Well my house will be FULL this Christmas. We are smoking 4 15# turkeys to have enough. I was so tied up at work my family had to step in and help. I tried smoking early and reheating at Thanksgiving and it worked out well, so we are doing that again. My son put 2 of turkeys on this afternoon between 3 and 4. He made a few mistakes but no biggie since they are brine cured. It's cold and windy so naturally its a PIA to get the smoker to high temps. when I got in I put up a wind block that helped some. At 10 pm I abandoned the smoke and added lit charcoal to my smoke tray to bump the temps more. I figured 6 hours of TBS from my AMPS was good. The lit charcoal jumped the temps from just below 250 to just over 300. At 12:00 as I wright this the IT of the turkeys are at 156 and 148. It will appear it has taken around 8 hours to get to these temps.
The smoker was not preheated, 1 of his mistakes, so that delayed things, no wind break was put up to stop the wind.The biggest mistake he made was turning on the burner and then lighting. when he did this he set the safety on the regulator. He called me around 7 and said something was wrong with smoker, it was on high and only at 135. So in all actuality they have only been cooking for around 5 hours. If these birds had not been cured I would be tossing them.
And here is the Q-view of them out of the smoker.
Turkey 1
The skin split and I'm not sure why. Any ideas?
If you look close you will see how juicy it is there is juice in the pan
Turkey 2
Good color but the wig tips got a little black.
Again if you look close you will see juice in the pan.
For all practical purposes this is my son's smoke not mine, as he did most of the work. He did the brining, including the injecting. So all in all I'd say it was a success, even with his mistakes.
The smoker was not preheated, 1 of his mistakes, so that delayed things, no wind break was put up to stop the wind.The biggest mistake he made was turning on the burner and then lighting. when he did this he set the safety on the regulator. He called me around 7 and said something was wrong with smoker, it was on high and only at 135. So in all actuality they have only been cooking for around 5 hours. If these birds had not been cured I would be tossing them.
And here is the Q-view of them out of the smoker.
Turkey 1
The skin split and I'm not sure why. Any ideas?
If you look close you will see how juicy it is there is juice in the pan
Turkey 2
Good color but the wig tips got a little black.
Again if you look close you will see juice in the pan.
For all practical purposes this is my son's smoke not mine, as he did most of the work. He did the brining, including the injecting. So all in all I'd say it was a success, even with his mistakes.
