite and work very well in our smoker.

We have a very tight, well insulated electric smoker that has a 1/2 inch air intake on the bottom and the same sized vent on top. It produces smoke very quickly and will smoke for several hours. I usually put in a 1 ounce chunk for a lot of meat, as per the directions. The wood gets charred all the way through and we get a very good smoke flavor when doing things for just a few hours. We'll try two birds and add wood for the second one.

We have a very old 6 gallon crock which can brine a 20+ lb turkey with about 3 gallons brine. Worked very well this past Thanksgiving for an oven roasted bird.

Thanks for the advice and the link. Anxious to smoke a whole bird.

 

[Maynerd62411]

I used to smoke turkey for my son's birthday parties.I used my bro-in-law's charcoal stacked smoker with mesquite chips. The first one I did , I started at Midnight and let it cook until 6am and I thought I'd done something terrible wrong. The skin looked and felt like shoe leather. I turned it over and it started to fall apart. I added more charcoal and mesquite and water and cooked it another 5 hours. That was the best turkey I'd ever had. :thumbsup:

 

Smoked
I put a theomoter in the bird and smoke it and cook it slow for about 12 hours. Apple wood I have used many times.
I got some hickory chip from the saw mill I buy logs for. I soak them over nite in water, then wrap them in aluminum foil and lay them on the burner in the smoker. A couple packs of these is all I use. Packs are about 3 inches wide 2 inches high and a foot long. Can always add more if they run out.
My smoker is a home made one I built out of a oven reostat control and oven burner from an electric oven..... and I incoporated it in to a striped out fridge that has the freezer at the bottom. I put the burner in the freezer section and the reostat on the outside of the fridge.
Then put a 4 inch stove pipe out the top. Wala! ya have a smoker/ cooker!

 

Woodhick

Always wanted to make a smoker like that. Ours is Cookshack's home version of their commercial smokers. I also just bought a real big wood and metal smoker at a garage sale a few months ago for $5.00. No heating element came with it but I figure an electric plate should do the trick. Kind of thought it would be neat if Technutz and I ever wanted to do several large cuts of meat such as hams or briskets all at once. We share a lot of our culinary adventures that way. I would like to try bacon someday too.

This may sound dumb but we take pork tenderloins and inject them, brine them for 7 days and then smoke them. It taste about as good as any ham I ever had but has no fat and no bone. We finish the process by boiling for a short time. Texture and mouth feel is real good. To keep that wonderful red color all the way through to the middle, you have to inject the brine as well as letting it sit in brine for the 7 days. We have a meat slicer and I can cut the stuff real thin and it is great for sandwiches or just for snacking on.

We keep very accurate records of times and temps and we use several digital thermometers. We use one to verify that the thermostat on the smoker is accurate and the other one is stuck in the thickest part of the meat.

Have you ever smoked a skin-on duck or goose? I think that would be great because of their fat content. My only trouble is that I like the skin when it's oven baked and we do it that way all the time. We use domestic birds bought at the store. Smoked skin is not too good IMO.

For another taste treat: brine a couple double thick (Iowa cut) pork chops, smoke them and then add a small bit of boubon to your favorite BBQ sauce. Succulent and very tasty stuff!