So, Neko! Let me tell you what I did yesterday...

This post is dedicated to the memory of my dear friend, Neko Hamlett.

Neko and I first got to know each other in 1999. I had just recently been hired by American Roamer (now Mosaik Solutions). Neko had long been a friend of the president of our company, and was just asked to join the team as VP of sales. It didn't take long for Neko and I to discover that we had a lot in common. We both loved darts (He was good at it, and I was good at making him look even better at it.), a good beer and a cigar (I didn't even know I had a passion for these until Neko introduced them to me. In fact, Neva says I was fairly virtuous...until I met Neko. I sure owe him a lot!), talking about how proud our wife and kids made us, and smoking (food)! It took a little while before we discovered the grilling part. One day I mentioned that my family loves for me to smoke our Thanksgiving turkey. Shortly after that, we were emailing before and after each holiday to find out what the other was going to smoke, and how it turned out. Neko went to be with our Lord during the Labor Day weekend in 2008. I was smoking a huge mess of ribs that weekend, and never got to tell him about them. I still love smoking meats (as well as all the vices he so wisely passed on to me), but there has always been something missing on holidays like Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day; holidays that require the use of a grill. This Memorial Day holiday I decided, what the heck! I might not receive a direct reply, but there is no reason for me not to let Neko know what I cooked for the holiday. So, Neko! Let me tell you what I did yesterday...

I hadn't smoked anything for quite some time. I've been itching to though. Plus, I needed to empty some space in the freezer. It didn't take long to decide I needed to smoke a turkey AND a boston butt. The next dilemma was figuring out what device I was going to smoke them on. Was I going to pull out the trusty Chargriller and smoke these the old fashioned way, with charcoal and wood chunks? Or was I going to crank up the Sawtooth pellet grill and slow smoke these items on the back deck? Both methods have their advantages. Nothing gives a good smoke ring and crust on a pork butt like smoking the old fashioned way. And you have to use the old methods if you want a smoked turkey that has that gorgeous mahogany skin. But...you have to really be prepared to dedicate your day to the grill. It is important to keep the smoke and temperature consistent, if you want your meat to come out just right. That's kinda hard to do if you have a lot of other things going on in your life that day.

Making life easier is what the pellet grill is all about. Other than occasionally checking the pellet level, these grill/smokers are about as "set it and forget it" as grills can be. You don't get the mahogany color on your smoked turkeys with a pellet grill, but that mahogany color comes at a price. While the turkey meat is juicy and flavorful, the skin gets so full of smoke it becomes acrid, and leathery. With a pellet grill, the smoke flavor of the turkey meat is still there, though as part of the background harmony, rather than the lead. However, the real treat with a pellet smoked turkey is the crispy, yummy skin. Who can argue with a turkey that looks like this?

 I thought about doing the pork on the Chargriller, and the turkey on the Sawtooth. My wife made some smart comment about me running back and forth between grills all day. I certainly did not want to create any unnecessary exercise for myself. That is NOT the purpose of a holiday. The pellet grill won!

The night before the great smoking event, I prepped my turkey. This year I found a commercial brine on clearance, that looked pretty good. It was mainly kosher salt, black and pink peppercorns, rosemary, and thyme. The next day, the real preparations began. I had to mix up a dry rub for the pork. Now, I live with a family of wusses (myself included). When we eat barbecue, we would much rather sink our teeth into something sweet and smokey, rather than spicy. My dry rubs have a tendency to be heavy on the brown sugar, and lighter on the salt and pepper.  This time my dry rub had brown sugar, smoked kosher salt, garlic salt, cumin, white pepper, dried red bell peppers that had been ground down completely, and finally, some dried tomato flakes that had been ground down. As you can see below, The tomato and red pepper gave the rub a nice red coloring.

Before rubbing the butt down, I mixed a bottle of pear hard cider and half a cup of vinegar, and injected all over the butt.

Next, I dried the turkey, oiled the skin, and sprinkled smoked salt and coarse ground black pepper all over the bird. Then, it was out to the pellet grill that was set on low/smoke which kept the temperature around 150 degrees, and produced ample smoke. It was a tight fit, but I got both pieces of meat, as well as a pie plate filled with water, herbs from the brine, and an apple, for moisture.

