Thanksgiving is just around the corner and it is time to talk about cooking our turkeys in our OldSmokeys
I think the 22" OldSmokey is the ABSOLUTE best turkey cooker that has ever been built!!
it blows away- the oven, frying in peanut oil= dangerous
,the CharBroil SRG- SmokerRoasterGrill Infrared cooker (i had one & sold it), any Weber, &any Kamado the 8"in between the fire grate and the grill grate!
the almost vertical sides of the lid!
&the almost 12"in of space under the lid!
and the fact that the 2-sided charcoal piles give us temps over 300°= crispy skin (Y)
it just doesn't get any better (Y)
before i talk about the setup i'm going to talk about brining your bird
I use the Reynolds oven bags- two sizes- the regular (bone-on turkey breast) &the BIG turkey bag= 24# bird
the bags are TOUGH!!
and you can make your brine mix and pull it up tight around your bird
which makes it much easier to put it in the fridge over-night
twist the bag closed and use a plastic pull tie to hold it closed
one of the tricks is to make sure the breast is DOWN- in the bag- in the spices
the basic bine recipe is 1-cup of salt to 1-gallon of water
i add orange juice, the Costco version of the salt free Mrs.Dash, garlic, etc..
it's your recipe
and you can poke the whole bird with a sharp fork to help the mixture get into the meat
I also have an injector for injecting melted butter &or apple juice into the breast meat
ok- it's setup time
before Bruce@OS gave us the hinged "FlipSide" grill grates
we bought spare grill grates for $10 and broke out the grill wires to make custom grill grates for 1-sided & 2-sided indirect cooks, to add charcoal and wood during the cook
you will notice them in some of my pics. i made them many years ago, and since i clean everything after every cook, they are still going strong
i have a FlipSide grill grate that i use for photography for Bruce@OS, for the OldSmokey website
but i still use my old grates with the wires broken out for my convienence
i have 4 grill grates for my OldSmokey
i use an 10x14 foil pan upside down as a separator-divider-riser for the two charcoal piles
with a 12x17 foil pan on top as a drip pan, I lay in a layer of foil to make clean up easier
I did a special cook for pics for Bruce@OS with just the "FlipSide" grill and no roasting rack for pics
but when i cook i use an oven roaster 'V' rack to hold the bird
what's great about the 2-sided indirect charcoal method is the dark meat is closer to the two charcoal piles so when the breasts get to 160° the thighs and drumsticks are already around 175°
i never let the breasts get past 165°
one thing i've been thinking about is another method of cooking the bird.
the big thing the last few years is to "spatchcock" a whole bird to help speed up the cooking
you cut out the backbone of the bird, then break the breast bone so it will lay flat
but when we were growing up and we went to a big BBQ social they always cut the chickens in half, which does the same thing as spatchcocking but it makes it much easier to handle the pieces on the grill.
I haven't cut a whole turkey in half and cooked it directly over the coals at 8" but i'm going to just for the test.
