Hi all,
Just smoked my first turkey in my new Masterbuilt 30" electric smoker. Cooked at 225 for about 9 hours and it came out great - falling off the bone, beautiful color, great turkey flavor. The only issue was that, while this would have more than satisfied any family at a Thanksgiving dinner, you didn't exactly bite into it and say "Oh, this is a smoked turkey!" It smelled fairly smoky (I used hickory chips, btw) and the apples, onions and celery I'd stuffed it with smelled/tasted decidedly smoky, but tasted a lot like a turkey from an oven.
I'd done a pork loin a few weeks ago that was nice and smoky - and here's the difference in technique I used: for the pork loin I just kept adding handfulls of soaked hickory chips to the chip tray when they burned up and for the turkey I followed a neighbor's tip to fill the chip tray with both chips and water, which stretched the wood out for a much longer time as I just kept adding more water.
On its face, it looks like I didn't get as much smoke as I did steam from having the chips combined with water - but my neighbors do this 100% of the time and always have great smoky flavor, although I haven't tried a whole smoked turkey from them.
Any thoughts here? It is certainly easier to keep topping off the chip bowl with water and avoid sloshing water from the water tray by pulling the lower rack in and out frequently to replace burned out chips (I do soak them beforehand), and I certainly got a great texture from a big bird doing it this way - but I just wanted to see if anyone has some best practices to share.
Thanks a ton.
Just smoked my first turkey in my new Masterbuilt 30" electric smoker. Cooked at 225 for about 9 hours and it came out great - falling off the bone, beautiful color, great turkey flavor. The only issue was that, while this would have more than satisfied any family at a Thanksgiving dinner, you didn't exactly bite into it and say "Oh, this is a smoked turkey!" It smelled fairly smoky (I used hickory chips, btw) and the apples, onions and celery I'd stuffed it with smelled/tasted decidedly smoky, but tasted a lot like a turkey from an oven.
I'd done a pork loin a few weeks ago that was nice and smoky - and here's the difference in technique I used: for the pork loin I just kept adding handfulls of soaked hickory chips to the chip tray when they burned up and for the turkey I followed a neighbor's tip to fill the chip tray with both chips and water, which stretched the wood out for a much longer time as I just kept adding more water.
On its face, it looks like I didn't get as much smoke as I did steam from having the chips combined with water - but my neighbors do this 100% of the time and always have great smoky flavor, although I haven't tried a whole smoked turkey from them.
Any thoughts here? It is certainly easier to keep topping off the chip bowl with water and avoid sloshing water from the water tray by pulling the lower rack in and out frequently to replace burned out chips (I do soak them beforehand), and I certainly got a great texture from a big bird doing it this way - but I just wanted to see if anyone has some best practices to share.
Thanks a ton.