I kept the Sawtooth on the low/smoke setting for a couple of hours. I then cranked it up to medium, which got the grill to just above 200 degrees. This still produced a good amount of smoke, but kept the butt and turkey both at a good rate of cooking for producing moist and tender meat. For the first six hours, I sprayed the turkey and pork butt with a mixture of pear hard cider, vinegar, and water. After six hours, I turned the Sawtooth up just enough to get the temperature to 250 degrees, and started spritzing every half hour. After nine hours (just in time for supper) I had the golden brown turkey pictured earlier in this post. The pork butt needed another hour and a half to finish.

Neko, I don't want you to think we were total carnivores last night, without a hint of vegetables on our plates. As you can see below, I had a green vegetable...as well as some Loaded Potato Salad.

So, you've never had Loaded Potato Salad!?! Well! All you have to do is boil three pounds of red potatoes that have been sliced into decent bite sized chunks. While those are boiling (Don't forget that Anne Burrell says to always add enough salt to the water that it tastes like the ocean!), mix together a cup of mayonnaise, a cup of sour cream, one pack of ranch dressing mix, half a pound of crispy bacon all crumbled up, a half cup shredded cheddar, and about six green onions finely chopped. Stick the dressing in the fridge to cool. Once the potatoes are boiled til fork tender, drain and allow to cool just a bit. Mix them with the cooled dressing. If you can make the day before, it is better. That gives the ranch flavor some time to mellow a bit. It ain't your mother's potato salad, but it sure is good.

By the way, did you see the pink on the turkey meat in that picture. That's smoke! Once that bird hit the table, it didn't stand a chance. I was afraid things were going to break out into WWIII over the drumsticks. Fortunately, some last minute diplomacy prevailed.

Don't worry. I haven't forgotten about the pork butt. Here is a picture of the finished product.

The bark isn't as dark and thick as it would have been with the Chargriller, but it was far from being a disappointment. In fact, I had some of the pork for lunch today, with my left over potato salad. All I can say is I am glad my office has a door on it. That pork resulted in some sounds that some might deem inappropriate for an office setting. I am definitely going to have to use the hard cider as an injection again. I don't know that I could pick out the pear flavoring, but there was something about the cider, that made this meat scrumpdillyicious.

Well, that's pretty much all there is to say about my weekend, Neko. Something tells me you fixed them one heck of a barbecue on the other side of those pearly gates. One day, you'll have to tell me all about it...

The Turkey in the Straw Has Come to Call

Those of you who have just recovered from your heart attacks that were induced by two blog entries in one week, might need to take some preventative measures. Here's the third entry. Two entries ago, I promised a smoked turkey on my new Sawtooth wood pellet grill. It has taken a bit, but here we go. This little write up should remain relatively short in comparison to most of my other ramblings. That's because of the nice little video surprise at the end of the entry. You heard me right! A video! Now, who can say I don't treat my readers right. I must warn you, though. There is some nudity in the video. That's probably going to make you skip the rest of this blathering and head straight there.

If you are a friend of mine on Facebook, or you have read previous blog entries, you know that one of my favorite activities is smoking turkeys. In fact, it has been several years since a turkey has actually graced my oven. In the past, I always smoked my turkeys on a large charcoal grill that had a side fire box. This allows for proper smoking with the indirect heat method. As you may remember from my previous post about smoking a turkey, the skin becomes a dark, almost mahogany, color. This is due to the massive amounts of smoke produced by throwing chunks of hickory in the side fire box. While this produces a turkey with an absolutely mouth watering smoked taste, it also produces a skin that is beautiful to look at, but only palatable to the few with cast iron stomachs, like my son. It is common knowledge that the skin is sacrificed for the flavor in the meat when using this method of smoking.

