Q-View - My first smoked turkey - MES 40.

OK. It's smoking nicely. Thank you AMNPS!

The MES 40, even with a 1200 Watt element cannot get/keep the smoker at 275°. It's holding, with the element on 100% of the time, at an indicated temperature of 268°. Knowing the offset for my MES's internal sensor/indicator, I know this really means that it's at about 250° which is just fine, IMO.

Internal bird breast temp is about 90° at the moment.

I'll post the pics when I get a chance. Right now, if I don't help my wife get the house cleaned up and ready for guests, I'll be spending the whole day/night out on the porch with the smoker. :biggrin:

OK. Some Q-View:

This is a while ago when I flopped the turkey from breast side down to breast side up. That was at exactly 3 hours into the smoking. Internal temp at that point, in the breast, was 143°F.


Breast side down, as it was for the first 3 hours.


The AMNPS smokin' away.


Breast side up now.


Probe reinserted, and ready for the home stretch.

OK. Here are some more pictures and a better description of the method I tried.

The turkey was about 10.5 pounds. I wanted a small one because it was to be a side dish, really, since we were having crab legs as the main course. I got it at Sam's Club.

I defrosted it immersed in water in a big cooking pot, still in its store wrapper, in the fridge. I did a couple of water changes with cold tap water just to accelerate the defrosting since I didn't take it out of the freezer until Sunday/Monday at about midnight. But in general, the water surrounding the bird read about 35° every time I tested it. When I unwrapped it on Tuesday, there was still some ice in the cavity with the neck, but it really seemed mostly to be defrosted.

I made up 1.5 gallons of Tip's Slaughterhouse Poultry Brine and put that and the turkey back in the big pot and back into the fridge with some ice. I put a dinner plate on top to press it down and keep it submerged. I put a couple of cans of pop in ziplock baggies on top of the plate to hold it down. I brined it for 24 hours.

When I took the turkey out of the big pot, there was still ice in the brine, so it was coooold the whole time it was brining. I then took it out, rinsed it off well, and dried it as best I could with towels, then put it back into the fridge to air dry for another 24 hours. The smell of the brined turkey was pretty tantalizing every time I opened the fridge, and the cat we have who is most nuts about turkey kept a close eye on things every time the fridge door was opened, too.

On Thursday morning, I got the MES fired up, with an AMNPS loaded with Pitmaster's Choice, and got that lit. I microwaved the pellets several times in a bowl, stirring them and letting them steam off well between "zaps". That seemed to dry the pellets quite well.

I had the MES's pellet hopper completely removed for max airflow, and had the top vent wide open. I also had the drip pan wrapped in foil, but completely dry. No water in the smoker at all. All of this was to assure that the pellets would have a good chance of burning well. I've had problems with the pellets going out on me, and have been advised to leave the drip pan dry to help with that.

The pellets did burn for the entire cooking time, and produced plenty of TBS the whole time. I even put the chip hopper back in and pushed it in quite far to choke off the airflow more and more throughout the smoke, and the pellets never went out. I think having everything very dry was the secret. I couldn't ask for better smoke generator performance.

I rubbed the inside of the cavity of the bird, and the outside of the skin with a mixture of olive oil and butter and some Lowrey's Garlic Pepper. I'd been reading the recipes for rubs and found that that stuff contained pretty much what many people were recommending for a poultry rub anyhow, so it was the ultimate lazy way out. I didn't put too much of it into the butter/olive oil, but enough, I think. I used only about 1/4 of the container.

I then put the bird on a rack, and slid it into the already hot and smokey smoker.

Once I saw good TBS emerging, I went in, cleaned everything up in the kitchen, and went back to bed. :biggrin:

I started with the bird on the rack breast side down. The whole smoke took about 5 1/2 to 6 hours. At the 3 hour point, I rotated the bird so that it was breast side up. Other than that, I didn't molest it at all. No opening of the door, no spritzing, mopping, etc.

After it came up to 165° measured by the MES's probe deep in the breast meat, I took it out, put it in a foil pan, and covered it with foil, and left it sealed to rest for about 45 minutes.

The turkey was incredibly moist, even in the breast meat. The smoke flavor was excellent, and everyone, even my mom (who often prefers a lighter smoke flavor) loved it.

The skin, however, was tough, IMO. But I didn't do anything to really try to make it come out good. I'm not sure I care that much, but a better texture skin would add another treat to the bird as long as getting it didn't compromise the rest of the bird.


Here are some additional pictures:

The crab legs awaiting steamage.








TBS.

More TBS as the door is opened at the 3 hour mark to flip the turkey to breast-up orientation.

The finished turkey, before resting.

A smoked turkey, scallion, celery, mayo, and paremesian sandwich - Wow! :biggrin:

Thanks!

The reason for the two extra racks in my smoker is to control where the air/smoke must travel to get through the smoker, and to prevent drips from falling into the AMNPS.

I'd read a few great posts showing different ways to force the smoke to go where you want, and it gave me the idea to simply wrap some foil over parts of two of the racks and leave them in place to serve that purpose.

So that leaves me two other racks, and so far, I've never smoked so much stuff all at once that I've run out of space.  If I ever need to do more meat than will fit on two racks, I'll have to re-think this and build something that directs the smoke, but doesn't monopolize two racks.

This picture of a pork butt in the unit shows these two racks better.


The top rack has foil wrapped over the entire right hand 2/3rds or 3/4ths of it.  That forces the air/smoke to flow all the way to the left of the smoker cabinet rather than channelling over to the right and up directly out of the vent.

The bottom rack has foil wrapped over the left 1/3 or so, which prevents any drippings from falling down onto the AMNPS which I place on the two rods, and well over towards the left of the cabinet so that it can't be dripped on.  Further, the smoke from the AMNPS is forced to head over towards the middle before it can come up into the smoker.

I just leave those two racks and their foil in the smoker, and use the other two racks for the actual cooking.