My local supermarket had bone-in turkey breast on sale for $.99 last week so I grabbed a couple and decided to smoke one for sliced sandwich meat and one to keep for roasting later. I just made up a simple brine using what I had on hand. I used Tender Quick because I wanted some cure in the brine.
My brine recipe:
2 Cups water & 2 Cups buttermilk
1 Cup Tender Quick
1 TBSP garlic powder
1 TBSP onion powder
1 TBSP ground pepper
2 TSP cayenne pepper
A bit of fresh sage from the garden.
Brined for around 24 hours, then rinsed it well, patted it dry and stuffed the cavity with some chunks onion, some lemons, halved, and a few garlic cloves. I let the bird sit with a fan blowing on it for 30 minutes or so to dry the skin somewhat while the smoker came up to temp.
Ready to go into the smoker:
In the smoker, temp at 250F with an AMAZEN smoker box on the bottom rack, using Pitmasters Choice blend pellets:
Went for an internal temp of 165F. It took almost 8 hours to get there. Through the cook I gradually increased the smoker temp till I ended up maxing out the MES at 275F. In the afternoon the sun started to hit the back wall of the MES and it caused the temp to DROP! That puzzled me for a bit but then I decided that because the MES temp sensor is located in the back wall of the box the solar heat was causing it to think the box temp was higher than actual. (I was checking the box temp with the second probe of the ThermPro.)
Here is is resting after 8 hours (pretty):
Slicing some for dinner. The rest will be sliced thin on the slicer machine and then vac sealed:
And, finally, dinner!
It turned out very good. The food police (wife) suggests either less salt or less time in the brine next time. I think I'll go with shorter time because I want to keep the cure level as recommended on the Tender Quick package. And I think I will start at 275F and use that temp throughout.
Thanks for looking.
Braz
My brine recipe:
2 Cups water & 2 Cups buttermilk
1 Cup Tender Quick
1 TBSP garlic powder
1 TBSP onion powder
1 TBSP ground pepper
2 TSP cayenne pepper
A bit of fresh sage from the garden.
Brined for around 24 hours, then rinsed it well, patted it dry and stuffed the cavity with some chunks onion, some lemons, halved, and a few garlic cloves. I let the bird sit with a fan blowing on it for 30 minutes or so to dry the skin somewhat while the smoker came up to temp.
Ready to go into the smoker:
In the smoker, temp at 250F with an AMAZEN smoker box on the bottom rack, using Pitmasters Choice blend pellets:
Went for an internal temp of 165F. It took almost 8 hours to get there. Through the cook I gradually increased the smoker temp till I ended up maxing out the MES at 275F. In the afternoon the sun started to hit the back wall of the MES and it caused the temp to DROP! That puzzled me for a bit but then I decided that because the MES temp sensor is located in the back wall of the box the solar heat was causing it to think the box temp was higher than actual. (I was checking the box temp with the second probe of the ThermPro.)
Here is is resting after 8 hours (pretty):
Slicing some for dinner. The rest will be sliced thin on the slicer machine and then vac sealed:
And, finally, dinner!
It turned out very good. The food police (wife) suggests either less salt or less time in the brine next time. I think I'll go with shorter time because I want to keep the cure level as recommended on the Tender Quick package. And I think I will start at 275F and use that temp throughout.
Thanks for looking.
Braz
![DSC_0485[1].JPG](/media/dsc_0485-1-jpg.545308/full?d=1507263180)
![DSC_0497[1].JPG](/media/dsc_0497-1-jpg.545315/full?d=1507263180)
