Thanksgiving Dry Run

In preparation for thanksgiving, I decided to do a turkey. I chose Raichlen's Hickory Smoked Turkey. Recipe will be posted.

I decided to not collect the drippings, since I'm using a smoker and just use chicken broth instead.

Bought a 14 lb turkey and made up the brine- the brine was simple. The turkey was frozen, but left in cold water overnight (brine), it was perfectly thawed by the time I started the fire around noon on Saturday.

Kept the temp 250 to 275. Turkey browned nicely. I decided to mix a little olive oil in with the butter to baste the turkey. I did well. I have switched to lighting Match light briquettes- they are just easier to control the heat. I then spread unlit Royal Oak in the bottom of my coal pan and poured the lit briquettes over them (pure Minion method). I kept the temp between 250 and 275 and regularly added hickory chunks to it. I basted every hour w/ olive oil-butter mixture and flipped it once. The skin browned nicely.

The gravy was easy to make, and like I said, I skipped the turkey dropping and just used broth. The gravey was great- sweet, but stil gravy.

Overall the turkey was....... okay. Breast was kind of dry, and the hickory flavor only came through on the leg and wings. The gravy did well w/ the dry-ish breast. Everyone liked it, but no screaming "this is the best turkey I've ever had" which is always the reaction I'm going for.

Overall, it was still better than your average holiday turkey, but I'd prefer shoulder or smoked chicken halves. I will definitely try again- turkey is pretty cheap and large. I think I will adjust the brine, probably by consulting Cook's Illustrated, which is the bible for brine recipes. Also, I'll probably double up on the smoke by doing more hickory. the gravy I would do again. I'll also probably do it breast side down for the whole time to prevent drying.

Plenty of time to practice before Thanksgiving- don't let me scare anyone- its easy and cheap to try, and I'd be interested to see how other people fare.