Smoked Christmas Turkey, a digital diary...

7:30am. Fired up the chimney of charcoal. I use an all wood fire, but start off with charcoal



8:00am. Starting with a big fire since it's below freezing.



100% Georgia cherry wood.



8:00. Pulling from the brine. I used 1 1/2 cup kosher salt and 1 1/2 cup brown sugar in 2 gallons of water.



Going to inject with 1/4 cup sweet wine, 1/4 cup butter and 1/4 cup honey.



8:30 am. Injecting the bird.



8:45 am. Prepped and ready to roll.



9:00 am. Locked and loaded. I have the bird backwards since I'm going to flip the bird" after 3 hours. Couple of fatties thrown in.



Preheating wood, "rock mod" in action.



12:00 noon. Halfway home and I "flipped the bird". Basting every hour now with a pump spray full of peanut oil.



1:00 pm. Once the charcoal bed is gone, I just crush up burned wood with a pair of tongs to form a new bed of embers. I throw 1-2 pieces of preheated wood on top of the embers.



1:00 pm. New wood bursts right into flames.



3:30 pm. All done! Looks good!



4:00pm. Time to eat! My neighbor put it best: "this turkey is to die for!" Very moist and sweet, and only a couple of people used gravy, most people just ate it plain. Best turkey I've done so far.

racer_81 said:

Anybody else notice that stovetop is waaaaaaaay too clean?

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Relatives for Christmas = Cleaning Lady = Clean Stovetop.

I'm cooking fried chicken and black-eyed peas for dinner tomorrow, so it will be back to normal

BigBelly said:

Not to mention the look of that Cherry wood almost gave me wood (mental note I need more cherry wood)!

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There's more where that came from

willkat98 said:

Awesome,

but how were the fatties?

PS, put fatties higher in smoke chamber, IMO

Thanks Saiko

Click to expand...

I loved the fatties, but I think the 3-2-1 method may have been a little too long for that size. When I pulled them at 3 hours, they were plump and juicy. After 2 more hours in foil, they shrunk a bit and dried out just a tad. I was also running my temps a little higher since I was doing a bird (250 or so), so that overcooked them a bit.

I would have put them higher, but I didn't want them dripping over the bird. I'm real anal about presentation, so I didn't want drops of sausage grease spotting my turkey rub, lol.