Happy Thanksgiving

So this was a first for me, smoking a turkey for Thanksgiving. I did a brisket, too, since I was loading up the smoker with fuel anyway, but I'm experienced at brisket.

I asked some barbecue gurus for advice about doing a turkey, and their answers all came down to 'don't dry it out.' A couple told me to brine the bird if possible.

This is kind of a hard one for me to figure: buy a fresh bird so it's not all injected with salt water and then, before cooking it, you get as much salt water into it as possible.

I was working with a frozen, run of the mill bird anyway, so I really couldn't see adding brine to brine. I did worry about drying out the meat and decided injections of garlic butter would be the best bet to battle it.

The other debate was do I get up at the drop of the rooster to start cooking in the morning, or do I start the night before and have the meat cooked hours before our guests arrived?



I figured it was easier to keep cooked meat edible, so I fired up the Weber Smokey Mountain about eleven Wednesday night and put the brisket on for about an hour before the bird. This was partly just to make sure I had the temperature stabilized where I wanted it, a 15 lb brisket is pretty forgiving of adjustments up front, I feared the 13 lb turkey wouldn't be.

I pinned the wings to the body with toothpicks, tied the drumsticks with twine, and that was about it. I gave it a slight bit of rub, not a thorough coating like I do with braising cuts, and when I was satisfied the smoker was settled in at about 230ºF, I set an alarm for 4:15 and went to sleep.

At 4:15, the internal temperature was about 130ºF in most of the deep places, and I melted a stick of butter with some garlic and a dash of balsamic vinegar and injected that as diffusely as I could figure to through the bird. At this point I added some mesquite chunks (the smoker had been loaded with about 20 pounds of lump charcoal up front). This got the smoke going in earnest. I know, people say you should use fruit woods like apple for turkey, but I had mesquite and hickory on hand and mesquite has never failed to please me.

Second alarm was set for 7:00, though I snoozed it until 7:30, then worried that I'd dry out the bird and ruin it. I did a stick and a half of butter with more garlic and went to check & inject. The meat thermometer was showing 165ºF at the coolest parts I could find, and more like 175ºF everywhere else. I went ahead and injected the butter, basting the skin with the last of it and gave it a few more minutes while I figured out getting it into the house.

The brisket was showing about 165ºF, too, so I figured it could come in as well.

After dinner, everyone interested in the Plaza Lighting ceremony piled into my black box and we headed that way. Beautiful weather, the only knock was we got separated in the crowd and once you get separated in a crowd like that, there's no recovery.

For one thing, having 100,000 cell phones in a neighborhood all at once overloads the cell towers, as far as I can tell, so communication by mobile becomes impossible.

People were generally polite and in a good mood, but in my efforts to find Corinna and Dennis, I ran into a guy who was a complete jerk about it. He told me there was no point trying to get through, no room. I told him I was trying to find the rest of my party and he insisted nobody could have come that way. His tone of voice told me he was probably right, he wouldn't have let anyone else by either.

Other angles of movement were basically blocked off at that point because someone fainted and on top of the normal bussle, paramedics and cops were trying to get to that. When that cleared, I spotted dennis and a millimeter of movement I could make that way, and as I shifted that way, a man with his young daughter came in my direction trying to find a bathroom for her. They ran into the same jerk I had, who told him to find a sign for her to pee under.

I need better filters on myself, I know, but I reflexively looked him in the eye and said, "Don't be a dick." It's one thing for him to refuse to make way for me, but a guy trying to find a bathroom for a little kid, come off it. But saying 'dick' instead of 'jerk' I think offended the guy with the little girl, so they turned around and tried a different way anyway, and the dick's family started defending him, saying he was 'just trying to be helpful.'

Helpful my ass. He was trying to stake a claim. If being in a throng like that gets you that cranky, you should watch the lighting on TV or something.

The Elders were great, we should have just stayed and listened to their whole set, but Corinna had brought Max and Sheba and with us getting separated it ended up being a mission to find each other and get back to the car. I don't think I'd go to the lighting by car again, especially not having the girls, I could have ridden in, goten a good spot and ridden back out pretty easily, and I saw a few guys doing just that.