Thanksgiving 2011

[mguerra]

TNT, that is some awesome color! Did you use straight coconut charcoal, or add some smoke wood of any sort?

[tnt]

I did straight coconut charcoal for this one.. I wanted to get a feel for the coconut charcoal smoke before I start adding extras.

Needless to say I was very impressed with the coconut charcoal..

Tony

[mguerra]

Bird 2 just coming off the grill.

[tnt]

Doc,

Nice looking bird !!!!

How much of a coffee taste do you get with the coffee wood charcoal ???

Tony

[lee grabowski]

Our Thanksgiving Giving Turkey is a 12 pounder and I followed the Naked Whiz's web site Mad Max's receipe. Very good, it took about 3 1/2 hours at 310 - 320 degrees. After about 2 hours I basted it every 20 minutes with an aluminum foil tent over it.

[DennisLinkletter]

Doc,

Nice looking bird !!!!
How much of a coffee taste do you get with the coffee wood charcoal ???
Tony

The flavor you know as coffee is of course from roasted coffee beans..
This wood has it's own magical flavor profile..
The secondary smoke even in large quantities is very smooth..
As our good Doc said, "The coffee wood smoke is hard to describe, aromatic, mild, flavorful; you just have to try it."
I can over smoke a chicken with every other wood I've tried, not with this coffee wood.
Maybe someday I'll be known as the guy who introduced coffee as a smoking wood and charcoal to the BBQ world..

[mguerra]

No coffee flavor at all, that would come from the beans, not the tree wood. It's not really describable in terms of flavors we are familiar with. Good is all I can say. And this is coffee wood, not coffee wood charcoal

[Firemonkey]

As is customary nowadays, I am days late - but this was my Komodo-licious turkey. Cooked over KKEC (original batch) and a mix of apple and peach smoke, from a smoke pot. It was outstanding.

On the grill:

Just as I started carving I forgot a "done" picture:

[Smoke]

Outstanding!!

I'll be smoking my first KK turkey for Christmas in a few weeks. Have you ever smoked a bird without brining it first? I've smoked a lot of wild turkeys (pre KK purchase) that I hunted and they were some of the best turkeys I've ever eaten; simply cleaned them and smoked them for about 3 hours around 350.

Always enjoy your posts.

Thanks,

Dana

[Firemonkey]

This turkey wasn't brined... Perhaps "enhanced" by the packer, but all i did was take it from the package, rinse and air dry it overnight in the fridge. Mixed my seasoning with about 1/4 cup evoo in the magic bullet, and put it under the skin, then filled the cavity with sage, Rosemary, and half an onion.

Cooked it about 3-4 hours at 350. It was a pretty low-key cook, and came out much better than some of the more involved ones - like the apple cider brine for example.

Once you try one yourself you will be amazed.

[Paswesley]

I may as well post one of my turkeys being cooked. The first and second birds were done on Thanksgiving and I have no pics. I stuffed and roasted the first bird, a fourteen pounder. I converted the whole bird to hash, stuffing added to the gravy, and saw it disappear in a few minutes. The second bird, a 13 pounder, I spatchcocked and roasted. It was served sliced with gravy, and was reduced to a skeleton in a few minutes.

This bird is a twenty pounder. It is stuffed with Pepperidge Farm herb stuffing. This photo was taken as soon as I put the turkey into Mable. As you can see, I prefer to put my spices on the exterior of the bird. As I type this, the temp is around 125. I just foiled the bird by placing a crumpled tent over the entire bird on the roasting rack. I will post a finished pic in a couple of hours. This bird is for the potluck feast that our church is having after service tomorrow. I will foil, newspaper wrap and towel wrap the finished bird and place it in a cooler. It should still be serving temp by noon.

Twenty pounder, stuffed and savory. Just put him in.

