Thread: Thanksgiving Turkey... how do you do it?

When I turned 40 or shortly after, I had a taste of smoked turkey once. It was really good so one year, I told my wife I would take a crack at it. She looked up how it was done and created a nice brine to soak the turkey in overnight.

I got a large bag of Kingsford and bought a "wet" smoker. For the "smoke", I started with simply hickory.

I started the charcoal at 6:30AM on Thanksgiving day. I spent the entire day drinking beer, adding water to the pan, an hourly sprikle of hickory chips over the charcoal, adding more charcoal (nearly used the whole bag!) and by 7:00PM, we had THE JUCIEST and best tasting smoked turkey anyone in our family had ever tasted!

Since then, I've used cherry wood and tea soaked chips and mix it with some hickory.

My nephew tried it once when he tasted our but his first attempt was so dry, it crumbled when my wife tried to cut it (she even tried to cut it real slow so he wouldn't see it crumble). I drank so much wine to dampen the dryness, I was pretty drunk by the end of the night.

He's done better ever since but I know I can do a better job. I want to do it again this year. Better buy a 12 pack of beer this time!!!

Oh, and to round things off, my sisters make this bread stuffing to die for. I don't know the recipe but I don't care. I do the turkey, they do the stuffing, wife makes the pumpkin pies, here sisters supply everything else...
man, now I'm hungry!