I have been hesitant to do turkey on my smoker since my first attempt ended with leathery skin. We decided to do some experimenting.
This is the first iteration, and they are already better than before.
First, we started with some back-and-forth messaging with a friend who is a sous chef. She told us that we needed to go to at least 275 to render the skin properly.
We found a recipe and adjusted a bit by increasing the temperature of the smoker over what was called for.
We started with a 22-hour brine in a liquid consisting of brown sugar, kosher salt, bay leaves, mustard seeds and cloves.
We used a rub made from brown sugar, mixed pepper, paprika, garlic powder and kosher salt.
I cooked them to an internal temperature of about 190, which is what I prefer for dark meat fowl We pulled one and tested at about 170 and did not like it. It was still a bit spongy.
I ran the smoker between about 230 and 350. I was tweaking it quite a bit. Thank goodness for wifi controllers. Total cook time was 4 hours and 20 minutes in the smoker.
The result was excellent. The skin was soft, but not crunchy. The meat was moist and tender. There was a bit too much of a brown sugar flavor for me.
I will cut down on that in the future or eliminate it completely. We ate a couple and freezed the rest, due to an overabundance of cooked food.
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