Thanksgiving comes early.

Due to work and what not, we decided to have Thanksgiving today instead of Thursday. The meal that is, not the Holiday. (For some reason the government still won't grant me the power to move Holidays as I see fit. :tsk: ) Being that I actually was getting the opportunity to cook the bird this year, you know I had to smoke it! :nod:
I started by mixing up some brine for the bird. Here was the recipe I used.

Water
64 oz Apple Juice
1 cup Sugar
1 cup Kosher Salt
1/4 cup Chicken Dust
1 Lemon (Sliced)
1 Lime (Sliced)
1 Large Yellow Onion (Sliced)
1 Celery Heart
1 Can Lemon Lime Pop (I used Diet Mist)
1 Can Light Beer

Use half the Apple Juice and combine the rest of the ingredients in a large pot and use water to make up a gallon. I then cooked it for 20 minutes.

This was then dumped in a bucket, the rest of the apple juice, and enough water was added to make 2 and 1/2 gallons. The bird was then dropped in to soak.


Meanwhile I got the UDS loaded up with charcoal and pecan shells.

After a little 2 hours of soaking, I took the bird out and dried it.

The wings were doing their own thing way too much so, I trussed the bird up.


I sprayed the whole thing down with a light coat of olive oil then came some Chicken Dust and another shot of Olive Oil Spray.

The smoker had just hit about 225 and on went the bird.

After a half an hour, I opened up the vents to kick up the heat. When an hour hit, I Put the turkey in an aluminum pan and then tented it with some foil.

The temp on the drum rose to just over 300. The bird continued to cook for 4 more hours until the breast hit an internal temp of 165. Then off it came.

I then sliced up the bird and served it up. We didn't have a ton of people for our meal but, I still was shooting for it to look good.

I must say that this was one super tasty and moist bird! Everyone loved it and it was hard to put down the fork. The thing I love best about doing Turkeys this way is you get a nice light smokey flavor but, the skin doesn't get overly dark and is even crispy just like oven baked, and the meat stays moist just like if you deep fried it. It's like the turkey that is the best of all worlds. Almost makes me sad that Thanksgiving only comes once a year. :becky:

Sammy_Shuford said:

Pecan shells? Does that work well?

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it definitely worked well for me. spreads out more evenly through the charcoal and I found the smoke to have a nice rounded flavor to it. I thought it could be somewhat acrid but, it wasn't at all.

landarc said:

Beautifully done bird there Tom?, you cooked it right. At first, when I saw the plating, I was stunned at how small the yield was, then it occured to me you might not have served the whole bird. :tsk:

I find the apple juice brine to be very interesting, never seen that before.

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Yeah, that was only about half of the meat but, with only 5 eating it didn't make much sense to use a bigger tray.

I like using the apple juice to supplement the sugars in the brine and also because it doesnMt hav an over powering flavor to it. I know a lot of people use brines to impart a special flavor to a rather bland meat but, I like my brine to hint at subtle flavors while providing a severly moist bird that the roasting flavors carry all the way through. To me it's making the bird all it can be instead of forcing it full of other flavors. :becky:

cameraman said:

How much did the bird weigh?

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I would say it was just over 10lbs.