^^^^^ OK, so PRON it is my friend!!!!
So I did a 24 hour brine in a simple brine of:
2 gallons water
2 cups table salt
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 handful (probably 1/4-1/3 c) whole peppercorns
I took the turkey out of the brine Sunday morning, rinsed it and let it sit in the fridge for about 6 hours to dry out and let the skin tighten up.
The boys were hanging out so I decided to put them to work. :heh:
Little Kempis loading the charcoal basket:
Orion loaded the chimney:
And Guerin lit the chimney:
Time to prep the bird!
Here's the bird out of the fridge:
And here it is spatchcocked (from the back):
Picked this up a while ago and decided this was the rub of the day:
Rubbed and ready to go:
On the drum it went:
I left all the vents open to crank the heat. It ended up climbing to about 400. I just let it ride.
About 3 hours later, the breast meat was FINALLY ready (at 155 IT). The whole thing came off to rest. After about a 30 minute rest while I finished up the sides, HERE it was:
Got enough carved to fill a platter:
TIME FOR DINNER!!!!!
Here's my plate, sides were mashed taters, giblet gravy, oven roasted carrots and biscuits:
SO, the bottom line was it was good, but not my best.
This was the first time I've spatched a turkey and I had some observations........
One thing I noticed was that the breast meat took longer to finish than the rest of the bird, which is not typical (as I've noticed). I assumed this to be due to the fact that since the bird was all spread out the breasts were the largest (most massive) pieces of meat and therefore, took longer to get cooked through. I don't usually find this to be an issue when I spatch chickens though, so I was a bit puzzled.
After about 2.5 hours, I went out and checked and the thigh/leg quarter was showing about 165 in the thigh while the breast was only at 112-115. The bird looked GREAT at that point.
By the time the breasts were where I wanted them, the skin had darkened quite a bit more than I wanted.
As with spatchcocking in general, I did like being able to get the seasoning over more surface area. and the cook seemed to go a bit quicker.
All-in-all it was a good turkey. Just not sure I liked the way it cooked for me. Anyone else had this issue or was it just me?
Thanks for lookin!
