Who is cooking Thanksgiving?!

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Just placed our order for our free range, no antibiotics, farm fresh bird... I cannot wait to smoke it up!
 
It's actually a Smokin It Model 2. Very similar to the Cookshack. 100% stainless, insulated walls, 3-4oz of wood per smoke, and easily smokes in temperatures well below freezing! One of my best cooking purchases ever.

It looked alittle different but those door clasps are almost the same. Love electric smoking!
 
Props to the Turkey Smokers. My oven died the night before T-Day 9 years ago. Luckily I had everything I needed to smoke a turkey and have done it that way every year since.
 
We are using the Pioneer Lady's brine recipe this year... And this is our first ever non mass produced bird. There is a farm in Ohio that raises turkeys solely for the butcher where we purchased our bird. It feels good to buy a bird from a farm, instead of a corporation.
 
When my company had transferred me to Cinci years ago, their was a turkey farm up the street in Amelia, I think it was. Huge 25lb bird cooked off the bones in some 2:45!
 
My dad shot one this past season he'll be cooking up. I'll be baking pumpkin spice bread for my niece, as requested.
 
Brine and smoke baby. Every year. I have a smoker (WSM) but the Weber does it perfectly, up to 20#.

Agreed on the "Weber does it perfectly" opinion. I have several smokers, but always default to the Weber for the TG turkey. Been doing it that way for 20+ years. Learned the technique from Sunset magazine, tried it the first TG we hosted, and never looked back. We often get "it's the best turkey I've ever had" comment from newbies (we try to host a few "orphans" every year who can't make it home to their own families).

Students.jpg


Downside: the aroma doesn't fill the house whetting your appetite all day -- you have to go outside for that.

Upsides:

  1. Great tasting, moist turkey
  2. Phenominally smokey gravy from the drippings
  3. Smoked turkey soup from the carcass

Tips and Tricks:

  1. Use a light fruit or nut wood for the smoke
  2. Breast-side down until about the last hour to let the juices run into the breast meat. Then "flip the bird" to brown up the skin over the breast meat. Drape bacon strips over the skin for that "little extra something"
  3. Don't stuff the bird; make the dressing separately.
 
Agreed on the "Weber does it perfectly" opinion. I have several smokers, but always default to the Weber for the TG turkey. Been doing it that way for 20+ years. Learned the technique from Sunset magazine, tried it the first TG we hosted, and never looked back. We often get "it's the best turkey I've ever had" comment from newbies (we try to host a few "orphans" every year who can't make it home to their own families).

Students.jpg


Downside: the aroma doesn't fill the house whetting your appetite all day -- you have to go outside for that.

Upsides:

  1. Great tasting, moist turkey
  2. Phenominally smokey gravy from the drippings
  3. Smoked turkey soup from the carcass

Tips and Tricks:

  1. Use a light fruit or nut wood for the smoke
  2. Breast-side down until about the last hour to let the juices run into the breast meat. Then "flip the bird" to brown up the skin over the breast meat. Drape bacon strips over the skin for that "little extra something"
  3. Don't stuff the bird; make the dressing separately.


Love my WSM. The smallest Thanksgiving turkey I've done on it has been 22 lbs. Biggest was 26 lbs. My WSM is the 18".
 
I'm currently sitting on 4 turkeys in the freezer. My grocery store keeps giving away a free turkey everytime you spend $100. We've been racking up the free birds. I'll probably cook each one a different way to see what I like best. Not all at once though.
 
I've been cooking the turkeys for Thanksgiving / Christmas for the last few years using this method. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/good-eats-roast-turkey-recipe.html I definitely brine my turkeys, I find that they taste much better especially the organic/farm raised birds that can be a little tougher than the mass produced turkeys.

I've never had a chance to fry a turkey, but my brother-in-law does and swears by it. It is certainly a time saver, but am partial to cooking it indoors as I love the smell of a roasting turkey.
 
So instead of dicing sausage, how about skinning it and running it through a Keystone 10 grinder? We've both ground and link sausage link for the balls.
 
You basically want small meatballs of sausage. Haven't tried making them with loose meat, but it might work.

If you need to combine the two, cut open the links and mix it by hand. It's already ground, no need to make it mush.

You can use a 1t scoop if you need to make a lot of them. Goes much faster than two teaspoons.
 
A melon baller works well too. Quick-n-easy. I was thinking of doing them with andouille sausage the next day with bacon gravy. We can get the sausage fresh-made over at Fligner's market on Broadway in Lorain.
 
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