[LarryR]

Great results as always on the KK this Thanksgiving. Jack Daniel's Maple Syrup Brine over ECC and a piece of cherry wood running at 325. More pictures in this SLIDESHOW

[Loquitur]

Sorry for the lousy cell phone picture but here is my 15.5 lb turkey, brined, air dried, stuffed and KK'd yesterday. It was not quite done yet in this picture but not far from it. It was excellent, thank heavens, which redeemed the fact that the cook was a nightmare - ALL MY FAULT, of course. So as a lesson of what not to do when cooking a turkey, here is what happened. I haven't tackled installing my new gasket yet so I am conscious of how much charcoal I use since I will burn whatever is in the basket. So I only filled it half way, mostly with the end of a bag containing a lot of small pieces and a little bit of a new bag with big pieces. I knew the fire wasn't burning just right because my Stoker couldn't keep the temp at 325 but it was cruising along at 310ish, which I hoped would continue to the end of the cook. But after three hours the temp started to fall and I knew I had to deal with it. I removed the Stoker probes from the turkey and bent them over the side of the KK to the outside rather than pulling them out of the probe hole completely. It took me some time to remove the turkey, the grate and the heat deflector while everything was really hot to move the coals around and while I was doing all that, the fire flared up just under the probes where they were bent over the KK to the outside. When I loaded the turkey back onto the grill, I put all the probes back but the temps were then reading in the 300's so I think I fried all of them!!! An expensive mistake to say the least. I am hoping maybe Rock will rebuild them for me or something.

So take a lesson from me: Fill the basket and completely remove the Stoker probes from the KK!!!!

Some other notes about this cook:

This is the second year I put some stock in the roasting pan at the beginning of the cook and found that the thighs and bottom of the turkey cooked at a faster rate than the breast. I watched this throughout the cook and when I removed it from the KK, the breast was 155 and the thighs were 170. I attribute this faster cooking of the lower part of the turkey to the steam from the stock. It works great in helping get the breast and thighs done at the same time.

As you can see, I really stuffed this turkey to the max. It was smaller than I anticipated and I wanted to use all the stuffing. The stuffing was only 140 deg when I took it off the KK. So I removed it from the turkey and baked it in the oven at 375 for about 20 min and it came out really great. It was crispy all over on the outside and moist and succulent on the inside, full of the flavor only cooking in the bird will yield. I think I will remove it from the turky and bake it in the oven for the future no matter what the temp in the bird when I take it off the KK.

[mguerra]

There is a school of thought that says you should not cook your stuffing in your turkey. However a number of folks here seem to get good results doing it.
The idea is that it takes longer to reach a safe finish temperature, the stuffing itself should be at least 160 to 165 before removing the bird; and that longer cooking time can result in an overdone breast. If undercooked, the stuffing can result in food poisoning. Susan flirted with that food safety issue removing the bird with the stuffing at 140.
But, no one on this list has reported any problems with cooking the stuffing in the bird. In fact every report is positive. For myself, I am going to cook the stuffing separately. But if anyone has a food poisoning event, please report it to us!

Fried probes: I have done exactly the same thing, laid my probes over the edge of the KK while doing something in the grill and having a huge fire build up in just a few moments. Those Stoker probes are expensive! REMOVE them if you will have the cooker open more than a minute. If you do get a big raging flare up, shut the lid, let it die down a little, then open it and get the probes back in position right quick and shut that lid.
We have said this many times; Start every cook with a FULL basket of lump, it will save all sorts of grief. If you just top off the old, which I do routinely, shake the charcoal basket vigorously beforehand to get all the ash out and allow good airflow. You can have a significant amount of ash that is not obviously visible, but up in the basket and around the charcoal, obstructing airflow.
Tough lessons there for Susan, I have had all the exact same!

[Loquitur]

This was my third KK stuffed Thanksgiving turkey. I was prepared with the first 2 to remove the stuffing from the turkey and continue to bake it in the oven to get it up to temp but I didn't need to. The difference with this one is that the stuffing was so tightly packed, at least in the big cavity. The stuffing in the small cavity in the back was at 160 when I took it off the KK so I didn't bake that part further and had good samples for comparison. I really liked the texture obtained by finishing the stuffing in the oven.

I'm going to send my four fried probes to Rock and see what happens. I think I read somewhere that he can rebuild them and its less expensive than buying new ones. I'll report what happens.

Thanks, Doc. Somehow I don't feel like such an idiot when someone else makes the same dumb mistake!!

Susan