First Turkey *Q VIEW*

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irie

Meat Mopper
Original poster
Oct 11, 2010
202
16
Southern California
On my quest to conquer all things bbq thanksgiving was the perfect opportunity to try smoking a turkey. I used an apple juice based brine for this bird and it turned out awesome.

The whole process with all the pictures is available here:

Brining process: http://notomatoesbbq.blogspot.com/2010/11/turkey-time.html

Finished Bird: http://notomatoesbbq.blogspot.com/2010/11/finished-turkey.html

But here is the final product, I wish I had more pictures of the finished bird but it was pretty much destroyed by my family once it was carved up. It started out as oh let me try a piece, Hey me too! then another and another.... etc... I was left with one single leg for leftover which I basically had to smuggle out of the house.

The Brine...

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24 hours later time for a rinse

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rinsed and rubbed, just needs some smoke now.

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here we go, cooked it at 350* and it took about 2.5 hours to get to 165* internal in the breast. It came out way juicier than I expected. When I first saw the busted skin on the breast I thought I really messed up but thankfully I was wrong!

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Thanks for looking!!!

oh and on a side note the skin was awesome!!!!
 
Last edited:
Very good first bird.  If you get some butcher twine and start trussing you can stop a lot of the skin bursting and help keep the wings and legs from drying out.
 
Looks real good irie!!!

Don't stop now----Lots of stuff in this world needs smoking!

Bear
 
Keep it going. All of your recent posts have been great. You are off to a wonderful start. I just think back to when I first started smoking and didn't know about this site. The meat was OK but never WOW like I was looking for. Once I found this site that was fixed. You are ahead of the curve my friend and came to the right place. Keep the Qview coming.
 
Yea I definitely should have trussed this bird, I have trussed chickens when I have oven roasted them in the past and didn't even think about doing it for a turkey (dumb I know) next time I definitely will though. live and learn right? It wasn't the prettiest looking turkey it sure tasted good, all the turkey q view the last few weeks was pretty inspiring, One things I didnt take pictures of and I wish I had was the gravy, the drippings for this bird made some of the best gravy I have ever had. 
 
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