Saturday, May 29, 2010

Turkey, It's What's For Dinner

I would consider my first smoking experience a success.
There are a few things I would like to do differently next time. The wood I used for the smoker was Maple that we trimmed off our trees over the last year. I headed out to the burn pile and salvaged enough wood for the turkey. Next time I would really like to have this done ahead of time or even buy the smoking wood chips at the store. It worked fine but I was checking and rechecking each piece of wood to make sure I had the right kind and I had to cut each piece. I didn't know how much I would need so I went back to the pile 3 times.

I used apple juice in the water to soak the wood and I probably won't do that again. It added an odd sweetness to the meat. The turkey is fantastic, this is a minor tweak.

I was super concerned that the turkey would dry out over the 4 1/2 hour baking time. To prevent this I had 5 Diet Mt Dew cans full of water and broth in the smoker. I basted the turkey about every 30-45 mins with chicken broth. It was super juicy!

Richard and Dustin "happened" by just as dinner was ready :) They each enjoyed a smoked turkey sandwich on hot wheat bread fresh from the oven.

The kids all loved the meat and ate and ate and ate :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Richard was raving about that turkey sandwich when he came home! He said it was wonderful and that he could have stuck around and eaten the whole turkey!

Good job, as usual!

Love ya,
Anita