Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Greatest Turkey Ever Made


Kickoff

And away we go.  Team Smoke kicked off and the turkey ran it back for a touchdown.  A virtually perfect consistent 225 degree heat with rolling white mesquite smoke.  Here are the pics of the soaked mesquite wood, the charcoal heating the wood to smoke, and the turkey about an hour in.  We're steady on course to one of the juiciest Thanksgiving Day turkeys EVER

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Game Day

Finally the day has arrived - no more practice - no more scrimmages.  THIS.......is GAME DAY.

 This brine was prepared Tuesday night but I hesitated posting until now for the deliciousness even in 2-D would be enough to send most you to the wacky barn with fits of uncontrollable drooling.    The brine was was prepared exactly as the rough draft I made with the chicken except this time I got it drunk with 3 bottles of authentic Texas Shiner Bock before adding the brine.  Only moments ago I removed the turkey from it's cold bath of the best smelling stuff you can't drink and it is currently drying and warming before being enveloped in smoke.  Stay tuned y'all - step two before ya know it.


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Take One: The Great Grilling Unknown

Every Thanksgiving, we grill the Turkey with some sort of BBQ Sauce. The past few years, we’ve been hoarding bottles of the fantastic Stubbs Honey Pecan sauce, and it’s helped produce some of the best tasting turkey’s we’ve ever made. But this year, we’ve committed ourselves to outdoing the masterpieces that have been grilled in the past. And to do that, we have to break from tradition and venture into the unknown. [INSERT CRAZY INTENSE MUSIC HERE].

So for my first dry run, I decided on a recipe that included pears and bacon. Weird combo, I know, but I was sure it would produce something magical. I decided to use a chicken, because it was smaller, and easier to test with. So I stuffed the bird with garlic cloves, onions and pears. Massaged a little bit of vegetable oil, salt and pepper into the skin. Wrapped the entire thing in bacon. Placed the turkey in a tin pan with about a cup of water. I put about two pears worth of slices in the water, hoping to make some sort of pear flavored gravy.

The chicken took about 3 hours to cook through. I usually keep the bird covered while grilling to help keep the meat moist. Once the chicken was fully cooked, I took the lid off to crisp the bacon.

While the chicken came out perfect, it just didn’t have the flavor I wanted. Knowing that, I’ve decided that for practice run two, I’m going to mix it up a bit.

·         Instead of standard thick cut bacon, I’m going to use maple bacon – and count on the syrup to create a sweet tasting skin

·         I’m thinking about swapping out the pears for more citrus type fruit

·         Crips the bacon earlier, probably with about 10 degrees left

All together, the experience wasn’t a total failure, and helps set me up nicely for a round two…

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In the beginning....

....God created birds who could fly, but that quickly became messy and we all know why. 

Then he created ground birds and gave them names like "chicken" and "turkey" - who neither could fly and both became the category we know today as delicious- sorry that's later- we know as poultry. 

Then God created man who saw these meaty foul as easy pickins.  Man evolved, but the feathered non-flying birds did not.  Man created fire with which to cook these birds, but burned feathers did not taste good - so man figured that one out pretty quick.  Then man created the oven, but the oven was boring and was indoors where man was not meant to be.  So man invented the out door cooking device we know today as The Grill.  However man quickly realized the grill was missing something, but what could it be....ah yes!......another grill!  Two side by side grills - and the eating was good.  Many a man has been driven outside by their *ahem* loving women.  They've spent many hours outside with The Grill and eventually wasn't hungry enough to cook any more meat - what to do? what to do?  After many more hours of staring at the grill/grill man devised a way to cook his food slower, ingeniously using the byproduct of fire - Smoke!!  Thus, the invention of the smoker was born.  Grill + Grill + Smoker is where meat go when they die.

Fast forward many years man no talk like that - we're civilized beings (kinda) who gather their families (but just once per year) to join them in a great feast; the likes of which grow year by year.  And this year is no exception.  We're proud to be together this year to bring our followers THE GREATEST TURKEY EVER MADE!!!! 

But before the great feasting day arrives, we're prepared to ensure there is validity to our claims.  We're gonna practice.  Consider this, then, our warm up, our training before the big show. 

There will be 2 of "THE GREATEST TURKEYS EVER MADE" this year.  David who's opting for the slow tender-loving cooking only created by Texas style smoking; and Matt who has chosen the more traditional methods and will be grilling his turkey - ah, but with a twist.

And So It Begins...

Earlier this year, my brother-in-law got a combination Charcoal+Gas grill.  Immediately, both of us knew the challenge that we would undertake come November.

See, grilling the Turkey has become a Thanksgiving tradition for our family.  But now that we had the ultimate grilling machine at our disposal, it was time to step-up our game.

So this year, we will be grilling two Turkeys. One smoked, one grilled, in our quest to produce THE GREATEST TURKEY EVER MADE. We’ll document the whole process here.

Follow along as we grill, smoke and marinade our way into Turkey History.

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