For almost 10 years now we have had Thanksgiving dinner for our families at our house and have been deep frying turkeys which always come out great. I have been smoking pork and beef for several years and never braved up to a turkey- well I decided I am going to give it a try. This has always sounded good but is normally cold and windy here around the holiday season and opt not to use the smoker. We normally do two turkeys, one buttery garlic injected and one cajon injected. I picked up a turkey last night and wanted to do a trial run so I have it on the smoker now, been on for about 3 hours so far. I only found limited ideas and recipes and due to time limitations I did not brine the bird but as most guys seem to suggest. I did rub it well with a olive oil/rub combination going over the entire outside and also under the skin.
It is pretty windy today so I built a large surround for the firebox side of my smoker to help keep temps more stable. My smoker is a barrel type with side fire box (CharGriller Super Pro). This smoker has always been a handful getting temps up high and staying steady, especially on a windy day!, so it has been a chore today to get them in the 250-300 range as it seems most guys suggest for a turkey. I tried to read several writeups on smoking a turkey but does not seem to be too many on this forum.
With pork and beef I have been a fan of the method to smoke several hours until meat hits a desired temp then wrap in foil and makes it extremely tender. I could not find anything like this about smoking a turkey so was curious about this- does anyone wrap their turkey along the process- if so at what temp? If not then I am fine with that- just trying to avoid it being dried out when I pull it off. Smoker has been in the 240-280 range since start time. I do have a large water pan that fits the depth of the lower part of the barrel and to help isolate direct heat from the fire on the side- though I found that by moving it over an inch or two as opposed to pushing it up tight to the hole in the side of the grill will help get temps up a bit higher instead of letting the water regulate temp as much. I also have a long flexy pipe I added from the chimney going down the grate level. Not trying to ramble on here haha just giving a picture of what my setup is.
Any tips or suggestions would be much appreciated! I will try to snap a pic of it when it is ready- looked very good at the 3 hour mark when I checked water pan.
It is pretty windy today so I built a large surround for the firebox side of my smoker to help keep temps more stable. My smoker is a barrel type with side fire box (CharGriller Super Pro). This smoker has always been a handful getting temps up high and staying steady, especially on a windy day!, so it has been a chore today to get them in the 250-300 range as it seems most guys suggest for a turkey. I tried to read several writeups on smoking a turkey but does not seem to be too many on this forum.
With pork and beef I have been a fan of the method to smoke several hours until meat hits a desired temp then wrap in foil and makes it extremely tender. I could not find anything like this about smoking a turkey so was curious about this- does anyone wrap their turkey along the process- if so at what temp? If not then I am fine with that- just trying to avoid it being dried out when I pull it off. Smoker has been in the 240-280 range since start time. I do have a large water pan that fits the depth of the lower part of the barrel and to help isolate direct heat from the fire on the side- though I found that by moving it over an inch or two as opposed to pushing it up tight to the hole in the side of the grill will help get temps up a bit higher instead of letting the water regulate temp as much. I also have a long flexy pipe I added from the chimney going down the grate level. Not trying to ramble on here haha just giving a picture of what my setup is.
Any tips or suggestions would be much appreciated! I will try to snap a pic of it when it is ready- looked very good at the 3 hour mark when I checked water pan.
