Turkey Test Run - QView

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bignick

Meat Mopper
Original poster
Mar 22, 2008
159
12
Southaven, MS
A buddy asked me to smoke 2 turkeys for his family...he has a 10 hour drive and leaving tomorrow.  He plans to cooler with ice and reheat Thursday.  I told him that's not ideal to reheat, but he insisted.  So...I figured it would be a good test run, as I am doing 2 for my family on Thursday.  Glad I did, I discovered both my thermo units are acting up.

I used a basic brine...honey, salt, veggie stock, water, ice, for about 12 hours.  I gave these birds "buttery nipples," putting pats under the skin.  I stuffed with cut up onions with pepper and apples with allspice sprinkled on top.  Sprinkled some garlic pepper and Tony C's on the outside.  Then, I followed fourthwinds weber kettle technique with bacon that I read on here not long ago.  The only difference is that I had two birds, and things got a little crowded on the weber kettle.  I went McGuveyor and built a heat shield out of a foil pan that seemed to help.  Used a mixture of pecan and apple....on to the QView...

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Draped with BACON and onto the kettle.

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The smell of thin blue mixed with bacon kept me coming back!

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It took me a few minutes to improvise the heat shield idea.  When I came back out, the bacon grease was already sizzling and it smelled great.

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Here they are about 2 hours along.  I didn't get any more pics, I had too much other stuff going on.  I took the bacon and the heat shields off towards the end to get some more browning.

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So, I talked my buddy into cutting into one of the breasts for a few bites just so we could "Make sure it's worth eating."  It was really good, and we both agreed that we could probably eat a whole bird at one sitting.  The only problem that I had was that when it was time to pull off...I followed Fourthwind's instructions on scraping with a spatula to remove, but those cluckers were stuck good.  3 of the 4 wings came off while removing.  I'm really torn right now on using my horizontal offset Thursday or doing this again.  Something else for me to ponder while trying to sleep.

Thanks for looking.  Sorry I didn't get finished shots.
 
Now your birds look good. I think next time I would remove the bacon maybe when the temp is at maybe 140* and you can get a good color on the bird.
 
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