Here we go, 3rd cook of the year, saw a box full of turkey legs when shopping and could not resist. These legs are quite heavy, in fact, such a leg has the same weight as any of the frozen whole turkeys they had (no fresh whole turkey available at all).
Three turkey legs with a total weight of 18.41 lbs
Got brined for about 10 hours in 1 cup Sal Salina Natural + 1/2 cup brown sugar + 2 tbs black pepper corns + good squeeze of honey
Drying up in the fridge over night
My famous Spiced Butter recipe: 1 tbs brown sugar + 2 tsp fine grained sea salt + 2 tsp cayenne pepper + 1 tsp garlic powder + 1 tsp onion granulate + one block of butter (which is a little more than 1 cup)
A full chimney of lemon lump
Dumped on a full charcoal ring filled with lemon lump without any additional smoking wood
Spice buttered turkey legs on upper grate of my WSM ready to go
Finished @ IT 185°F after 3H06
The first leg after crisping in the oven at max. grill
It doesn't get any juicier then this
Some turkey meat with crispy skin and self-made goose fat fries
What a nice smoke ring purely from lemon lump
Of course that was too much for one meal, the rest got pulled for use during this week.
I'd say it was a perfect cook with tender and juicy meat, crispy and tangy skin, nice flavor profile with a good touch of smoke, and not too salty (as it happened before with brined products), but the wife DID NOT LIKE IT AT ALL
She despises that flavor profile coming from the added garlic and onion and the smoky touch on poultry in general. I really can not share that opinion, and even the kids liked it very much. Wife demands the use of S&P only and no more smoked poultry, which pretty much means pork is next (again).
