smoked my first turkey ECB. Pics.

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tcharris32

Newbie
Original poster
Dec 25, 2014
6
10
Indy
My inlaws bought me a Brinkmann R2D2 smoker for Christmas. We hosted Christmas for all the kids and grandparents on the 26th so I decided to utilize it and smoke a turkey for everybody. I have minimal smoking experience. I have tried to smoke pork loins twice on my chargriller with a side fire box with ok results. I learned quickly that as a grill, it is great. As a smoker, not so much. So, since I am a procrastinator, I waited til midnight Thursday to prep the turkey.

I looked up some simple dry rub recipes and picked one I could do with what we had on hand.
It had:
Kosher salt
Fresh Black peppercorns (just used regular pepper)
Italian seasoning
garlic powder
smoked paprika (just used regular paprika)
Ground mustard (didn't have any of this so I omitted it)

I liberally lathered up the 12lb bird in yellow mustard and applied the dry rub. I also put the rub underneath the skin the best I could. Wrapped it all back up in saran wrap and returned to the fridge. Went to sleep super excited and set my alarm for 4:30am so I could get up and get everything going and make sure it was done by noon when everyone showed up. I missed that alarm and didn't wake up til 6:30. Oops. My wife informed me that my 4:30 alarm did indeed go off, it did not malfunction like I was sure it did. Lol.

So I get up at 6:30 and get the coals going and pull the bird out of the fridge and unwrap it. It smelled delicious. I really wanted to lick it. I didn't.

I got water in the bowl, grate in and bird on. Everything went really well. It ended up running pretty hot. I was able to keep it between 325 & 350 for the most part. it went from 40-140 in about 3.5 hours. One of the thighs was about 15 degrees cooler than the other thigh and the breast so I checked my pride and finished it in the oven so it would be done and safe for everybody when we were supposed to eat. It was pretty good. Everyone else loved it.

Here are some pics. Maybe.

 
This was pretty much an unmodified ECB. I did drill holes in the charcoal pan and I made a quick expanded metal grate for the charcoal to set on. Other than that, it was bone stock.

I used Kingsford charcoal and some cherry wood chunks.
 
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