Wood pellet grills use what I would call a semi-indirect method of smoking. The fire pot is inside the grill, instead of outside. This puts the heat source closer to the meat. However, the drip/flavorizer pan prevents any flames from being able to reach whatever food items are on the grill. Also, instead of wood chunks that burn very slowly, wood pellet grills use...well, wood pellets. These burn at a somewhat faster rate, even on the low "smoke" setting. Therefore, the amount of smoke produced is sufficient for creating that smoked flavor, but nowhere near the amount that is produced in the traditional method. This could be good, or bad, depending on who you ask. Some people absolutely crave that super strong smoked flavor that comes off a traditional smoker. However, some people want a milder smoked flavor, and dearly wish to eat a super crunchy turkey skin. That is what you get with a wood pellet grill; a milder (but definitely present) smoked flavor, and crunchy, yummy, skin.

I usually brine my turkeys. The master BBQers will tell you to never brine a turkey from the supermarket, because it has already been injected with a broth or salt water solution. That may be the case, but they are still as bland a shoe leather. I have never had a brined turkey that turned out too salty. However, I chose a completely different method of keeping my turkey moist this time. I had a bottle of Tony Cachere's Roasted Garlic and Herb marinade. I injected that marinade ALL over the turkey. Wow! I mean, Wow! Between that marinade and the crispy skin on the turkey...I don't know if you could get any closer to heaven without actually being there. The turkey was so juicy. Since it was roasted garlic, the garlic flavor was mild. It was definitely there, but not in an overpowering way. See how I did the wings in the picture above? I learned to tuck them under the bird. This keeps them from flopping, and makes the bird more stable. The cool thing is that all the sugars in the marinade and rub collected at the bottom of the turkey. Those sugars, along with the natural sugars in the skin were in direct contact with the grill, creating a wonderful caramelization. Eating parts of the chicken wing meat and skin was literally like eating candy. I do think it just about got Neva speaking in tongues.

I promised a short blog, and here we are. It's only four paragraphs. Ok! They were long paragraphs. A little about the video below. It is a short "How-to" video on smoking a turkey on a wood pellet grill. It is my first instructional video, so I do realize some of the tips could have been slowed down a bit for those who aren't speed readers. Sorry. This was Christina's first time as a camera man(woman). Some of the footage is slightly out of focus, but I think she did a whizbang job for her first time. Thanks, Christina. I hope you enjoy this.

Enjoy!

Can We Talk Turkey?

I would love to have a little conversation with you concerning turkey. So many people only associate turkey with two times of year, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Folks! I am here to tell you that turkey can be our friend all year long. I highly encourage you to take advantage of Thanksgiving sales this year and stock up with three or four, or five, turkeys. If you don't have a deep freeze, find someone who does and rent some space. Turkeys aren't just for the holidays. All throughout the year, my family loves for me to smoke a turkey. Let's get something straight. Smoking turkey's and smoking cigarettes is NOT the same thing. Are we all on the same page now?

One of my scrumpdilyicious smoked turkies...done in the middle of summer!

 I know! I know! It takes more than simply smoking a turkey to make it our year round friend. But, consider this. You've just finished eating all of that delicious turkey up, and you have a carcass left over that looks like it was a victim of Cujo. Do you just throw it away? Heck, NO! You throw that sucker into the largest stock pot you have, throw in some carrots, onion, celery, and garlic, and boil the stew out of it. There's flavor in them there bones, folks! Oh! By the way. This is the perfect time to go rooting through the crisper drawers in your fridge, and pull out all of those limp vegetables you wouldn't feed your dogs. (Come on, people. You know you have 'em.) There is a big difference between limp and lifeless, and a full fledged science experiment. Limp veggies may not be appealing to serve, but they still have oodles of flavor in them. Once your done boiling everything, your going to throw them out anyway.

What you have left, after boiling the turkey carcass and veggies is a big batch of turkey stock that can be frozen in pint and quart containers. This stuff will add more flavor and goodness to your recipes than any store bought chicken broth. Guaranteed! This works, whether you smoke, roast, or deep fry your turkey. With smoking you get the added benefit of a slight smokiness in your stock. It is amazing how much of a difference that subtle flavor can make in any recipe.

So, come on, folks. This year, make those supermarket meat department managers quake in fear. Let's go on a turkey buying spree, and show that turkey is our friend ALL year long!