I always make the trip down to my parents for Thanksgiving, and we have a tradition of eating out for the dinner. It's a nice place that we go to, but now that I've got that smoking itch, I felt the need to do my own Turkey. So, I decided to smoke one up for my wife and I today so that we can get our smoked meat fix prior to making the trip south. I've been hearing good things about the Turkeys you can order from Lobels for a couple years now, and this year I decided to pull the trigger and pre-order one back in September.
The 12lb bird arrived at my door step on Friday, and I proceeded to let it thaw in fridge until Sunday evening around 10pm. From 10pm Sunday until about 10am on Monday, the bird (spatchcocked) was brining and doing it's thing. When I removed it from the brine on Monday morning, I patted it dry and decided I'd let it air dry in the fridge for a full 24 hours.
So that takes me to today. I pulled the bird out of the fridge at 10am this morning and decided to do a Mayonnaise Slather that I've been reading so much about online (All things BBQ just did a video of it on Youtube). In about a cup of mayonnaise I added roughly a tablespoon of freshly minced garlic and freshly minced sage leaf. Once applied to the skin, I sprinkled a bit of my favorite rub for poultry: Cattleman's Grill Ranchero.
After the slather was applied, I took it out to my 22.5 WSM and let it smoke with a bit of Hickory and Cherry until it hit 135 IT at 275. Here's the Turkey at 135; roughly 2 hours in.
In an attempt to get just a little bit crispier skin, I decided to bump the temp for the last 20 degrees. I opened all the vents on the WSM 100% and just let it climb as high as it was willing to go. It ended up making it to about 350, but stabilized in the 340s. About 30-45 minutes later, the turkey hit 158 in the breasts and decided it was time to pull it.
Here's the IT of the Turkey and the graph of the WSM's Temperature. Unfortunately the first hour or so of the smoke was lost, as the app didn't want to connect to my wifi for some reason. The whole cook actually ended up taking a little under 3 hours.
Once pulled, I let it sit for about 30 minutes, or until the smell was too much to stand. Here's a couple shots I got of the whole Turkey and it sliced up.
It was a nice quick cook and turned out really great. The brine combined with the mayo/sage slather really brought out the Thanksgiving smells and put me a bit more into the holiday spirit!
The 12lb bird arrived at my door step on Friday, and I proceeded to let it thaw in fridge until Sunday evening around 10pm. From 10pm Sunday until about 10am on Monday, the bird (spatchcocked) was brining and doing it's thing. When I removed it from the brine on Monday morning, I patted it dry and decided I'd let it air dry in the fridge for a full 24 hours.
So that takes me to today. I pulled the bird out of the fridge at 10am this morning and decided to do a Mayonnaise Slather that I've been reading so much about online (All things BBQ just did a video of it on Youtube). In about a cup of mayonnaise I added roughly a tablespoon of freshly minced garlic and freshly minced sage leaf. Once applied to the skin, I sprinkled a bit of my favorite rub for poultry: Cattleman's Grill Ranchero.
After the slather was applied, I took it out to my 22.5 WSM and let it smoke with a bit of Hickory and Cherry until it hit 135 IT at 275. Here's the Turkey at 135; roughly 2 hours in.
In an attempt to get just a little bit crispier skin, I decided to bump the temp for the last 20 degrees. I opened all the vents on the WSM 100% and just let it climb as high as it was willing to go. It ended up making it to about 350, but stabilized in the 340s. About 30-45 minutes later, the turkey hit 158 in the breasts and decided it was time to pull it.
Here's the IT of the Turkey and the graph of the WSM's Temperature. Unfortunately the first hour or so of the smoke was lost, as the app didn't want to connect to my wifi for some reason. The whole cook actually ended up taking a little under 3 hours.
Once pulled, I let it sit for about 30 minutes, or until the smell was too much to stand. Here's a couple shots I got of the whole Turkey and it sliced up.
It was a nice quick cook and turned out really great. The brine combined with the mayo/sage slather really brought out the Thanksgiving smells and put me a bit more into the holiday spirit!
