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| Western Kennedys Website | |||||||||||||||
| The Secrets of smoking a Turkey! General strategy on how to smoke a turkey... |
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| Basic Idea to smoke a Turkey! 10 to 15 pound Turkey White wine Mesque, hickory, or Keawe wood Salt and Pepper and Spices! |
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| When smoking meats, the trick is patience. Ideally, you will have a mix of woods and charcoal. Woods such as Keawe and Mesque take a long time to burn. It will usually take about 30 to 45 minutes to start the fire. You want wood and smoke flavors - not fire or gas flavors. As the fire starts up, the charcoal helps get the wood going, but for the first 30 minutes too much dark smoke will be produced by the fresh charcoal - so you must wait as the fire becomes mature. Also, don't use small chopped hickory or sawdust products - you want medium to large pieces of wood - even branches and logs. For a big 20 pound Turkey, you could expect to use 1 or 2 10-lbs bags of charcoal, plus a whole bunch of wood. When you're ready to smoke, you quickly position the water and drip pans and hang the Turkey, then close the smoker. Then, it's on auto-pilot. You usually just wait until the fire burns out - about 4 to 5 hours later. It's hard to overcook or undercook a smoked turkey. The main prerequisite to great smoking is having a great smoker. At our house in Hawaii, I used to use a large stainless-steel washer-dyer enclosure. It was huge and had the perfect design for the fire down below, a hook at the top to hang the meat, and a make-shift set of grills above the fire for the drip pan areas. And there should be a couple of holes near the base of the smoker to keep the fire going, and a pipe or set of holes at the top to let the smoke out. | |||||||||||||||
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| The turkey is suspended from the top of the smoker. Below the turkey, you should have a drip pan to catch the drippings for a gravy; the second pan should be one level below the gravy pan, filled with water or wine, which provides for moisture and flavors. The coals and wood are located at the bottom of the smoker. Generally, it takes about 4 to 5 hours to smoke a 15 to 20 pound turkey. |
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