Poultry is about the easiest type of meat to smoke. Very hard to get it wrong and a few cheap chickens are perfect to practice on when first starting out. Still, smoking the Christmas turkey is a serious matter since the whole meal depends on you pullng this off right. This year I smoked turkeys at Thankgiving and Christmas. While both turned out well, the Christmas turkey got a lot more raves and I'll admit it was a piece of art. I did a few things differently this week, not intentionally so, just the way it worked out. So until I find a better method, this is my way of smoking turkey.
One 15 1/2 lb turkey ( all the recipes say you shouldnt smoke anything bigger than 14 lbs. They are wrong)
Soaked the turkey in brine for 24 hours. Brine is 2 gallons of water, 2 cups salt (cheap generic table salt), 2 cups brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of black pepper, one or two cups of apple juice, two oranges quartered. Mix all this up in a clean bucket or trash can.
Since this time of year it is below freezing in my garage, I simply leave this in the garage. In warmer places I'd keep it in the fridge.
Smoked it with hickory wood. Stuffed the cavity with an apple and an orange, sliced in half. Used about two thirds wood, one third Kingsford charcoal. At thanksgiving I think I used a little more charcoal and cherry wood. Put it on at 7am and kept the temp between 250 and 350 most of the time, though it did dip down to around 200 while I fell asleep on the couch. At about 1:30 it reached the magical 165 degrees internally, so about 6 1/2 hours to smoke. So tender and smokey and moist, just about perfect.
